Research, Teaching, and Service Accomplishments for Annual Review
Amy Olberding, Professor of Philosophy
General remarks on this year’s evaluation
Record here any context you would like the administration to consider in assigning arbitrary numerical scores to all your efforts.
For much of the pandemic, I was relocated to an ag campus (i.e., my family’s farm in the lonely Ozarks). Never one to miss an opportunity to expand my knowledge and competencies, research this year was both abundant and, as they say, relevant.
I. RESEARCH
Please list all research completed and appearing this year. Also list works in progress and characterize their stage of development.
Measurable Work Products Completed
“From Cistern Filter to S’more Pit: Charting Ozark Enlightenment or Something Else?” Considers the ambiguous nature of transformation when an early 20th century metal bucket/chicken wire water filter is converted into a 21st century fire pit for making s’mores.
“I Shot a Coyote.” Title is self-explanatory, but if you must know, he was wounded and too close to the house for comfort.
“Fourteen Quarts of Canned Fresh Tomatoes: We Refuse to Stew Them.” A critique of, and amendment to, Grandma’s method of tomato harvest preservation.
“We Threw a Dead Cat in the Creek.” An interdisciplinary assay to the crossing down the road where the smell wouldn’t carry, co-authored with an early China historian. (Work breakdown for apportioning credit: The original thesis was mine but he traced out all those intriguing further implications. We both claim credit for the aesthetic of existential agony that pervades the work.)
“Just Grab This if You’re Falling.” A disability studies exploration of ways to make an eccentric old farmhouse safer for one’s elderly parents through the strategic placement of things to stop or break a fall.
“Finishing What Dogs Start.” A survey of uneasy human-canine cooperation in which all manner of dog-wounded dying animals are shot or clubbed to merciful death by humans who wish the dogs would just cut that shit out. Key terms: groundhogs, armadillos, beavers, bloody mattock.
“Crying into the best pillow in the house.” Strategies for the cushiony muffling of animal-like howls are considered, as are ways to flip a soggy pillow to the dry side while suffering no pause in one’s tears. Free and heavy use of distancing passive-voice constructions are employed to generate an effect of tears from both nowhere and everywhere at once.
Under Review
“Raise the Crossing Before the Truck Engine Floods.” Introduces gravel, large rock, and sections of busted concrete to the low crossing of the creek. Draft complete and submitted, decision pending the arrival of spring rains.
“We Planted 220 Walnut Trees.” Acceptance contingent on those cows not busting the fencing and trampling the saplings.
Presentations
“At Least We’re Not Like Them.” A conversational excursion into how our family has never had father-son shoot-outs nor lain in wait to murder each other at the graveyard, unlike those people up the road.
“Dear God, Do I Really Look Like That?!? Since When?” A Zoom talk, the contents of which were swamped by visuals that oddly featured my grandmother’s neck on my body.
In Progress
Discovering the source of the leak in my truck power steering. Originally conceived as a brief journal article, but now appears to be turning into a monograph.
“It Still Doesn’t Flush Right.” A multi-section, multi-dimensional, multi-frustration exploration of what went wrong with the farmhouse toilet.
Funding-seeking Efforts (list both successful and unsuccessful)
Surrendered one full ton to the scrap metal recycling facility. Successful. Amount awarded: $87.23.
Proposed that I be paid an equitable, fair salary. Unsuccessful.
II. TEACHING
Briefly characterize your efforts in teaching this year.
Taught online from my car in the Walmart parking lot for more than two months. Considering moody halogen street lighting for all classes going forward.
Learned how to drop my overall bib for a more professional Zoom appearance.
Taught a bunch of students, a select few of whom did not endure long periods of quarantine, general confusion, and totalizing despair.
III. SERVICE
Briefly characterize your efforts in service this year.
Chair, Committee on Invasive Species Containment.
- Hand-pulled two truckloads of thistle from hay pastures in a bid not to seed our hay, and thus our hay buyers, with thistle.
Member, Committee on Surviving Arctic Blasts.
- Snow-plowed every homeplace on the road I could reach during that long cold snap.
- Led Subcommittee for the Purchase of Cheap Heat Lamps to Keep the Wells Workings
Chair, Committee on Workplace Climate.
- Did not punch or cuss my cousin, even when he spit tobacco juice by my boot during a disagreement about shared boundaries.
- Avoided most human beings and thereby spared the world my nigh-explosive new levels of misanthropy.
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