"He could teach his students nothing; he was only educating himself at their cost." (Adams. The Education of Henry Adams. Ch XX) 「彼は生徒に何も教えられなかった。彼はただ生徒たちに割を食わせながら、自分自身を教育していたのである。」（ヘン…

I have no word to explain my feeling when I read an email from my foreign adviser at UCI, which reads: thanks for your reply, the transcript confirms that you proceeded to Ph.D candidacy and are now eligible for reduction of the non-reside…

To render "Schuld" as "guilt," it seems to me, makes psycho-analysis more moral(istic). If, as Nietzsche so strongly argued in On the Genealogy of Morals, the origin of what we commonly call "guilt" today can be traced back to the relation…

"Those sexual instincts which are inhibited in their aims have a great functional advantage over those which are uninhibited. Since they are not capable of really complete satisfaction, they are especially adapted to create permanent ties;…

「一寸ばかり育ちがいいといふ印象を与えるだけで、社会的信用は格段に増すし、日本で『育ちがいい』といふことは、つまり西洋風な生活を体で知つてゐるといふだけのことなんだからね。純然たる日本人といふのは、下層階級か危険人物かどちらかなのだ。これ…

「忌はしいもの、酩酊、死、狂気、病熱、破壊、……それらが人々をあれほど魅して、あれほど人々の魂を「外へ」連れ出したのは何事だらう。どうして人々の魂はそんなにまでして、安楽な暗い静かな棲家を捨てて、外へ飛び出さなくてはならなかつたのであらう。…

「希望といふものが不透明な表現をとるのはやむをえません。」（三島由紀夫『わが友ヒットラー』） "A hope can't but take opaque expression." (Yukio Mishima. My Friend Hitler.)

アメリカ観察記断章。アメリカの学生の読解力について。4年間アメリカの大学一年（理系）相手に作文の授業をやっていちばん疑問を抱くようになったのは彼ら彼女らの読解力かもしれない。実際、少々いりくんではいるがしっかり筋の通っている学術系の文章を読…

「ベナレスでは神聖が汚穢だつた。又汚穢が神聖だつた。それこそは印度だつた。／しかし日本では、神聖、美、伝説、詩、それらのものは、汚れた敬虔な手で汚されるのではなかつた。これらを思う存分汚し、果ては絞め殺してしまふ人々は、全然敬虔さを欠いた…

In attempting to file a Student Deficiency Report form, I noticed that one student's name is missing from the class roster. This is really strange, because I never gave her a drop code and how could you delete your name without that? But t…

How can I be cold to ESL students, when I am an ESL writer too? So, it's literally painful to write on their papers that they clearly show ESL problems. It's almost like reading a paper I might have written, criticizing awkwardly written i…

アメリカ観察記断章。アメリカの大学一年生の文章力について。文章の種類によって信じられないほど出来不出来がある。分析的なエッセイを書かせるととんでもなくひどい代物を提出してくるくせに、カジュアルな宿題だとかなり流暢な文を書く。これはもしかす…

"What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" (Orwell. 1984.) 「何ができるというのだろう、とウィンストは思った…

Do students really believe that by using such easy tricks like switching to a larger font, changing the font size, enlarging the margin, and so on, they can fool their teachers?

アメリカ観察記断章。英作文のＴＡ（といっても細かな授業計画や運営は個々人にまかされているのでアシスタントどころではないのだが）をやってもう丸4年、大学一年生の文章をかなり読んできた。率直に言って、かなりひどい。論理的な飛躍や根拠のない断定と…

Do you know any psychoanalytical theory that explains the reason why students keep forgetting the simplest MLA style rule (italics for book titles, double quotation marks for article titles)? There should be some psychic mechanism of resis…

the more i teach, the more convinced i become that there is little relevance b/w the superficial fluency and the inner deep thinking. indeed it's often esl students who barely speak up in classes but write extremely provocative and stimula…

The five-paragraph essay structure is a straight-jacket students don't know how to shake off. But I often suspect that they don't really want to be free from it, for this ready-made format is so easy to recycle and a still viable strategy …

Student drafts always make me wonder if non-discriminatory opinions about race and gender students frequently boast of aren't anything other than set phrases and ready-made thought patterns, something like a gadget they installed without l…

「なぜなら、すべて神聖なものは夢や思ひ出と同じ要素から成立ち、時間や空間によつてわれわれと隔てられてゐるものが、現前してゐることの奇蹟だからです。しかもそれら三つは、いづれも手で触れることのできない点でも共通してゐます。手で触れることので…

The more I revise exam questions, the more lengthy and complicated they become. I do this in hopes of clarifying them. But I suspect my students take my desperate effort to be unambiguous quite negatively. They seem to see this is too cons…

「自分をだましたところで、事実までがだまされてくれるとはかぎるまい。」（安倍公房「燃えつきた地図」）

「自動販売機のサービスは、なにより忠実と従順が取柄なのだ。客は、孤独のまま、王者の傲慢を満喫することが出来る。」（安倍公房「燃えつきた地図」）

an (un)likely dissertation plan written in a cryptic shorthand style at a brush---------- critique of post-anarchism--poli-sci: politics--philo: philosophy--poststructuralism & postmodernism--discursivity, impossible normativity; against e…

Okay, the teaching experiences in these four years have almost proved that it's futile to send long emails to students, for they seem to pay little attention to them. Then why am I still writing such a monstrous text at this silent night t…

"Narcissistic and selfless at the same time, he did not clutch at his life, which seemed subject to a prioviso clause. That probably explains his irony. If it be true that intellectuals should not be fathers, then Berg was the most unfathe…

"In an ideal society, a correlation between quality and success could perhaps be put forth..." (Adorno. "On Jazz")「理想社会においては、質と成功の相関関係が表明されることもありえるのではあるまいか……」（アドルノ「ジャズについて」）