One thing I find weird when describing this "worst poetry" project to people is that some assume *we're* the ones making the judgments. That would indeed be a boring question. Much more interesting is reporting on what people have historically considered "bad" and why.

https://twitter.com/tommazanec/status/1392911256240103424

"Bad poetry" is the inevitable side effect of claiming something to be "good poetry." Those standards of good and bad change significantly over time and across literary traditions. Scrutinizing those standards can tell us a lot about literary, intellectual, & political history.

Join us for phase two of “The Worst Chinese Poetry: A Virtual Workshop.” This will be two-day roundtable discussion open to the public, following up on phase one, which was a series of fourteen miniature workshops held in early April.
Register here: tinyurl.com/WorstPoetry
1/ Featuring @nadmussen , @madpoli90, @wangsixiang, @a_detwyler, @kjdphd, @Daiwenchen, @ChloeEstep, @JDBHenshaw, @yunte, @Qiao_J, @pvierth, @quasiphantasmal, and many others who aren't on Twitter!

Description & schedule below:
2/

This wrong in many ways. Let's start with:
East ≠ China
West ≠ United States
and
East ≠ (Mencian) Confucian
West ≠ (Calvinist) Protestant

https://twitter.com/david__moser/status/1386506129539174401

On the Chinese side, human nature 性 was hotly debated (David knows this, or should). Xunzi has a whole chapter refuting Mencius, called "Human nature is evil" 性惡. ctext.org/xunzi/xing-e. Here's how that chapter begins (trans. by Knoblock) : 今人之性，生而有好利焉...

What strikes me about Jesus & John Wayne by @kkdumez, a historian at my alma mater (Calvin University), is the emphasis on the evangelical media network in spreading the patriarchal militancy that enabled abusers and elected our outgoing prez. I think most commentary on this book has focused on its shock, its power, its impact (all deserved). But I really noticed how none of this would have been possible without the insular (and lucrative) evangelical magazines, newspapers, bookstores, publishers, podcasts, etc.

Instead of watching the new Mulan movie, I invite you to read my favorite article about the original poem, a 34-page investigation into the meaning(s) of the first line. In the received version, that line reads:
唧唧復唧唧
Meaning basically: "Tsk-tsk and tsk-tsk" The article is "As the crickets stridulate: Texts and textual weaving in the Ballad of Mulan" by Timothy Wai Keung Chan 陳偉強, in Willow Catkins, ed. Shirley Chan et al. (2014). (Email/DM me for a copy.)
Now, Chan's a serious philologist, so you know this is going to be thorough

Some people say, "A dissertation is something you'll only write once, so save yourself some trouble and write your dissertation as a book." Here's why that's bad advice.
(Some thoughts as I revise my own diss into a book) Dissertation & book have fundamentally different aims. One is to demonstrate what you know to a small group of experts, the other is to pass on that knowledge to a broader audience. The first group reads for errors, the second group reads for information.

Now that I've been through the academic job application process from both sides, people have started email me for advice on cover letters. Here's what I've written back. (I know this is late for TT jobs this year.) 1. The cover letter should be consistent. A consistent theme should run throughout the whole thing, not only through the cover letter but also through the other application materials. Consistency (within a broad framework) is preferable to eclecticism.