Alissa Wilkinson » Eggheadedness

Letter to the future, or something

Alissa — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:08:45 +0000

It would seem right here to mention that my blog yesterday at Cardus’s staff blog was on, well, blogging.

Over there

Alissa — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:17:53 +0000

There’s now a Cardus staff blog, and along with some of my colleagues, I’ll be posting there once a week or so. So I blogged something very brief about the KJV Bible today. (I also quite frequently post to the Comment Tumblr.)

And speaking of colleagues, Rob and I have a point/counterpoint piece in the May/June Books & Culture on food politics. Some of it may sound familiar if you were in our workshop at Jubilee this February, though it’s more developed here. If you’re a subscriber, you can read it at Books & Culture’s website or in the print edition if it’s shown up in your mailbox. If you’re not a subscriber, well, shame on you. For Christians who want to actually thoughtfully engage with both books and culture with some depth, there is, quite literally, nothing else like it. (So subscribe!)

Peeking out

Alissa — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:58:46 +0000

Hello, friends. I have not blogged, because I have been extremely busy teaching five classes, editing a magazine, writing, and traveling for conferences and meetings: Pittsburgh, southern Ontario (several times), San Antonio, Texas hill country. I am off to Grand Rapids and Princeton this April, and very occupied with a bunch of fun pursuits.

That said, I’ll try to do better, when I have something to say. You should also follow Comment’s Tumblr, where I post fairly regularly.

A Hurried Linkdump

Alissa — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:42:09 +0000

I know I’ve been absent, mostly because since I last blogged I’ve entertained a ton of out-of-town company, written several relatively hefty articles, started the semester, and been to Canada and back. So what you get from me right now is a linkdump.

I wrote this review of Nancy Pearcey’s latest book, Saving Leonardo, and it published in Comment on Friday.
My friend David works at the Daily Beast and sent out this cheatsheet which he and another colleague put together with the best longform journalism on Egypt. Some great stuff on here.
On teaching literature through seduction. Not what it sounds like.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, wrote a riveting, knockout piece on the paper’s dealings with Julian Assange. Also an impassioned defense of the freedom of the press. A real study in how to write an informative essay with personal elements.
Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury, if you’re not paying attention) set up a writing prize for young people and wrote a little about it in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago. A great idea, incidentally.
Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin, on how boxing is like writing, or maybe how writing is like boxing.

Epiphany

Alissa — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:58:58 +0000

First things first: I was featured on the back page of the December issue of Christianity Today, and the interview went online yesterday. The digital edition has a couple of factual inaccuracies (notably, I am not the editor of Comment), but I’m still very humbled that CT even asked me to participate and grateful for their kind support.

–

So, as you might know, we had a bit of a snowpocalypse here in New York, beginning Sunday. My family almost never treks to NYC to visit, but as luck would have it, not only were my mother and brother in town, but my paternal grandmother and aunt had taken the train down from Boston to spend the night. They got here right as the snow started falling, and so we had a grand time traipsing around in a Little House on the Prairie- style blizzard on Sunday, eating at our favorite restaurant, book-buying at Greenlight, bracing against some crazy winds, and eating Tom’s chili.

Yesterday we’d originally planned to do some touristy sightseeing, as my grandmother had never been to New York before, but with the winds and the snow we thought we’d better stay inside. So we headed for the Met, which, thankfully, was open, and wandered around a bit. Several of the wings were shut off (unfortunately that included the contemporary art wing), but several among our party had never been inside the Met before. (My brother walked into the room with the Temple of Dendur and said, “Gee, some day a really confused archaeologist is going to dig this up.”)

They all got off safe between last night and this morning, and after lunch with an old friend from college whom I haven’t seen in years, I’m in my office, madly meeting deadlines, voting on end-of-the-year lists for CT and Paste, and returning emails before the rest of the week happens: celebrating the New Year with friends (notably, Rob, who is coming all the way from Hamilton-by-way-of-Ottawa for the occasion, provided the good weather holds), traipsing to the Cloisters (which ought to be gorgeous in the snow), practicing music, drinking whiskey, playing poker, hopefully seeing both True Grit and The King’s Speech; basically, wishing 2010 a fond farewell and greeting 2011 with open arms.

–

(Marilyn Chandler McEntyre exhorts us to “love the long sentence” – I think she’d be proud of that last paragraph.)

