Today a BA student at Harvard emailed me to ask for an electronic copy of my thesis on the development of the Darb al-Ahmar, and I spent the morning converting files, and scanning tables and prelim pages that apparently got lost transferring from my old computer to my present one. And I found myself surprised to find that it was good and very serious. Also puzzled that I just didn't take it any further. Need to think about that. Now I'm living in the wrong town to do any more with it. Why was that, just because I was occupied with babies and making friends with mothers and playdates. Strange.
Anyway, I looked up various colleagues and senior people who were working in the area, and found that of course their current work is increasingly up one meta-level, from the urban history of Cairo and the 'Islamic city' to studying the conceptualizing of those cities. I suppose this is inevitable, but it makes me a bit sad. I know academics have to use conceptual frameworks these days to keep professional, but why do they have to become more and more self-referential , and more interested in the framework within which they are studying than in the content they are looking at? Honestly, sometimes I just wish people could come off duty and talk about the real subjects they are still actually studying, if they would admit it. It's the academics' form of political correctness. But it's so annoying. And in a decade or two it will look so dated.
And it's so predictable. And there's such a gulf between that mode, and what you would actually say if you were going out to a totally novice audience - clever high school students, or even, heaven help us, DANES. Shouldn't that difference make one worry?
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Its almost like keeping up with a trend isnt it. There is always the latest buzzword- like globalization is now the hot new topic that everyone is launching into. I have found out that academics can be very insecure for some strange reason. It almost seems like they hide behind frameworks to establish the legitimacy of their work.
ReplyDeleteHello, eldest niece here!
ReplyDeleteIt's dreadful in Classics. UCL has replaced the obligatory end of degree translation papers with compulsory modules on literary theory and Cambridge almost won't accept anyone with a phd proposal on a real topic. Lots of horror stories from my classicist friends here who have been driven to oxford by this phenomenon. I expect it won't last long.
Anyway, nice blog. Glad laila's party went well (for her!). Do you fancy paying us a visit in mid july? We might be having a big (secret) party for mum's birthday.
xxxx
What we get in Islamic art & arch is the 'highly charged and deeply embedded social practice' of public writing (for Fatimid textile inscriptions), and 'the Orientalist imaginary of Cairo' and the study of 'representing and narrating' for what we're all actually interested in, medieval/Ottoman city life and popular culture. Eughhh.
ReplyDeleteJuly - yes, will go downstairs and talk to M. about that and summer holidays. You're thinking of July 10th itself? xxx
Ugh, in archaeology it is all about "landscapes". "Sacred landscapes" "social landscapes" and if you can throw "frameworks" in you are an academic god. My advisor continually tells me off for colloquial speaking and non-academic writing. I had to turn "Silver plate was a luxury item that people used to compare their wealth to their neighbors wealth in a mad display of one-up-man-ship resulting in bigger heavier plates" into 250 pages!!
ReplyDeleteDamn, and I didn't use landscapes or frameworks once in that sentence! Academic FAIL!!
My dissertation in lolspeak: Silver iz purdy. Lets me showz you dem.