Two for the show …

It has been a rather good week.  Last Wednesday I began my annual autumnal practice of visiting the FASS First-Year Seminar classes.  I usually wait until after the Thanksgiving weekend to do this, primarily so that any feedback received is based on at least one solid month of experience.  I always begin with a few words of advice – “Go to class!”, “Find your passion!” – but I prefer to listen than to talk, and it is always interesting to hear the first impressions of our new students.  Based on an initial sample of four visits, life in FASS seems good from a student perspective, despite the shock of an unaccustomed workload.  We’ll see how this view holds up as the sample size increases!

I have also been visiting academic departments, including both English and French this past Friday.  Again there is a sense that things are basically OK, although there is much apprehension about the future.  And the level of uncertainty is certainly understandable.  The basic problem is that we do not control our own finances, and hence are, to a greater or lesser extent, hostage to government whim.  Will they cut the grant per student, plunging universities across the province into turmoil?  Rumours abound, but no one knows for sure … at this point possibly not even the Minister himself.  And perhaps the biggest danger is that this sort of speculation will produce unnecessary levels of stress, never a good thing.  Much better to focus our energy on the task immediately at hand: teaching and research.  After all, that’s what we do, and in fact we do it very well.  What we need most at this point is, in my view, a period of stability, and perhaps even of “benign neglect”.  In purely “business” terms, universities are delivering a better product, at the lower unit cost, than at any time in their history.  It is the continual tinkering with the system that causes the problems. 

And it was a good week for FASS on the “research” front as well.  At the “Passion for Research” lunch on Tuesday, James Opp offered an eloquent defense of projects which didn’t fall within the context of Carleton’s identified strategic thrusts, giving voice to the unspoken thoughts of many others.  There is always the worry – particularly prevalent among scholars in the humanities – that what one does won’t be viewed by the university, never mind SSHRC and other granting agencies, as “relevant”, and hence won’t be supported.  But a quick glance at the list of SSHRC-funded research projects in FASS quickly demonstrates that such a view, like reports of Mark Twain’s death, may be exaggerated.  Indeed, on Thursday I had the honour of opening an international conference entitled “Inside and Out: Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity (200-800 CE)” – my kind of event!  I hope that the organizers will forgive me for the thought that humanities research doesn’t get much more esoteric than that, and thus I was absolutely thrilled when they received a substantial SSHRC grant to fund the costs.  I always find that these very specialized conferences are the most invigorating.  There may be no more than 15-20 specialists on a particular subject in the entire world, and bringing them all together at the same time in the same place makes for an exceptionally fruitful exchange.  My congratulations to Greg Fisher for pulling off this remarkable coup!

Of course the conference itself is just the beginning.  Ephemeral events of this sort usually generate some sort of more tangible product, most often an edited book.  Two years ago I worked with some British colleagues to organize a conference in Rome on the church of Old St Peter’s, the 4th-century precursor of the one that stands today, and arguably the most important building in the Western world over a period of some 1200 years.  This similarly attracted all the major scholars who work on that topic – and on Friday we submitted the final digital file of the resulting volume to Cambridge University Press, with whom we have a publication contract.  That same morning I attended the opening of another major conference on campus, the 25^th annual meeting of the Japan Studies Association of Canada, at which a number of Carleton faculty and students were speaking.  There is certainly no moss gathering on any FASS stones!

So, while this may not be the best of times, it is far from being the worst of times either, and no one need feel discouraged.  The important thing is that we carry on to the best of our abilities, maximizing the use of whatever resources are available to us.  And these are not inconsiderable!  We need to continue to inspire our students, and to pursue our research passions.  FASS is doing amazing things each and every week, and I have no doubt that it will continue to do so.  I can’t wait to see what the next week brings!

And as for the plug in Saturday’s Globe and Mail for our Bachelor of Humanities program … in a word: priceless!