Saturday, July 16, 2005
(7:55 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Taking Stock
We stand at approximately halfway through the summer, and being the goal-oriented paragon of anality that I am, I felt it would be appropriate to take a look at what I have achieved academically thus far and what remains to be done:- I have gained a reading knowledge of German. I completed April Wilson's German Quickly several weeks ago, and I am likely to complete the reader Deutsche Denker und Forscher (which, despite its German title, is intended for English-speakers learning to read German) this weekend. I am still very much in the phase where one looks up every third word in the dictionary (including words one probably knows, but just to be sure), but I have at least attained the skills sufficient to pull myself out of that stage with time.
Late in August, I will take the German language exam. I think I've mentioned this before, but the format is that I agree on a book (in my case, Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral) with the examiner, study it for a month, then translate a passage chosen by the examiner in a timed environment. As long as I work an hour or two a day on getting through the book, I don't think this will present any problem at all. It will be good to have the two required languages out of the way before formally beginning coursework. (They might still have me take a French exam, but that would be absolutely no problem for me at this point -- still, hopefully they'll accept the Derrida translation and the review.) - I have read some Patristics, but not enough. I had hoped to have the directed study essentially done by the end of the summer, but that's going to be tough to pull off at this point. Once I'm done with Clement of Alexandria, though, I get to move on to Origen, who was one of the main draws.
- I have written my Nancy review and read a few of his other works. I was planning on a "Nancy and Agamben" directed study next semester, so that will be a good start.
- I finished Ted's index. This isn't terribly academic, but I feel like every scholar should complete at least one translation and one index, just to know what it's like.
- Most likely an edited version of my Derrida "commentary" for my thesis (focusing on Derrida's use of Kierkegaard
- Touching up my Benjamin paper
- Expanding my post Abortion and Obscurantism into a full essay
- Writing the paper on Žižek and Kierkegaard for which I wrote an abstract for my ill-fated MLA proposal
- Longshot of longshots: working through my paper on Barth and Moltmann
