Faculty seminars usually suck. But here’s some good news: my
exhaustive scientific researches have finally revealed the cause.
Faculty seminars, it turns out, are polluted with six types of DIC (Damned Irrelevant Crap):
1. Thesis
regurgitation/sloganeering. This flaccid DIC is usually, though
not exclusively, found in the shaky and inexperienced hands of junior
faculty members trying to hide their self-doubt, and it generally takes
the form of aggressively trotting out slogans and propaganda slavishly
absorbed in graduate school—usually from the DICk’s (Damned Irrelevant Crap speaker’s) demagogic thesis
advisor, who is, no doubt, an enormous DICk herself. Seminar question:
“Is Heideggar opposed to technology?” DICk’s answer: “Heideggar is
obviously anticipating the prescient works of the pre-post-dadaists who
turned away from the hegemonic notion of ‘notion’ and instead embraced
the ‘notionless’ as derivative of the thinking of Derrida’s
protégé, Doggie-do, whose deeply spiritual, sensitive,
haunting and utterly French third book ‘Fuck Off and Kill Me, a
Deconstructionist's Spitefully Rancid Suicide,’ published (and written)
posthumously, was a watershed event in the history of transgendered
puppeteer literature.” Huh?
2. Discipline-based
jargon tossing. This confident little DIC is what the thesis
regurgitation/sloganeering DIC eventually becomes after he works
himself into a post-tenure swollen state. Seminar question: “In Frost’s
poem, who is it that doesn’t love a wall?” DICk’s answer: “In their
1984 study, ‘The Hermeneutics of Walls in Korean Sanitariums,
1925–1951, a Case Study in Systems Management after the Japanese
Textile Crash of ‘03: The Renaissance of Walls, pre-Berlin,’ Farthead
and Festerface clearly remind us that the treatment of
turn-of-the-century, cross-dressing, retired, Korean Army officers was
really the Kim regime’s attempt to repress the nascent wall-loving then
overwhelming the military—Ha! What a blatant metaphor!—and that they
were secretly funded by the Tibetan mafia, in collusion with Swiss
bankers (naturally!). So it is obviously the Swiss (those fuckers!) who
don’t love a wall. Question answered. What’s the reading for next
time?” Uh, thanks for the, um, insight.
3. The asshole showing
off. Make no mistake, this big DIC is the classic prick. He’s in
constant need of stroking. Seminar question: “Is Lucretius attempting
to trick us?” DICk’s answer: “In my graduate classes [imagine William
F. Buckley’s haughty drawl extending the word “graaaaaaaduate”] I
always like to try to make the students see that blah-ty fucking blah
blah blah.” In my undergraduate classes we try to stick to the books.
4. Leather-couching
for emotionally ruined teachers. This limp DIC wants to be firm,
but is just too full of self-pity. Seminar question: “Is Turnus pious?”
DICk’s answer: “My students hated that question! You can’t imagine how
hard it is to teach a seminar to a group of hostile, conservative
students. Just try to find time for research under oppressive
conditions like these. And with low pay, to boot. Impossible business,
this. . . Uh, what was the question, again?” Yea, whatever.
5. Ignoring the
question. Don’t be fooled by this sweet-talker’s DIC;
you’ll just feel cheap and used afterward. Seminar question: “Who can
work through the demonstration of Proposition 12, Book II in The Elements?” DICk’s
answer: “You know, I just found the technicalities too droll to work
through. I read it more as Euclid speaking metaphorically. The
demonstration itself was just not important to me.” Must be an
inspiration to struggling students.
6. Any utterance that
includes the words “21st Century,” “the internet,” “critical thinking,”
“paradigm shift,” or “scaffolding.” This DIC loves himself above
all else, and is always looking for the opportunity to spew the
evidence of his self-love. ‘Nuff said?
The seminar is dangerous enough, even if there are
no DICk’s. It is supposed to cultivate deeply reflective and thoughtful
discourse. Try telling that to a group of verbally precocious (dare I
say, precious?) college professors, who often act like British Members
of Parliament in stepping over each other to be the first and loudest
to speak/shout. The faculty seminar where good questions are met with
the silence of bright and thoughtful seminarians wrestling with their
thoughts before weighing in, and then balancing their comments against
their careful and respectful listening to their interlocutors, is very
rare. The risk is high that the most confident and least reflective
faculty seminarians will take the floor and monopolize the
conversation, while the most thoughtful, collegial, faculty seminarians
think, listen, but all too rarely, speak. Some of the best faculty
seminars begin after the seminar officially ends and the DICks have
gone limp, whence, the real conversation finally begins with the
reflective seminarians, informally, after hours, without the burden of
the tyrannical
“Look-at-me-I’m-so-fucking-clever-can’t-you-tell-by-how-much-I-say-and-by-how-quickly-I-say-it”
DICks.
Here, then, are two suggestions to help the cause,
followed by a question:
• Keep your DIC to yourself; no one wants to
see it.
• But if you do feel the urge to show us your
DIC, slow down. Take a deep breath. Count backward from 100. Don’t stop
at zero. And remember,
don’t be a DICk.
• Why can’t we, as a faculty, do what we
expect our students to do; namely, have a good seminar?