Thursday, October 16, 2025

The Silent Office Hour

Administration wants to encourage faculty-student interaction outside of the classroom, so they require the faculty to spend two hours on drop-in office hours a week.

Bwahaha.

Ask any faculty member, and I’ll bet you’ll find they agree with me. Office hours are the perfect time to submit travel receipts, catch up on paperwork, and take care of email. They’re just a terrible time to expect to see students.

Because students almost never come. Too far. Wrong time. Too nervous. No identified questions.

After all, who has questions before lunchtime? Questions are a nighttime activity. You know, after the faculty have already left campus.

If administration wanted to support genuine interaction between faculty and students, they would require things like:

1) Mandatory concert atttendance – and the wonderful chit-chat afterwards when we’ve all been moved to laughter or chills by the music in all its performative glory

2) Mandatory shared setup time. Before class even starts, when the projector’s misbehaving and I’m untangling cables, students drift in and talk about what they’re listening to, what’s happening in the world of campus and beyond, or whatever else is on their mind. No grade pressure, no formalities – just human contact with a purpose dangling from a HDMI cord.

3) Mandatory packing-up time. There’s nothing like unplugging the laptop from its station to bring on a host of quick one-off questions from students. (Some days I cynically wonder if more productive learning happens when I’m packing up than actually happened during discussion – there’s a lot of “aha” in those quick exchanges)

4) Mandatory text capacity. No, I don’t give out my phone number to students – but I do have students use a walkie-talkie app. They can leave voice or text messages; I can respond asynchronously, again, by voice or by text. This for me takes about 2 or 3 hours a week, since these can become extended conversational exchanges. (Please please please don’t tell me about the messaging app in your LMS. I live on a farm, with all the absent internet that comes with that. The walkie-talkie app takes two pennies; the LMS feed takes two dollars. Let’s stick with ‘Can I receive and respond?’ as our measure of tech success.)

5) Mandatory coffee fetching. When I’m in my office, I can feel lonely. Head out to get a cup of coffee from the lounge, and I inevitably bump into one or more students, and those conversations can be rich, deep, and meaningful. Those usually aren’t about course content – they’re about the discipline, life experiences, and our place in the world. You know, the stuff that carries forward in a forever kind of way.

6) Mandatory “big deadlines.” There’s nothing like a deadline to clarify what could use some support. And the problem with office hours is it is not only the wrong time for interactions, but it’s the wrong space, too. Better solutions come in the library, or in the hallway outside the restrooms (we’re just being honest here), or on the sidewalk between one space and another.

See, the problem with office hours is the office. It’s not that setting aside time for 1:1 with students is a bad idea – in fact, it’s one of the most valuable aspects of a college education. And it’s not that students don’t prize their access and the support it affords. They genuinely do respond to faculty who care.

It’s the whole idea that you can take all the ideals of academia, and put them in a box (the office) and on the clock (at a reasonable time of day). Real learning isn’t like that. Ideating and interaction both happen at their best on the spontaneous edges of other kinds of activities.

And spontaneity can’t be mandated.

But it can be invited to appear.


True Confessions:
Here’s my shout-out to the real and impactful student moments—the ones that happen in the dining hall, the hallway after class, or occasionally (miracle of miracles) in my office. They're real. I just wish the last kind happened more often. And I’m not alone.

Monday, October 13, 2025

Smells and bells? Just bells!

So, I’m working through my memoria documents – charitable endowments for commemorative services – for a paper I’m writing. These are two sets of Charters from Bregenz, one cluster from the early 15th century, and another from a century later, right at the start of the 16th century.

I’ll save the big observations for the paper itself, but thought it interesting that the documents are very clear, abundantly clear, about many things. The donor wants this service and that one, done in this order, with this personel. That’s the what and the who. They want their services done in this place and that one, by these personnel. That’s the where and the who. (“Who” matters twice because payment depends on it).

