About

I am …

  • Maxwell S. Leung.
  • a recent transplant to the commonwealth of Virginia from Los Angeles, CA, as of August 2006.
  • a PhD student working on the very last chapter of his dissertation on the cultural politics of hate violence in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University.
  • a lecturer in Government at George Mason University (2006-2007 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.

This third (or fourth) 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 want to be a professor.

~SITE UPDATES~

  • October 6, 2006: Added “Guestbook” page. Also decided to focus weblog on topics related to dissertation writing.
  • October 10, 2006: Added “Michel Foucault” link list.
  • October 27, 2006: Changed the theme to ChaoticSoul. I prefer dark themes so I’ll try this one out for now. But instead of tabs for the pages, it now has it’s own section underneath the calendar. Also removed “Word of the Day” feed.
  • January 10, 2007: Replaced the default image header with a picture of the lobby at Grand Central Station in New York. It was a bad picture, but I was able to salvage it with a little help from Photoshop.
  • January 18, 2007: Thanks to WordPress, they’ve enabled Snap, and I’m checking out their new plug-in for Sonific. Enjoy the music!
  • March 2, 2007: Took out the plug-in for Sonific.  Got bored with it.  Tried other templates for a new look and decided to change the picture header.  It’s a snapshot of the lobby at MOMA in New York.