Post-Grading Strategy

Student papers are turned in once again on Thursday. This weekend will be hellish. Simon and Nelly’s wedding is the weekend after, so I must do everything I can to have the papers done within a single week. I need to be hyper-productive Friday-Monday. I think I’m going to cancel my office hours on Wednesday and stay home to grade. I’m hoping I don’t have to turn back any papers late. Taking papers with me to the wedding is ridiculous.

Anyway, after Craig and I get back from the wedding, that gives me two weekends of work before I grade finals. Our final exam is on the first day of exam week. The final exams require no comments, so I’m hoping I can crank those out in a few days.

I’ve decided that the next book on the timeline list is Raghid El-Solh’s Lebanon and Arabism: National Identity and State Formation. I’ll put off the Great Arab Revolt for a while. I’ve also picked up a few books on French colonialism. I need to photocopy these excerpts:

Persell, Stuart Michael. The French Colonial Lobby: 1889-1938. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. 1983. pp. 97-114, pp. 140-158.

Thomas, Martin. The French Empire at War: 1940-1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998. pp. 62-63, pp. 100-129,

Martin, Thomas. The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society. New York: Manchester University Press. 2005. pp. 40-45, p. 115, pp. 162-163, pp. 185-208, pp. 218-226, p. 295, pp. 323-326.

Those will provide snippets for the timeline, but they can wait, too.

I’m embarrassed to say that the Solh is the only thing on my list by an Arab. But Arab writers are not publishing on the subject in English and I’ll be damned if I slug through books in Arabic for what we’ve determined is already an unpublishable conference paper. Truth be told, I think that this paper is a lot like my lone grant application this year. It’s not so important that it get me very far. It’s just important that I write it to prove that I still can still produce a paper. Baby steps.