In these documents, we also know the why and the how.The why has been well-studied; memoria are services of remembrance for the donor and his ancestors and descendents. The prayers given at the service help all these people toward salvation, and so engage with a different “who” than the question of who performs. The people being prayed for are often named family, and include marital family as well as natal. Sometimes, they include aunts and uncles, cousins (particularly those in orders), and even second spouses. They include the dead and the living, a point which has always struck me as a bit odd. What does it mean to be praying in remembrance of someone who might themselves be standing at graveside?

And the how is clear. With crosses and processions. At graveside. With singing and speaking and reading. With standing and sitting and bowing heads, and all the other choreography of ritual. Or, as Ursula Speckerin (1405) puts it in her own Alemannic dialect,

with worship and beginning with proclamation, with singing and with reading, with standing and with prayers, and with all other things in the way previously prescribed. [mit libtind (?) und begiengingt mit verkundung mit singet und mit lesent mit stende und mit genbent und mit allen andren dingen in der wiscz als vorgesteben stat.]

To this, we add the gifts to the sacristan for the provisions for service. There’s bread, and more specifically bread for the poor. There’s wine for the service. There are lights – candles – not just for the vigil, but for both masses as well. And there are bells, bells for the vigil, bells to be rung at mass, bells to announce the service.

All these things are mentioned, for all these things have costs.

And so we can run through the multisensory modalities of these memoria services:

  • Sight: procession, cross, lights, people

  • Sound: singing, reading, reciting, saying, bells

  • Taste: bread, wine, “Tisch” or food at table (improved over their normal fare, in Ursula’s provisions)

  • Feel: bowing, standing, sitting: all the embodied shifts of orientation of an active quasi-choreographed worship

  • Smell: ???

The documents I’ve looked at, I realized, are completely tacet on the sense of smell. No mentions of incense or flowers or herbs or smoke or any other proxy for smell. The closest we get is the bread and the wine, placed on the altar and distributed to the poor, but the memoria endowments, for all their sometimes surprising specificity, don’t think to cover the sense of smell. And yet smell is typically a key part of liturgy. Its absence is striking.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. One plausible answer is because your incense for the censor is budgetted separately, and that in paying the sacristan you have already covered “the goods” necessary for the service.

But it is an interesting omission, and speaks to the question of what goes without saying and what must be specified when you’re seeking control of events-of-remembrance for after your demise.

Smell, it seems, was so woven into the fabric of ritual life that it didn’t need to be written down.


RESOURCES:

Bregenz, Stadtarchiv Urk. 19. (Ursula Speckerin, 1405). Consulted via monasterium.net. (A list of other relevant charters is available from the author.)

For more on movement during prayer, see:

Cyrus, Cynthia J. 2025. "Praying Before the Image of Mary: Nuns’ Prayerbooks and the Mapping of Sacred Space" Religions 16, no. 10: 1277. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16101277

Two standard works on memoria are:

Geuenich, Dieter, and Otto Gerhard Oexle. 1994. Memoria in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, Bd. 111. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Geary, Patrick J. 1994. Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the end of the first Millennium. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

From Draft to Done

Many writers talk about the "ugly draft." I'm here with images to confirm that drafts can, indeed, be ugly! Three months ago, this was the article, in its summative glory (?):

As you can see, I was working (as per usual) in a bound book. Not that I didn't have about 17 different computer files going. And a kindle with highlights. And a handwritten table a few pages before. And about 20 pages of hand-written notes on the articles I'd read. And a couple of other brainstorms.

But when push came to shove, this was the set of pages that I'd keep coming back to:

In orange on the left is the lit review. Well, not its formal version, but the ideas and the people I wanted to engage with, and, numerically, the order I decided to take them. Yeah, some midstream figure-it-out happened: 1.7 became 1.7a and 1.7b, and to be honest, 1.1 to 1.3 are on the previous page in the notebook. But the bulk of the content and the ordering got worked out, first by throwing stuff on the page, and then working with what order and what flow of ideas needed to happen.

