Welcome, all, to 2017. I hope and trust your new year is starting well. I know mine has started with wonderful adventures and I know, too, that I am ready to settle back into the routine of the cool job I have which is, at its base, hanging out with all of you.
Over the next few days we will be finalizing our tasks as we head into the new semester. Gloria and Dawn are catching up from the maelstrom that was last semester and together we are getting ready not just for spring but for next summer and fall as well. I see faculty and grad students around the building finishing syllabi and sending out revisions to essays and thesis chapters. The ACT team is narrowing in on film programming and the graduate committee and Carly are working on next year’s grad class—including the first ever PhD cohort. The ASCs are helping students finalize their spring schedules and are gearing up for graduation contract season.
So while these weeks are our winter break, they are also moments for (re)starting and renewing. Very cool.
Speaking of very cool, Eric and Hannah Adams (former undergrad communications expert in the department) has docked in and left Hawaii on the first leg of his Semester at Sea jaunt. He tells us that you can google “semester at sea spring 2017” to get updates on the journey.
Julia has a new essay this week as well. “Borgen and the Double Bind: The Haunted Princesses of the Danish Castle,” has been published in Issue 3 of EuropeNow.
You know as well that ACT Human Rights Film Festival folks are going to be volunteering at the MLK Jr Day March. Join us at 11:00 am in Old Town Square. Free t-shirts. Free good feelings. Free good work.
Because this is my newsletter I also get to talk about me. My book Suburban Dreams: Imagining and Building the Good Life was named to the Choice Outstanding Academic Title list. As you probably know, Choice is a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries and it reviews more than 5,400 academic titles a year. According to the note I received from the publisher:
“This year’s Outstanding Academic Title list includes 494 books and electronic resources chosen by the Choice editorial staff from among the over 5,400 titles reviewed by Choice during the past year. Comprising almost 9 percent of the titles reviewed by Choice during the past year, and less than 3 percent of the more than 25,000 titles submitted to Choice during the same period, Outstanding Academic Titles are truly the “best of the best.”
Enough of tooting my own horn, right?
Hey, I am ready for an amazing spring semester, are you?