The MLA is coming to Chicago, and while I vowed to avoid it, last night I rashly promised my three-year-old son Ben that next week I’d take him on a train ride to downtown to see the "towers" (anything taller than three stories is a tower, and he loves them) and maybe the Shedd Aquarium to look at the clown fish and the sharks. It’s possible that I might bump into a Victorianist briskly confident that she knows exactly where the Arthur Hugh Clough panel is located or trip over a drunken comp lit grad student curled up in a little ball because he didn’t get a job interview. So to remind myself of the world I used to inhabit, here’s a dead-on satire of academic life in the form an Office episode, complete with a shaky video camera, awkward but meaningful pauses, and secret drinking. The setting is the poli-sci department at Harvard, but except for the matching chairs and better lighting, it could be any department in any research university in the country.
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3833875541020589090&hl=en
Now take away the shaggy hairstyles and that guy with the bow tie, and you’re right back in the corporate world.
One-Way Street 