Tuesday, April 24, 2007

GREAT CAREERS IN ACADEMIA



MARC ABRAHAMS, GUARDIAN, UK - Doughnuts fuelled Steve Penfold's rise to
a professorship. As a graduate student in the history department of York
University in Toronto, Penfold had to choose a topic that required
original research on a subject of interest to scholars in his field. He
chose to write about the place of doughnut shops in the social fabric of
Canada.

Canadians eat more doughnuts per capita than any other nation on earth.
. . Here are some tasty extracts from his work. "In Canada, the doughnut
is widely believed to be the unofficial national food. Expatriate
Canadians speak of associating a trip to the doughnut shop with
returning home."

"In Canada, the doughnut is mainly produced by large companies, sold in
cookie-cutter shops across the country, and served by low-wage workers
doing carefully defined, unskilled jobs. Yet the doughnut is also a
vehicle for ironic depictions of Canadian life. Ultimately, the effect
of doughnut folklore - the nature of its mediation of structure and
identity, of mass and community - remains ambiguous."

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2058251,00.html

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