Down at the bottom on the right is the outline of the method. That was the work that reminded me what I was covering and why. This section is the part that didn't really make it into the final paper, but it drove its direction. For me, the emphasis on close reading and the content of the prayers in question was something I reviewed iteratively -- first (A), about these prayers, first as sensorial compilations, then (A1) as their place in the space to which women had access, and finally (A2) in dialogue with the literature on performative reading. By having the method written out in front of me, I held myself accountable to the themes I was engaging.

The last bit, in yellow on the top right, is the part I originally thought this notebook opening was going to cover: it was my list of "emo words," the emotional and affective vocabulary that leapt out from my readings of these poems. This became a table in the article. Doing that word-count was the moment at which I knew where the article was headed. 

In my own head, this article follows a format similar to the one I teach my students:

It starts with the question of scholarly conversation, moves through several types of evidence, including a nerd table in section three, and concludes with an engagement with the question of what this all means. I've spoken to these kinds of formulas here and here, so this is my contribution on "how it applies in real life."

There were, as always, important edits that came between the bare-bones outline and submitted draft, and even more edits with the assistance of the anonymous readers (thank you, kind souls -- and thanks too for the speed of turn-around!). Edits and page proofs all went smoothly; this was a project that found its groove and kept to it. 

And so, here it is, the published article! 


From idea to delivery, this project was the fastest I have ever worked. But the cribs and habits that I've developed facilitated the careful integration into the literature, the original and -- perhaps quirky? -- assessment of what's going on in these prayers, and the big takeaway that is the whole point of writing such things.

This morning, I've written my "thank-you's." a part of my process that I require of myself before moving an article to the done and delivered stack. I *always* thank the library, and this time had several scholars whose "big ideas" informed my own; acknowledging those debts is a citation practice, but it also makes a nice email exchange. Plus, I shared the citation to professional colleagues -- and to family, of course. 

And then I closed out the files, took the "AA" header off the front of the file folder name that kept it at the top of the search stack, moved the line from the works-in-progress sheet to the one of projects that are done. And then I wandered through my kitchen, singing "done, done done done DONE!"

The citation to the finished project: 

Cyrus, Cynthia J. 2025. "Praying Before the Image of Mary: Nuns’ Prayerbooks and the Mapping of Sacred Space" Religions 16, no. 10: 1277. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16101277

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Monday, October 6, 2025

The silence of the woods is full of noise

The woods are many things: peaceful, calming, multi-hued, and (in my memory) often silent. But that mental shorthand is a mistake. That forested silence only addresses the pleasurable absence of the sound-detritus of modern life. There are no car horns, no rumble of heating or cooling systems, no yakety yakety yak yak of too many people in too close proximity, no clacking keys, inspired or otherwise. In other words, the woods create the illusion of silence by taking away irritants.


Truth to tell, the thing my brain likes to encode as “silence” is anything but. There is, in the woods, a continuous burble of a stream. The crickets offer up a track of chirping, that sawing stridulation that calls to mates and forms the backdrop of dreamland.

Other night-noises abound as well. There’s the scream and then hoot of an owl noting its territory; the rustle of a mammalian something-or-other searching for a snack amidst the leaf-litter of the forest floor; the wit wit wit of a first bird at morning light. I listen to these noises, and translate them from the unexpected “what?” into the identified “oh, that.” These sounds bring the satisfaction of discovery, and yet they are quiet, ever so quiet, and in their quiet regularity they soothe.

What we (or at least I) think of as forest silence, then, is the absence of urban noise. It is also bound up in anticipatory listening. Was that the rumbling croak of frogs? The intermittent drops of dew from the treetops? The tap tap tap of water dribbling over an end-of-season waterfall?

Silence here is a coded word, speaking to peace as measured in slowed breathing -- the rise and fall of the backpacker at ease, sleeping perhaps more deeply than home bed and familiar surroundings allow. It is a word reflective of paced regularity, of less-familiar noises often repeated, assessed, and held in the translated understanding of thing-as-sound. By grappling with what a noise represents, we become comfortable with it, often to the point that it no longer registers.