O come, O come

Alissa — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:31:09 +0000

I’ve been keeping very busy traveling back and forth from various places, mostly all over the states from here to Virginia and back, for family things: weddings, funerals, holidays, and the occasional fine craft beer tasting with cousins-in-law. And the semester, which ends next week. And writing and editing. You get the idea.

That said, through the wonders of modern technology we can now do such things without wildly disrupting our work, and so, I’ve been working busily. The latest bit – co-authored with my good friend and colleague, Rob – was published in the Globe & Mail yesterday: Not their parents’ conservatism.

–

What I’ve learned this semester about teaching, and writing, and myself, is manifold. For instance, I do have a breaking point, and my eyes are bigger than my proverbial stomach: I often, as Linford Detweiler put it, grab this life and wring its neck with joy, but sometimes it turns around and fights back. Also, I revert into my college-era unhealthy habits when I am stressed out, eating poorly or forgetting altogether, not exercising, sleeping a little here and there.

Also, Bach is very helpful for concentration.

Also, there’s a reason we were created for community.

–

Last week I accepted an offer (with support of my department) to teach a class at NYCAMS next semester as an adjunct, as my course load at King’s will be four sections of a class I’ve taught twice already and therefore (hopefully manageable). It’s a departure from teaching writing, which is mostly a workshop-based endeavor. The class is a history of Christianity and the visual arts, and I’m still sorting out what exactly I’ll teach but it will be something in the crossroads between philosophical theology and aesthetics, read against (mostly Western) art history. It is in fact what I dwell in and work with and think about, but it’s the first time I’ve put it together in a formal way. I’m nerdily excited. But wow, the spring semester is coming fast, isn’t it?

–

That all said, Advent is here. The new church calendar started on Sunday. Though it wasn’t actually acknowledged where I was on Sunday, I still felt the newness of it, the anticipation. It’s no accident, I don’t think, that the darkness stretches wider and wider across the day until just about Christmas. So much to wait for. So much to yearn for, and anticipate. So much rejoicing to come.

On tackling and linking

Alissa — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:13:47 +0000

A last-minute trip out of town for family matters and I’ve spent the entire day (after class) trying to unearth myself from links and projects and emails. I have a Sharpied list of five enormous projects staring me in the face now, taunting me from my bulletin board. But seeing them there, they seem tacklable. Even if I’ve just realized one of the deadlines is in two and a half weeks, not six.

And I tacked my “we want you in our MFA program” letter from SPU to the board right above it, right below cards and notes from loved ones, to remind me that all I have needed, His hand has provided. The semester marches on. And then. And then!

Some links collecting in my browser:

From Duke Divinity’s truly excellent Faith & Leadership blog: Exhaustion ethics and Networking: a feature of thriving communities.
A really fun Culture Diary from Tim Wu, over at the Paris Review. (Parts 1 and 2.)
FoodPress!
The Simpsons will turn 23. (Bart won’t.)
Coffee cocktails: yes please.
Rejoice: A new Didion book is on the way.

On teaching poetry as a non-poet

Alissa — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:34:04 +0000

Also, from a student today: “Well, poetry’s really like when you pour Coke into the glass, and fills in between the ice cubes. That’s the poetry.”

—

I’ve been taken aback by how much I’ve been soaking up poetry these last couple weeks as I prepared for class. I didn’t teach poetry in last year’s class – it is, after all, a nonfiction class – but, inspired by Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, I built two weeks’ worth into my syllabus and as it turned out, it hit right in the perfect time for both my students (who have been wearily slogging through midterms) and me. October was good, but not easy, and very wearying in body and soul and spirit in a way I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. In the past when I was weary, I shut down, but this month I’ve felt the exact opposite happening inside of me. I’m beginning to understand things I haven’t in a long time, if I ever did.

And so I’ve been inhaling poetry, more than anything else.

—

On Friday I went down to First Things to hear Christian Wiman – eminent poet and essayist and editor of Poetry magazine. He read some old work and new. I admit, shamefacedly, that I’m familiar with his name and reputation but not his actual poetry. It was a rather august crowd, including some King’s students (some mine!) and a colleague on the faculty as well as a number of other familiar faces – including, believe it or not, Mark Strand.

