(no subject)

I've nearly finished teaching my family history course. It's been so much fun! I haven't reported back here every week because I come home and am promptly besieged by emails. I only have one more evening course this semester and it doesn't yet have enough people, so whether or not there are funny comments that emerge depends so much on whether there is somewhere for those comments and thoughts to emerge from.

What's peculiar is that the course is a food history one. Maybe everyone has left their enrolments till the last minute (which is a surefire way for a course to get cancelled). If you want to know what subjects you may or may not hear from me about, you can see the detailed page here.

If I don't get enough teaching, I might have to sell more fine literature or get a temp job. I guess this means I need to write fine literature. Food history is easier. Also a better source of bad jokes.

I don't have to worry about any of this tonight. Tonight is anime night!

(no subject)

I really don't understand the world of scholarship. I've been telling everyone the last while that I'm not really a scholar, at least while fiction demands so much time. While I wasn't looking, my two worlds met in the footnotes of an article*. One footnote refers to my contribution (as part of a panel with Sean McMullen - he was very nice about me turning up there, but I think a tad surprised) one of only two Medievalish conferences I have given a paper at in ten years and the other about the fiction I write. I'm obviously much more interesting when I'm just doing what I do, rather than when I plan or angst.

I like the footnotes, I have to admit. I like most footnotes. It just seems strange to see my name in any.

Anyhow, it will please you to know that one of the authorities in the field lists me as a writer who researches her medieval historical fiction quite carefully. This is proof that we write what we write and readers read what they read, and we really should not get too hung up on what sort of categories we get put in.

I know at least two of you who will want to check out this article (and I am only a minor part of 2 footnotes, but I know you'll ask anyway). You want the latest issue of Parergon (which is part of Project Muse), p. 99ff.

The irony is that I happen to have that volume sitting in my TBR pile, but the history side of my reading had to give way to being ill, to what happened to my father, to fiction, to teaching and generally making a living. I knew I couldn't get to it quickly, so I put it aside unopened, as a treat after I caught up with my long-overdue reviews for that same journal. I've now read the article, and it has a bunch of interesting things in. Trigg's discussion of Bryce Courtenay's use of historical research in one of his novels is particularly interesting.

This is the strangest twelve months of my life, bar none.

* as opposed to Sylvia Kershaw's conference paper.