What I recall, in my fecklessness, as silence, is instead the susuration of leaves, the murmers of small animals, the steady quiet systematic vamp-til-ready steady state of forest hum. It is, in other words, a low-level background that caresses and comforts my ears, accustomed as they are to the more penetrating sounds of urban existence.

Silence as golden? Not exactly. But forest as restorative, a living quiet that listens back? Absolutely!

Thursday, October 2, 2025

Musicological Paper Structures 102

In Musicological Paper Structures 101, I introduced the idea of a paper template that I find helpful for my undergraduates. The first model could be summarized as the three-types-of-evidence model, with one section per evidence type.

There are several other approaches to writing with a template which can be useful, depending on topic. Most frequently, students respond to the problem driven outline, where defining the problem and resolving it is the story arc for the paper as a whole.

In this kind of paper, the intro sets out the problem and its significance, leading up to the presentation of the thesis. That’s a format that fits with a lot of pre-college writing instruction, and students seem comforted by its familiarity.

Next comes the lit review section. This, as I’ve said before, needs to demonstrate actual familiarity with what’s been done. In this context, I stress to students that they need to beware the temptation to rely over-much on the kind of wikipedia-like info dump in neutral voice. I’m looking for what threads they found compelling and which were troubling, provocative, or a complete snore.

I encourage judgment as they go: this article is radically over-reading the evidence; this is so boring that I could hardly keep my eyes open; that just never needs to see the light of day ever again. One doesn’t SAY that, at least not directly, but those underpinnings inform a lively assessment. “Scholar X argues that … Basing the entire premise on a short snippet from the documentary literature, however, distorts and and oversimplifies the broader interpretive context for…” Students love digging into what is great writing and what is just a pitiful excuse for ink. I’ve seen some truly lovely 19th-century style slams on the scholarship over the years of reading drafts.

In the problem-based paper, I find the recurring drumbeat model of writing to be helpful. Each paragraph (or at least every two) needs to tie explicitly back to the working premise. As I tell them, hand-hold the reader through your argument. Over-explain. We can always soften the argument if it’s overdone, but chances are, your quick-and-dirty reader will be grateful for the interpretive apparatus being so transparent!

If a student is interested, developing a counterargument and addressing it in the late stages of the paper can be helpful. “Some would argue… the evidence, however, suggests…” can be a nice way of tying a bow on the package, pinning down the validity of the thesis and bringing the argument into closure.

And then the conclusion, as I said last time, can address the so what, so what, now what of the argument. The so what underscores why the thesis/argument matters in its immediate context. The second so what situates the claim in a wider scholarly or cultural frame, showing its implications beyond the narrow case. The now what invites the reader to apply those insights elsewhere, whether by reconsidering related evidence, rethinking assumptions, or extending the method to a different repertoire or cultural context.


OTHER APPROACHES TO CONSIDER

If the thesis-driven structure appeals to students because of its familiarity, they may also be interested in other familiar but less-frequently prescribed approaches to their paper-writing. I have some examples which we sometimes riff on in class, what I can the rhetorical tricks of organization:


CAUSATIVE STORY: cause – manifestation – consequence
Lay out what sets things in motion, show how it appears in practice, then track the consequences that follow. This can be particularly effective for biographical or musical-analytical papers.

HISTORICAL STORY: origins – crisis – outcome
Start at the beginning, follow the disruption that shakes things up, and trace the resolution or transformation that results. This one, I find, is more risky. It’s tempting to default to assumptions of unproblematic linearity, where the author is invisible. Great for wikipedia; bad for situating oneself in the context of the scholarship. Still, carefully used, it has reader appeal.

ANALYTICAL STORY: structure – agency – interaction – result
Explain the framework (the how), identify the players (the who), analyze how they interact, and spell out what emerges. I like the way this invites the writer’s assessment of the material; it moves away from a temporal organization of first this, then that, then the next thing, and toward one that capitalizes on the author’s own interest in the material.

