On Living with a Cinema/Media Studies Student

My roommate is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Cinema/Media Studies Department. She’s also very interested in gender issues, and is currently working on a project about intersex people. She’s interviewed several intersex people (commonly known as hermaphrodites; I think “intersex” is the preferred term or the self-designation). Now, she and a colleague are putting [...]

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You Know You’re at the U of C When…

A character on a sitcom says to his brother regarding his new, too-young girlfriend, “Don’t bring her around here! This is where fun comes to die!” You respond aloud, “NO! That’s the University of Chicago!”
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current book: Alright, who’s gonna suggest something else for me to read? Maybe I’ll move Moby-Dick to my bedside [...]

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You Know You’re At the U of C When…

…one of the magazines offered at the gym is JAMA.

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U of C, Represent

In line at Fifth Third Bank during lunch to deposit a handful of checks.
clerk: You wanted … some money back?
me: Yes, $40.
clerk: Do you have your ID with you?
me: Yes. Wait, no. I just have my school ID. Is that okay?
I hand him my University of Chicago ID card and give him my social security [...]

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I Bet He’s From Texas

I met my workout buddy at Ratner, the U of C gym, on Saturday morning. Neither of us had any idea that the Ratner pool was the site of the swimming events for the Gay Games. Every stereotype about gay men? In the flesh. In large numbers. Cute gay boys prancing and strutting about in [...]

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Plummeting from the Ivory Tower

I was thinking the other day about the great unknown that stretches ahead of me, and how it might be nice to approach it with some specific goals in mind. You know how people always ask you, "well, if money wasn't an object, what would you be doing?" That seems like a well-organized way to [...]

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The Unbearable Cuteness of Being, Part 2

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I walked over to Harper Quadrangle this afternoon and watched about an hour of the graduation ceremony, long enough to watch my classmates graduate. I don't regret my decision not to walk–I'm not comfortable being in the spotlight, even if it's for only .05 seconds. And really, if I don't get to wear [...]

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Wafflings and Ramblings of an Almost-Graduate

I just finished my penultimate paper for grad school. My final paper (on Heidegger & Adorno) is due on Monday, and graduation is tomorrow. I'm skipping the awards brunch and the graduation ceremony, although I might swing by to watch some of my classmates graduate. The problem is that it's a University graduation, which means [...]

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Another Post From the Bowels of Paper-Writing Hell

For those of you who are just here for the cute cat pictures, here’s some candy for you:

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I am in the midst of paper-writing hell. As though I haven’t already suffered enough? In some ways it’s a lesser circle of hell than my thesis was, because I don’t feel [...]

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The Spatialization of Time and Other Things I Don’t Understand About Graduate School

Compare and contrast the spatialization of time at work in Maus and in Time Code. How is it similar in the two media? How different? Please be very concrete in answering.
I just wrote a five page mini-paper answering this question, so I hope that I do actually understand the spatialization of time, at least as [...]

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