Welcome!
This is Jim's Web Site

Don't hesitate to send along comments, questions, thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's The Road or Yann Martel's Life of Pi, teaching tips, links to your favorite Wilco web sites, and lists of all the things that get on your nerves.

My most recent book, On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching, was published in May of 2008 by Harvard University Press. Click LEARN MORE below for a link to the book.

On this website you'll find links to my regular column for the Chronicle of Higher Education, information about speaking and media appearances, and an occasional blog about what's happening with me. You can also find links to the band for which I play keyboards.

Enjoy. [LEARN MORE]

Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year
Available from Johns Hopkins University Press

Back Cover Text: In this fast-paced and lively account, Jim Lang asks the questions that confront every new faculty member: Will my students like me? Will my teaching schedule allow me time to do research and write? Is anyone still awake in the back row?

Lang shares his moments of confustion, frustration, even elation--as well as his insights into the lives and working conditions of faculty in higher education today. Engaging and accessible, Life on the Tenure Track will delight and enlighten faculty, graduate students, and administrators alike. [LEARN MORE] [BUY NOW]

Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease
Now available from Capital Books

Back Cover Text: Diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1996, James M. Lang spent five years trying to ignore the disease and its effects on his body and his life. In August of 2000, he began a year-long struggle with the disease, which included a week in the hospital in February of 2001. By August of 2001 he had returned to health with the help of a new medication. 'Learning Sickness' chronicles the author's battles with the disease, with doctors, with family and friends, and with the painful realization that he had to learn to live with a chronically diseased body. The book combines narratives of the author's daily life with reflections upon the nature of disease and medicine, upon the lessons we can take from illness in the human condition, and upon what it means to live with a physical self. [LEARN MORE] [BUY NOW]

News/Blog
May 26, 2009

Greetings.

Two big pieces of news around here since my last post, which was quite a few months ago.

First, the debut CD for Hat On, Drinking Wine is available for purchase. You can find it at itunes, or you can click on the link at the top of the page to check it out, or you can click on the link below to visit our MySpace page and hear some live songs. We play roots rock music, which is a combination of rock, folk, blues, and maybe a few other genres. Might be easiest to give you an idea by telling you that in our live sets we mix in cover songs from Wilco, Van Morrison, the Band, Bob Dylan, the Jayhawks, the Decemberists, Warren Zevon, the Grateful Dead, and more. I play piano, accordion, and tin whistle for the band.

Three of us in the band write songs, and I wrote two of them on the new CD ('Pictures of Your Exhibition' and 'Jackie'). Recording in a studio was a fascinating experience, which required constant collaboration on a creative project--something that we don't get as much as I would like in the academic world. I'm very happy with the results, and we'll be heading back into the studio in the fall to record CD number two.

How did I end up playing such a strange assortment of instruments, by the way? Primarily I play piano. But I have always loved traditional Irish music, and so I took up those other instruments to allow me to play some of my favorite tunes in that genre, and they found their way into the band. You'll definitely hear traces of my interest in Irish music, as well as accordion and whistle, in the song 'Jackie'-- my fellow English professors should also hear a stolen line or two from T.S. Eliot in there.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the music--spread the word if you do.

The second piece of news for me is that, as of June 1st, I will be the new Director of the Assumption College Honors Program.

I am thrilled to be able to work with the outstanding students in this program, whom I taught for the first time in the fall of 2008. I had such a wonderful experience in that course that I could not resist my lifelong resistance to administration when the Director position came open.

So I will be teaching a few less courses, and doing some administrative work in exchange. But I like new challenges, and it should keep me busy, which is OK by me.

You can keep track of how busy I will be, in fact, by seeing how long it will take for me to post the next blog. Of course, it's been four months since the last post, so I've set the bar pretty low.

In any case, everyone enjoy the summer!
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