Teaching narratives

["Long, Mark" <mlong@keene.edu>]

Hi, everyone,
 
Best wishes from Pune, India, where I am spending the year. 
 
First, I regret my lack of clarity: we are not working on an anthology of essays. And let me affirm Chip's take on the happy stories and false impressions and idealism: yes, boring. Of course fragmented, bitter, cruel, and selfish people readily trade in false impressions and idealism. Also boring. So let me try again: we are looking for narratives that do not swing to either extreme: narratives that might offer something worth knowing about wholeness and fragmentation, centeredness and bitterness, generosity and selfishness--especially for anyone interested in pursuing a faculty position in a college or university. 
 
John and I have been talking about the enabling fictions of the academic life over the past year or so. In a workshop at the last ASLE conference we tried to make visible the discontinuity between success and happiness, the false promises of institutions, the prevalence of hierarchy and privilege, distortions of honesty and integrity, and so on. We've found few professional stories about graduate school and the profession that take up these issues in an honest and constructive way. (For me, "Meeting the Tree of Life," archived on the ASLE web site, offers an instructive example.) 
 
So thank you for your interest in the subject, and your comments. And though it seems there is less writing on the subject than I might have thought, do send along suggestions if any come to mind. 
 
After reading all these posts in my weekly ASLE digest, I did realize that I prefer hanging with whole, centered, compassionate, and generous individuals--whether I'm out in the mountains or in a seminar room. Yes, hope, the thing with feathers.  
 
Mark