My Inaugural Page

This is the very first blog I’ve created, so it will take me some time to learn how to use the technology and how to post things here properly.

Let me introduce myself: I am a college professor of Communications and the Humanities (English and American Literature, from an interdisciplinary point of view).  After a serious illness, two complete hip surgeries, and (given my chronic health condition) the very long recovery period after each of them, I am now on Long Term Disability and will probably not be able to return to my former teaching position even on a part-time basis.  What does remain possible for me is research and writing, i.e. the creative and scholarly work I can do at my own pace.

I’m so committed to universalism (and, naturally, the Project of the Enlightenment, too) that I regularly forget to start by mentioning the basic biographical details about myself.  So, here it goes: I was born in a country that no longer exists, have to date lived on three different continents, and am proud to be (also) a citizen of Canada, a naturalized Canadian.  One last, possibly pertinent, detail: I am, at it happens, a female of the human species.  I mention this as I have frequently been mistaken for a male of the species even in situations in which my photo could quite clearly have indicated otherwise.  My Facebook page appears under my former married name (Tumir).  I also post on Google+ as Vaska X Tumir MA.

I intend to use this blog for several purposes:

1. As a portal for the final preparation of the special issue of Pynchon Notes devoted to the Transit of Venus International Pynchon Conference held in Malta in 2004
2. As a portal for the translation I am working on of Letters from Two Sarajevos
3. As a portal for my creative writing projects, starting with my poetry
4. As a place where I can post my observations and thoughts about the world of international politics, which, at this juncture in time, is reaching a crisis of epochal dimensions in my view

Eventually, I may even post some of my work on these future projects:

1. A new, feminist, universalist Minima Moralia.  I don’t have a title for it yet, so this borrowed work-in-progress-title will have to do for now (with all due respect and acknowledgements to Theodor Adorno, of course).
2. A much longer work I do have a title for: A Phenomenology of Being.  (This title is hereby/henceforth reserved for my exclusive use.)
   

These last two projects, will take time and I won’t be posting any materials towards them for at least a year (and probably quite a bit more).