Robert E. Stutts

Magpie (2013) by Niroot Puttapipat (click on the image to go to his website)

I’ve been neglecting the blog most egregiously, I confess, but I’m hoping to start posting regularly again (well, semi-regularly. Or at least more frequently than a few times a year?). Last spring I was awarded tenure, and it’s taken me this long to let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding for the four years I was tenure-track.

This spring I’m on sabbatical from teaching, which makes me feel all kinds of things, not the least of which is how I wish more jobs allowed for sabbaticals (my own trajectory took me twenty years to get here). Taking some time away, to get recharged and re-focused, is something that everyone needs, and I wasn’t aware how much I needed this time until I was taking it. I’m very, very grateful for sabbatical; in no way do I take this opportunity for granted. Still, I feel like I’m not quite doing sabbatical right (why does every day feel like Saturday, which I usually reserve for housework and errands?), but there you go.

So I thought I’d write a bit about my sabbatical projects, of which there are many. Not all of them are going to get done—my application was extremely ambitious, and I haven’t listed here everything I thought I might do—but I’m going to give it the old college try. Writing them down is my attempt to keep myself honest. Here’s the general breakdown of my sabbatical, and I’ll follow up with a few specifics:

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