1: Unbecoming Becoming Kim Novak During Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s talk last week at the Sheldon, I began to feel dizzy. Low blood sugar? No. (I’d checked beforehand and was holding steady at 112.) Tired. Yes, but what graduate student so close to November isn’t a little world-weary? That hasn’t stopped this old bobcat of academia before. Panic attack? Maybe. Read on. 2: The Virtue of Difficulty When faced with difficult texts, I tell my students to power through. I thought I kn

I. The term multimodal is problematic. We need some context. How's Aristotle—mimesis (representation) / diegesis (telling)—as a starting point? Draft #1: I was given an insulin pump, which is basically a mechanical pancreas in the form of a mid-1990s pager. It attaches to a port on my abdomen and, aside from being useful in managing the levels of sugar in my blood, seriously compromises my ability to tuck in a shirttail (White). Choose your own adventure: If it's not already

Draft #1: Technology Was Scary, and Then I Became a Diabetic One may as well begin with the diagnosis: Five years ago a doctor at an urgent care center in Mississippi told me I was diabetic. I had all the classic symptoms: rapid weight loss, dark urine, fatigue. My blood glucose level was so high the meter couldn’t read it, simply blinked “High” and made this odd keening noise like my blood—so sugary it was, I imagined, the consistency of maple syrup—had offended it. “Oh, boy