PARADIGM SHIFT: we thought – but now – that shows…
Highlight what everyone assumed, present the evidence that unsettles it, and show how the new perspective changes the conversation. Love these when they come together. It can be some of the hardest pre-writing work to do, but is often the simplest to turn into prose. This is inspired writing at its finest.

I INVENTED A THING:
Unveil your new model, show how it fits the data, and point to the fresh insights it unlocks. This has some overlap with the “paradigm shift” approach, in that the sense of ownership can be deeply satisfying.


CONCLUSION

There are, of course, plenty of other writing templates, but the idea of sharing these out loud is that each one acts like a container into which the writer can pour their writing. The goal is to provide a structure that fits the evidence and insights that come from personal (but research-informed) reflection, and to steer everyone, EVERYONE, away from the step-by-step account so familiar from Wikipedia. A template like those mentioned above isn’t meant to box the writer in. Instead, the framework actually gives creativity room in which to flourish.

In the end, paper structure is about helping prose flow out smoothly for the writer, unfolding is steady stages rather than one mad writing rush. At the same time, and equally importantly, such structures allow the story to land clearly for the reader, letting them follow an argument and discover what about it matters most.


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Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Musicological Paper Structures 101

In a discipline that recognizes that sonata form and all its nuances was a real and useful framework for composers, the need for teaching students how one can structure a paper should be obvious. It wasn’t part of my training, but working out an approach that lets me get the job done has been helpful, and I like to pass it along.

Is such a structure required? No, but it helps the writer to frame an argument, and the reader to digest it. My students have fared well with the template (I’ve had students take a writing prize each of the last five years), and I share the model here in hopes it is useful.


START: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SCHOLARLY CONTEXT

The big question at the start of any paper is: who am I in conversation with? In my classroom, that driver amounts to having undergraduates – yes, undergraduates – check out about 25 to 30 sources. Do they read them all? Heavens no! But they assess them using AIC reading, focusing on abstract, introduction, and conclusion. I always give them an option of managing by spreadsheet, which is what I often do with my own bibliography. About half of them take me up on it, and they tell me they find the practice useful.

At any rate, using their bibliographic overview of the field, the intro sets up the backdrop to why the work is important, and how it fits into the broader scholarly context.

CONTINUE: DATA SECTIONS

Then there are the data sections. Sometimes students use a couple of different methods; other times, there is one batch of information but it’s explored at length, adding nuance as the paper progresses. A story might help illustrate the point, or not. The student might want to pick up a counterargument. Or not. In other words, the framing is flexible, and fields can be reordered (as the arrows suggest), but it takes the reader from what’s been said (in the field), to some new ways (plural) to think about it, to a conclusion that helps us understand “what it all means,” as my students like to say.

CONCLUDE: SO WHAT, SO WHAT, NOW WHAT

There are many ways to wrap up a paper, of course. One is to talk about who should care. Another is to review the skeleton and then "hang some flesh" on it in terms of its broader implications. One of the easiest strategies for concluding is often the "so what, so what, now what" conclusion. So what did all of this mean? So what does that tell us? Now what should we do/think/say differently? In other words, go to what the implications are, or where the conversation could and should go next, or how the insights might be applied in a different context. It doesn’t have to be big or world-shaking, but it helps the reader walk away with a sense of why the paper was worth reading and where their curiosity might lead them next.

Start of the first of Beethoven's Razumovsky Quartets, Op 59 No 1

 CASE STUDY: BEETHOVEN

Think, for example, about Beethoven and deafness. There’s a lot of info out there, but a student who’s been trained in hearing-inclusive techniques could do a lot with the topic. (Drawing on personal/professional expertise is a useful way to find something new to say!). The student could talk about the contrasts of 18th/19th c ideas of deafness with present day practice (data set one). They might then move to the specific detail of, say, the Rasumovsky quartets in a hearing environment, comparing then and now (nuance to the argument).

For section 3 of the paper they could, for instance, turn to their own insights to discuss how players negotiate hearing-inclusive demands (balance, visual cues, tactile feedback). Or, section 3 could look at how narratives about Beethoven’s deafness shape interpretation of the Razumovsky quartets in liner notes, and how those narratives draw in medicalized or heroic tropes. Or… well, there are lots of directions to go.

