Stratofanatic's Emporium

That's a wrap, folk. Our latest issue of Fafnir, volume 9, number 2 , has just been published, and that's officially my last horrah with the journal. It's been a pretty rewarding time overall . Over the course of the last five years , I've had the opportunity to work with some fantastic editors and, of course, reviewers. In fact, it's probably been working with the reviewers themselves that I'll remember best about this experience. Although I'm closing out my tenure with relief -- the burnout was starting to get to me -- I'm still immensely proud of everything we've managed to accomplish these past five years. Anyway, here are the highlights and personal accomplishments: Developing the reviews section from scratch.  We went from having 0-1 reviews per issue to about 6-11 per issue under my tenure. Ushering almost 100 reviews to publication, oftentimes through several drafts. Many reviews were from graduate students and Early Career Researchers.  Wor...

So, reading through my first-time course evals for ENG 373A. In general, I'm satisfied with them. As per usual, students found my energy and style especially appealing, and they also gave high marks to accessibility and ability to make material interesting. Nobody complained about unclear expectations. Overall, the commentary was quite positive, and several students self-reported enjoying the course highly. The complaints were also pretty standard. I still talk too fast. Unlike my freshmen course on Monsters, however, there were almost no complaints about "too much work." Still, several people offered the standard complaint about "harsh grading." (This remark, which also tanks my ratemyprofessor score, continues to confound me, as 70% of my students got A's or B's. Historically, I'm pretty sure at least some of these complainers have actually gotten A's in the course overall. I struggle to come up with an explanation that don't sound like an ...

It's well-known that Tolkien pronounced his name tol- keen , not tol- kin  (like most Americans do) ... but here's a conundrum. Did he emphasize the first syllable, or the second? In other words, TOLL -keen or toll- KEEN ? Reading Bowers's Tolkien's Lost Chaucer , which is fantastic, and he says that he confirmed that the accent's on the second syllable through people who worked with him. (His first source was Reynolds Price's Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back , 2009), and then he confirmed Tolkien's supervisee V. A. Kolve.  However, in CS Lewis's essay "The Alliterative Meter," he clearly puts the accent on the first syllable. The line goes like this (the capitals belong to Lewis): "We were TALKing of DRAGONS | TOLkien and I". So, Tol -keen. I'm going with Lewis here for now, because part of me has really never cared about proper pronunciation. So, personally, I'll keep saying Tolk- kin, like a good 'Murican. Sti...