JACOB LEWIS

Over time Bao came to understand that teaching too was a kind of reincarnation,
in that years passed, and students came and went, new young people all the time,but
always the same age, taking the same class; the class under the oak trees, reincarnated.
He began to enjoy that aspect of it. He would start the first class by saying, "Look,
here we are again." They never knew what to make of it; same response, every time.
-- Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt

principio, I am a caucasoid male Homo sapiens currently residing in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was born and to some extent raised in Little Rock, Arkansas (that Rome on the Arkansas, that London of the West), though I moved to Fayetteville a billion years ago and have now made it something like a home. I am currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Arkansas, where I am studying medieval literature, and will probably graduate sometime around AD 2010, at which point I will certainly be poor, unless someone is nice enough to think that the work I've done merits a lecturer or (hope of hopes) a tenure-track position. For more information, click any of the bios, which haven't been updated in years (Fanboy Bio ¦ Truthful bio).

For those who were wondering, yes, I did get both of my previous degrees from the University of Arkansas. However, I see not that as a deficiency but an asset. Because I did not have to deal with the stress of moving and the (comparatively) crushing poverty and depression that would have accompanied that move to any of the places that offered me a place for my PhD, I was more free to focus on research and teaching. I think I've gotten pretty good at both, that one comment about me "just standing there and staring" on ratemyprofessor.com notwithstanding.

Speaking of, right now I'm teaching two sections of WLIT 1113H (Honors World Literature to 1650); if you are my student and have found this page while looking for your assignments, GO NO FURTHER. They are here. A conference sign-up sheet will appear HERE when the time is right.

Philosophically and politically, I'm a Utopian Socialist, Marxist, and Pacifist. My own heroes include, alongside the majority of my family, Grizz Hayhurst, Utah Phillips, Dick Feynman, Robert Heinlein, and Ernst Bloch (link in German as the English entry is a bit shit); these men form the core of my philosophical views (in what proportion depends on how I'm feeling at the time). I'm aware that it may seem odd for a Marxist to profess to like Heinlein, who was, if we're pigeonholing, at best a Capitalist Libertarian, but he was also the first strong individualist I'd encountered and still who I return to for doses of absolute pragmatism. Hey, it could have been worse: it could have been Ayn Rand.

Like Chaucer, I have a blog; unlike Chaucer, you may see mine here. I don't really update it as much as I should, though that may pick up as my graduate and/or professional career proceeds.

As far as religion goes, well, as one of the old "Parody Dinners" puts it, risum fecit mihi deus. My ethics are bound up in my politics, and I try to do right by others; to quote what was told to me as an old Irish saying, "You're no better than anybody else, and nobody's better than you." That's the start of it, really.

What, you do(n't) like me? Tell me about it!.