An Odd Position: On Being an Ex-Pat Americanist

So, I've been in Canada for most of the past year. I like it here. Culture shock has largely worn off. I still think poutine sounds gross, but I'm okay with the fact that it exists. I appreciate the fact that having an advanced degree is a good thing and not a prohibitive factor for people planning on running for public office.

There are still things I find odd or inexplicable, but much in the same way that I found things in Nashville inexplicable by virtue of being a native of the North. I'm used to the occasional befuddlement, and it just a part of living somewhere other than where I was born.

What still absolutely discombobulates me, however, are certain issues around my professional life. As a musicologist, I generally work on North American music (my pop music interests include the Barenaked Ladies, and not just to sound more Canadian on my OGS and SSHRC applications, so I can claim the continent), and I tend to do it from the perspective of how music is a reflection of the culture that uses it or creates it. Here's where I get at a loss for words: any time I have to have an extended discussion of "Americanness" in one of my classes. After all, the vast majority of my professors, fellow students, and students I teach are not from the United States. So when they are talking about "Americanness" (by which I specifically mean "in regards to the United States of America"), they are doing it from the outsider's perspective.

This isn't a bad brain place to be in from a scholarly perspective: while I am too much of a post-modernist to really believe in absolute objectivity, I do think a certain degree of intellectual detachment leads to better work. At the same time, I always get caught up in the strangeness of my personal position in these discussions: on the one hand, I am more or less obligated to participate at the same level of abstraction as my colleagues. On the other, however, I have a huge string of attachments to the U.S. that they don't have, and I want to defend my home just by virtue of it being, well, home.

In a certain sense, this is like having or being a sibling: they can torment, mock, taunt, and tease, but will defend you against outside attack. I feel like I can criticize my country, its politics, its wars, its culture, but I get a trifle defensive when someone else does. This comes into play in these discussions of "Americanness," and I feel like I have to be almost continually vigilant about it.

In the end, I think this will make me a stronger musicologist, better able to articulate my positions, but at the moment, it stresses me out a bit.

I'm Not Really a Student...

... except to the people who hold my Federal Staford Loans.

What I mean is this: what I am doing now, being a Ph.D. student in the humanities is not being in school in the sense most people think. I mean, I go to classes and get academic credit for them, I write papers (lots of papers, lots of long tricky papers). But I haven't been to a kegger in over a decade and I no longer wear pyjamas or work out clothes to class.

I am in an apprenticeship phase of my career: I am expected to begin participating in my profession, but with guidance from those more experienced at it than I am, to keep me from making any serious mistakes/ faux pas. My coursework, which at the Ph.D. level really is minimal, is to, for the first few years, give my research a direction, but beyond that, my activities are the same as any other musicologist working in an academic setting: I research, I write up my research, I submit my research to conferences and journals, and I teach. I mark papers and have laughs with colleuges.

I am not a student: I am a musicologist. I'm not even a musicology student: I know this culture now, probably about as well as I ever will. The Master's degree is about inculturation. The Ph.D. is about getting down to work and joining the discourse in the field, a discourse I am starting to shape in some small way. In other fields, entry level jobs involve a lot of supervision, limited authority, and (in good jobs) mentoring. In this university professor gig, the difference is that one ends this entry-level stage with an extra set of initials after one's name.

I have had this realization because I am at the end of the semester. Three small tasks stand between me being entirely free of formal responsibilities until September. Itty bitty tasks. I should feel relieved. I should want to throw a kegger. Nope. Not this gal. I mean I'm glad to have my papers done, but there is still a whole lot of stuff to do. I'm going to have a bit of a lie-in tomorrow morning, maybe crack open a bottle of wine tonight, then back to work. After all, the Society for American Music is having its annual conference next March, and they are looking for papers for it. The deadline is 15 June. I have to get on that.

Unless I happen to owe you money from my undergraduate degree. Then I'm totally a student. Completely.

(Next time, the knitting report)