I am …

• Maxwell S. Leung.
• returning to California after living and working in Washington, DC and Grinnell, IA.
• a new resident living in the proud working-class city of Oakland.
  
• joining the faculty of the California College of the Arts as an Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies Program starting in Fall 2009.
  
• working on revising his dissertation into a manuscript.
  
• a recent transplant to the Commonwealth of Virginia from Los Angeles, CA, as of August 2006.
• a recent transplant from the Commonwealth of Virginia to Grinnell, IA as of summer 2008.
• a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and Program in American Studies at Grinnell College.
• a PhD student in the Cultural Studies Program from Claremont Graduate University. My dissertation title is Governmentalizing Hate: Theorizing State Power and the Regulation of Difference.
• officially a former lecturer in Government at George Mason University (2006-2008 academic year).
  
• a former lecturer at Santa Monica College, Loyola Marymount University and others teaching in Political Science, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies.
• also interested in poststructuralism, critical race/feminist/queer critiques of law and culture, discourse/ideology/power, visual and cultural politics, and game studies.
• trying to finish my damn dissertation.
  

And other tidbits …

• born and raised in San Francisco, CA.
• moved to Los Angeles to start my Ph.D.
• avid gamer and pool player.
• quitting smoking (in progress).
• amateur photographer.
• I do not own an iPod. I now own an iPod.

This third or fourth fifth(!) manifestation of my weblog is essentially about my continued inability to finish the one thing that ought to be my immediate and important goal and that is my dissertation. I have one more chapter to finish my project but I can’t seem to get myself to sit and write it out anymore.

Frustrated? Yes.

Exhausted? Most definitely.

Uninspired? Absolutely.

Disoriented? Yep. Sounds about right.

So every now and then I’ll post something that I find amusing or of note to me. But a special shout out goes to other graduate students working on their thesis or dissertation in whatever discipline / field it may be. This weblog is still new and the topics are somewhat random, but I’ll post topics regarding my writing and research progress (woes?). Maybe I’ll focus on strategies about getting to, and through, the writing process. It’s awfully ironic that the time I spend here is time away from actually writing my dissertation. *sighs*

And as my tagline goes, I think I still want to be a professor.

UPDATE: I defended my dissertation in April and will complete my final revisions for a Summer 2008 graduation. In Fall 2008, I will be joining the faculty of the Sociology Department of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Hooray! A real job!!!

~SITE UPDATES~

• March 30, 2007: *WHEW* After several days of cutting and pasting my posts, it's finally done. This fifth or sixth version of my blog is off and running.
  
• April 8, 2007: Messed around with CSS, some basic coding, hacks, some javascript, and I think I got the look of it just right.
  
• April 10, 2007: Added three pages to my blog. I got the idea from BlogU by creating new blogs and linking it to my main page. Very cool! Also added a "Return Home" link on the pages, and a "Read More" link that will open to a new window. The code for the "Return Home" can be found on BlogU, and the code for "Read More" can be found Beta Blogger for Dummies.
  
• April 13, 2007: Added another page just for my favorite links.
• April 14, 2007: Added Twitters, a widget reporting my up-to-date activities.
• April 15, 2007: Attempted a 3-column blog but it didn't look right so I removed it. I added a new widget called Mood-Me Moji to my widget panel. Looks cute!
• May 11, 2007: Obviously removed Mood-Me Moji. Added Town Called Dobson which is a cool comic strip on political and cultural commentary.
• May 17, 2007: Added a bookmarking widget from AddThis.com. Pretty nifty!
• June 21, 2007: Attempted a 3-column blog, and I think it's a success. I needed to ease the clutter on my right sidebar and take advantage of the space I had. As a result, I had to resize my picture headers.
• September 7, 2007: Removed the Feevy bar listing a number of friends's websites, and a couple of widgets from the right column. Got bored with them and it looked like clutter.
• January 9-10, 2008: Major changes to my site. Removed "Continue Reading..." link and Snap Shot element. I thought it was not useful. Redid my Twitter element to include friends. Redid my block quotation format. Switched back to a two-column format for breathing room. Added a box around my posts. And redid my color scheme. I wanted a simpler cleaner look. I decided not to adjust the colors for my other pages for now. I have to let this sink in for a bit. UPDATE: It just occurred to me that my changes to the block quotations and the removal of the "Continue Reading..." link is not automatic for past posts. I think I have to go back manually remove the code for each post. Grrrrrrr. UPDATE2: I finally went back and removed all the codes from each post. I'll never do that again.
  
• February 4, 2008: Checked out AMinus3.com photoblog service. It seems like a fairly supportive photoblogging community so I added it as a link. I'll discontinue the one I have now and maybe delete altogether.
• May 2, 2008: Added Apture to the webpage to enable dynamic multimedia content. It's kind of fun at the moment.
• May 21, 2008: Removed my old photoblog page and link. I may replace it with a reading list and reviews page.
• May 22, 2008: Added "Perpetually Reading" page about my current reading list.
• March 7, 2009: Linked my Twitter account with this blog so that whenever I "tweet" it lists as a post. Let's see what kind of a "microblogger" I am.
• March 14, 2009: Removed a few banners and replaced them with 4 new ones. I just got tired of the same old pictures.