Good thinking. Sorting out the pros and the cons and what exactly about your current job is problematic is sensible in the extreme. it kinda bums me out because you were so enthusiastic about teaching not very long ago, but I have a lot of sympathy for you. All the non-teaching CYA stuff is what got me out of teaching ages ago.

I'm still enthusiastic about teaching, -t; I'm just not TEACHING. My current job is education advocate at a homeless shelter for teens, and it's so not teaching. It's a useful job, but it's not teaching; it's social work, and it's not right for me. I'm burnt out on it already.

I've been called a bitch and a cunt about (seriously) 500 times in the last 10 months. Nope; not my personality. I need a slower pace, more introspection, less crises.

Oh, I didn't know that's what you were doing! Yeah, that sounds seriously hard and not right for you. hope you can figure something out that will fit you better and give you health insurance and pay you well enough, etc.

Kennedy half-dollars are possibly cooler, if not as valuable, if you can find a source, which I have no guidance on.

Erin, that sounds awful for you. It's good to know what you need, though, and sometimes the only way to do that is "not this". t /silver lining

Plus, I dunno what my dissertation would be. Atwood? The explosion of female heroines in modern fantasy? Buffy? Urban fantasy as a response to a mechanized global culture? Umm.

So interesting (to me) that you're bringing it up now.

Next year, if my mostly awesome sociology schedule won't fail, I'm about to be very lucky with my "elective" classes. One of them, touchwood touchwood touchwood, will be with Nachman Ben Yehuda.

I got this whole theory how there really is no "Other", and how it's just a part in us we prefer to project on other social groups. And I started thinking what's the place of Sci-Fi in it, when I realized how similar are some ethnographies to SF/F novels - and the absurdity that we can't imagine another social order without it involves aliens.

Now, and it's all in very early stages - I want to see how "The Other" is being portrayed in SF/F, and what does it mean in terms of the sociology of deviance.

Plus, I dunno what my dissertation would be. Atwood? The explosion of female heroines in modern fantasy? Buffy? Urban fantasy as a response to a mechanized global culture? Umm.

FWIW, I would read any of these.

Shir, it's only tangentially related but have you heard of the Monkeysphere?

Shir, it's only tangentially related but have you heard of the Monkeysphere?

Have you met me? I EXIST in the tangentially related!

And no, haven't heard of it yet. Bookmarked it and will read it tomorrow. Right now, I gotta start thinking about going to bed.

Now, and it's all in very early stages - I want to see how "The Other" is being portrayed in SF/F, and what does it mean in terms of the sociology of deviance.

Shir, if you haven't already, read Iain M. Banks' "Excession". The concept of the alien species referred to as "The Affront" is, I think, a brilliant encapsulation of "The Other". Actually, any of Banks' Culture novels work as excellent places to start discussing the concept of "other" - what is "inside" and what is "outside" a specific, delineated operant-space.

(And whatever you write about it, Shir, I would devour and enjoy immensely. It's this mental whirly-thought-stuff that I most enjoy about reading!)

Oh, I didn't make myself clear, as usual.

I don't mean to see when and where X calls Y "The Other". I mean, it's done 24/7, so it's kindda boring to me.

I mean to see how it's done, and what, perhaps, it says about us as a society. Because as I said, ethnographies are in a way SF/F. And if that's the case, we can't be that far ahead with our SF/F literature, which will only show, I vaguely guess, a very certain perception of "The Other" - yes, in the very place which should be the farthest of all, imagination speaking.

In anthropology, the "how" is so much more important than the "why". Kindda like Rome studies. I find it rather neat.