Wiman’s poetry is dark in a not hopeless way. There seemed to me to be a lot of spareness and trees in his work, probably something borne of his youth in far-west Texas. He found his way toward faith through poetry. His work seems like it’s a curtain between the eternal and me, fluttering and letting me see beyond it just a little, once in a while.

Later that night we were at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe, where about half my students and some of their friends and roommates piled into a corner for their Friday night slam, which was (at times literally) hopping. The poet who won is an NYU student and a pastor’s kid, something I wasn’t expecting and something I was glad of, for their sakes.

—

After these few weeks of teaching, experiencing, and observing poetry, I’ve been gratified to have several students approach me and say they want to start writing and maybe even performing their own work. Nothing could delight me more.

But I don’t write poetry. Sometimes I think I could, but I’m not sure you can force that sort of thing, and I’ve chosen my genre for the next few years. And yet. And yet.

Rare, Vaguely Existential Ramblings

Alissa — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:31:42 +0000

Last night I popped over to the blog I kept when I first moved to the city to establish a date on something – I’m glad I blogged that year, there’s so much I’d forgotten – and it reminded me once again that I was quite a funny writer at one time. I’ve been digging through my archives and putting them on Dropbox and found my first attempt at NaNoWriMo, which I abandoned about five thousand words in, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. And I thought: Huh, maybe I’m more creative deep down than I really think I am. Which bodes well for my next stage of graduate study.

But before I can get back to creative writing, I need to finish my Harvey Fellows application. My chances are very slim – I’m not being modest, they are slim for a few different reasons – but I have amazing, wonderful recommenders and at least a shot and it would cover tuition entirely, so it’s worth the angst. It’s due November 1, so I’m hoping to get it submitted by mid-week. Then I can go back to noodling around with essays and conference paper abstracts and the like.

By way of quotidianity: It’s been in the seventies here the last few days, which is thoroughly confusing. I do like warm weather. But I also relish the scarves and sweaters, and whenever the warmth extends too deeply into fall, I get nervous that I won’t get enough winter to satisfy my need. I’m such a northerner. I need seasons to feel settled. And I do want snow – preferably by the New Year, because it’s just so happy-making to have white stuff on the ground when the year ticks over.

And on the subject of years: Every year ends and I say, wow, that was quite a year, but this year really was on so many levels. I am much older at the end of it than I was at the beginning. For instance – and this is simply one instance of many, but you’ll have to buy me a coffee or a glass of wine if you want more – at the turn of the last year I had just finished and submitted my thesis and had no real intention of pursuing further graduate study or seriously pursuing a job in academia. Then I got offered one out of the blue. And then I was convinced by a couple of conversations and some gentle Almighty-nudgings that no, this is for me, and I need to go for it. And now here I am: applied and accepted in a program I’d only sighed wistfully over before, and working full-time with a proper office and students who call me professor. It’s freaky. And fabulous.

That leaves me wondering what on earth can be in the cards for 2011. People sometimes write me emails to ask how I have gotten into the jobs and opportunities I have, and at this point all I know to say is that the only thing I do is make myself extremely available to – well, to whatever – and I work really hard at whatever I’m doing at the moment.

From what I can tell, from my fairly naive and inexperienced vantage point, it seems the line between success and failure is just showing up and doing whatever you’re given to do. And doing it well. And on time. And with a smile and a sense of wonder.

It helps to have some good traveling partners along the way, though. In that, I am blessed.

Getting in

Alissa — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:11:38 +0000

The last couple weeks have been very roller-coaster-y: some excellent time in Hamilton and in the Cardus office for a bunch of work on Comment, then returning home to stacks of work and some very late nights.

Good things, though –

I got an incredibly exciting call when I was sitting late in my office trying to meet a deadline: I got into Seattle Pacific University MFA in creative nonfiction! I’ve deferred my acceptance to the fall term, which means I’ll start at the Glen West in August. I did a lot of research and soul-searching before deciding to apply to SPU because, frankly, it’s the best program out there: selective, rooted, low-residency but also very rigorous. And I’m so glad I got in.
Yesterday, my spring course load was rearranged, and now I have my ideal schedule, giving me freedom to schedule conference and Comment-related travel into my week when needed.
And I’ve caught wind of some exciting teaching opportunities in 2011.

Leaving shortly for my sister-in-law’s wedding in the Richmond, VA area. Relishing the idea of Monday, which starts my first full week in the office in a month.