My Fall Semester Plans

It’s Labor Day here in the US so a perfect time to think about work (when isn’t it really?).

It’s also the start of a new semester and my world is filled with the excitement that comes with teaching new groups of students. New (to me) books arrive daily and I’ve been tearing into them like they will continue to surprise and enthrall me (even if my critical mind knows this is unlikely). New projects have appeared on the horizon and completed projects are getting placed in folders to collect dust. 

To do lists still help me focus my excitement especially when I know that some of my adventures are going to push me into new territory or offer interesting challenges to my ability to write.

In mid-May, I compiled a list of my prospective summer adventures. I almost got through all the things on that list, but I have a few things lingering into the fall:

3. Complete revision on a working paper from our work in the Bakken. 8. Prepare a draft of an essay on the archaeology of the Corinthian countryside for the Hesperia reprint series.

At the same time, I have added to this list:

1. Finish the final draft of our Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Survey Volume. We’re so close to being done and all I need to do is finish some figures, maps, and a tiny bit of text revisions. 2. Develop a more sophisticated draft analyzing the results of our work from Polis this summer. I’ll give this at the University of Texas at the end of next month, then at ASOR later in the fall, and hopefully we can move it toward publication by the middle of the spring. 3. Finish a book review of Butrint 4 which is a couple of months late. 4. Send out invitations for a new, large edited volume project: The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology. 5. Move the Punk Archaeology volume through the type setting and into publication. 6. Move a slim volume on 3D modeling through a quick digital publican process. 7. Continue to clean up the North Dakota Man Camp Project dataset. As of last weekend, most of our project’s photographs have been geocoded.  8. Quietly work on preparing a finds and field database for a new survey archaeology project. TOP SEKRET.

Along the way, I’m going to work with some great colleagues to develop a digital-first press on campus. This is less of an official announcement, and more of a confirmed rumor.

This should be a fun semester!