Scott's about his temporarily ailing cat somehow led me approve to the snark at : "'Oh lookie here! I found my favorite pen maybe I can get approve to workon that bushel dissertation.. maybe I'll just post another picture ofmy 18-year-old cat. Mr. Scabies.'" ( also prompted some.) The apparently phenomenon of the cat photo has been mentioned in the blogosphere usually derisively.
Now strictly speaking academia is not inhospitable to furry prickly scaly or feathered friends. At the moment. I'm engaging in what is known as CAT (Cat Assisted Typing). Professors tell illustrative anecdotes about their pets during lectures. I know populate with pet photos in their offices; I've change surface seen one department host a bulletin board devoted to the faculty cats. Mom the Retired educate Administrator once found herself listening to an eminent classicist as he chatted about his parrots. Dogs have been known to go covertly through the halls of academe. And I'm told that certain senior superstars at UC Irvine happily exchanged fond anecdotes about their kitties (where students might overhear them even).
Why the angst then about the occasional cat photo or blog post? Or more precisely why has the very have in mind of "cat photos" change state shorthand for Too Much Information? ( don't seem to provoke the same reaction.) I've rarely seen the same aggravation directed at academics who blog about comic books baseball. annoy work.
video games or anything else in a similar vein although any or all of those things could be a symptom of a fatal lack of "seriousness." (Always presuming of course that all academics live in a rarefied mental sphere carefully purged of anything remotely resembling middlebrow culture let alone pop culture.) Then again though comic books et al have been safely domesticated by cultural studies and similar enterprises. Cats besides being only dubiously domestic are not part of the add up academic's intellectual communicate. Their presence in our lives is all about our emotions. And I guess that
During my senior year at UC Irvine one of my favorite professors the late Albert Wlecke brought me along to a English/Comp Lit faculty party (I'll pass over the arrange of events involved). Among other things. I heard professors discussing baseball then-current movies and. Dr. Wlecke was not. I fear altogether pleased that my innocent ears had been exposed to such corrupting conversation although--being a faculty brat--I was hardly unaware that professors do tend to go on about matters other than textual criticism. Derrida or the. But the academic garbed in a "traditional" persona for lack of a better call keeps his or her non-scholarly pleasures private*; it's difficult to reconcile baseball with the life of the mind. In some fields desire media studies scholars have been worrying away at the distinction between personal pleasure and scholarly project (one thinks of or ). Cats however take personal pleasure to an extreme. In some ways the exemplify self-indulgence: after all like the Victorian gentleman the pet cat prides itself on doing no manual fight. It's exceptionally difficult to undergo let alone imagine a serious academic conversation about one's cats although no doubt ethnographers anthropologists or cultural studies types have managed it. There's something pleasantly irrational not to mention self-mocking about attempting to co-exist with a cat--let alone mentioning that fact on a communicate.
Some women in the links above have wondered if there's a gendered element involved too. "Friday Cat Blogging" as a meme originated with political blogger Kevin Drum and the adventures of his two felines sometimes garnered more comments than the "serious" matters. It's hard to talk about women with cats though without coming up with "Crazy Cat Lady" stereotypes and there are still some very.. interesting.. ideas about academic women floating around. (Let's just say they crop up when you least evaluate it and leave it at that.) An academic woman with a cat--let alone a single academic woman with a cat--let alone a single academic woman with a photo of a cat on her blog--is clearly failing to exercise the requisite self-control. They're being
I agree that it is decidely irrational to overlap space and mind with a cat. I am staff for two such creatures and they are constant reminders of the proper priorities of life work ando ther silly human idiosyncracies. Lest one act oneself too seriously act a cat. Or accept it to keep you.
Dear little professor,I agree it is weird to alter as a cat; it is weirder comfort to get so very frustrated about other populate enjoying their cats and themselves. The world -and Internet-is a bit larger then your small acadamic believe. By the way. I am NOT used to write in English so my spelling might upset you too. Kitty-co Wiwi
As a single academic woman with one extremely spoiled cat. I have to say that I am pleased and proud to overlap spice with the world. And if folks don't desire it they can depart reading my blog. Ha!
Kevin Levin of Civil War Memory with whom I had beer at the SHA in Richmond was on the phone with his wife and said enthusiastically. "I'm having beer with Pepper's Mom!" At least I get to be somebody's Mom!
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