WHY THIS KIND OF FORMAT / PAPER MODEL IS USEFUL 

The point is that this kind of structured writing helps a student to mentally break out their work into sections. It is hard – nigh on impossible! -- to “write a paper,” but to write a paragraph or a section is in the doable realm. Don't write the whole sonata, start with the first theme.

As I’ve said many a time before, little by little by little, and sooner or later it all gets done.

I’ll post on other paper strategies in another few days, but for now, I should go tend to my own writing practice and get at least “a little” of that done before dinner.

Happy writing, everyone!


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Saturday, September 27, 2025

Listening in on the Nuns’ Rebellion at Kloster Goldenstein

Bells, chants, prayers, the scrape of chairs at table, the hum of a vacuum, the splash of a sink being plunged: the soundscape of Goldenstein Cloister is equal parts liturgy and daily life. Layer onto that the laughter of eighty-something sisters sharing coffee, the creak of a chairlift, the slap of running shoes from Sister Rita’s daily 5K after prayer, and you begin to hear what’s at stake in Austria right now.

The Augustinian choir women of Goldenstein had spent their lives in this convent—decades of vows that they believed bound the Church as much as themselves. And then, dissolution. Closure. The doors shut on their home, the place where they had lived out obedience, prayer, and community. Their leader called it a “necessary act of care.” But care for whom? Care, in this telling, seems less about human dignity and more about ease of management. (There may be a plausible “other side” to the story, but when your church leader argues that orthopedic shoes are a violation of the vow of poverty, somebody hasn’t thought about how decisions about elders read in the broader universe.)

What these sisters assert is simple and radical: their vows were two-way. The Church has responsibilities here. And the sisters and their supporters are claiming them.The three Augustinian sisters—Rita, Bernadette, and Regina—repossessed their cloister earlier this month. That sparked a cascade of attention: a podcast episode, a BBC story, Guardian coverage, and a flourishing Instagram feed that pairs black-and-white habits with splashes of bright flowers and cheerful captions in German and English.

What I hear in all this isn’t only the sound of bells or the chant of the office. It’s the sound of determination, of voices raised in defense of their rights, of a community that has chosen to rally around them. On-site helpers showed up with brooms and mops to scrub the convent back into habitability. Supporters—English and German alike—comment on their posts, write emails, show up at Mass. And even when there is no priest to say Mass, the sisters sing the rosary together, because prayer continues regardless of who is willing to stand at the altar.

Why bring this story here?

First: because it’s a rare window into monastic life today, with all its joy, grit, and creativity.

Second: because some of you may want to follow them online or even donate. They’re @nonnen_goldenstein on Instagram, and their captions read like tiny table-prayers, interspersed with photos of a community refusing to fade quietly away.

Third: because it’s a living parable of resistance. For those of us who study monastic history, it’s not every day that we get a real-life #NunsOnTheRun story unfolding in our time. These sisters have claimed their right to remain, to pray, to belong. The least we can do is listen, and perhaps add our voices in support.

Their own social media team has a bouquet of hashtags: #nunsontherun #goldenstein #augustinerchorfrauen #churchfluencer #nonnen #klosterleben #elsbethen #fyp #gästebuch #guestbook #willkommen #youarewelcome. Give them a follow. Raise up your voice for the dignity and self-determination of those who have faithfully served. Support their renewed convent soundscape. After all, the soundscape of Goldenstein is not just liturgy or rebellion—it’s the sound of life insisted upon, carried forward, and sung into being.

RESOURCES: 

Bethany Bell, “Defiant nuns flee care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps,” BBC, 12 September 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y8r2gk0vyo

Kate Connelly, “‘We were obedient our entire lives’: the nuns who broke back into their convent,” The Guardian, 26 Sept 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/26/we-were-obedient-our-entire-lives-the-nuns-who-broke-back-into-their-convent

Kloster Goldenstein: 


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