The week before school started, I attended an afternoon orientation for grad students in the urban theory and social planning program, after which I got a buttload more textbooks and readings for the recitations I’d be teaching. A recitation, in case you don’t know, is a class connected to one of those big lecture classes taught by a professor for hundreds of students in big lecture hall a couple times a week. Then the teaching assistants, grad students like me, go over or “recite” the material in smaller breakout sessions in regular classrooms on another day for about twenty students at a time.

When I was a freshman at Arbor State I took one of those kinds of classes, and I really hated it; I avoided them like the plague thereafter. But, it was part of the deal if I wanted to be in the program as a grad student. It also guaranteed me a stipend, which I was probably going to need to pay my rent, since for all intents and purposes I had no time to be Ms. Megaton Man even if I cared to, and fully expected ICHHL to revoke my Megahero subsidy any day now.

The class was Intro to Urban Social Policy, and there were four of us teaching assistants under one professor, a meek African-American lady named Professor Dolores Bledsoe Finch—no hyphen, she stressed. Dolores, as she encouraged us to call her, was an expert on how freeway systems and other “public works” had been deployed by urban planners to eradicate ethnic neighborhoods and create racial and economic barriers in postwar American cities.

Dr. Finch—I mean, Dolores—didn’t I already have enough doctors in my life?—was a soft-spoken lady who patiently marshalled the facts behind her arguments and spoke truth to power in a whisper that could bring down the walls of the Federal Motors Building. I could tell I was going to learn a lot from her—she was also probably going to be supervising my master’s thesis, too, although that was yet to be determined.

Lectures would be on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and I would have four fifty-minute recitations on Fridays of about twenty students each. That came to a total of about eighty students that I’d be responsible for to grade homework and tests. My own grad courses and seminars fell on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which meant my weekends would be consumed with endless grading. In other words, I was totally fucked.

The meeting was held in Dr. Finch’s tiny office, with the four of us crammed in there, with all of the professor’s books. Her desk was a mountain of books, stacks and stacks of books—we could barely see her the whole time. She had to peer around stacks just to make eye contact with each of us individually.

“I tend to wander from my prepared outline,” she said. “So you have to on your toes. Take good notes. Have you got that?”

We all nodded as we wrote that down in our notes.

“All right then,” she said. “I’ll see you back here on Monday. Have a nice week.”

As my fellow teaching assistants decamped from the cramped office, Dolores called to me.

“A word, Clarissa,” she said.

“Yes, Dr. Finch? I mean, Dolores.”

Dolores came from around her desk, and I saw her full figure for the first time. She was a slight figure, and she ambled slowly, with a cane. She wore a knitted shawl and gave the impression of magical Fairy Godmother in some folktale.

“Are you going to be good with this workload, Clarissa?” she asked. “It’s a lot to ask of a first-year grad student.”

“I think so,” I said. “I’ve been prepping all summer.”

“Shame for a young woman to be spending all her time studying,” said Dolores. “Doesn’t leave much time for anything else.”

I was about to tell her how dedicated I was to my studies, and how supportive my family was. But she continued,

“Not much time for other adventures, I’m afraid.” Apparently, there were no secrets from Dr. Dolores Bledsoe Finch.

“I don’t plan to do much adventuring,” I said. “There are others better equipped to handle that.”

“Sometimes we don’t have a choice. Sometimes, the adventure chooses us.”

She directed my attention to the bulletin board next to her office door, which was just as cluttered as her office. She pointed with her cane.

“Do you plan to submit something?” she asked. It was more of a suggestion than a question. “Go ahead, take one.”

I followed her cane to multiple copies of a flyer that were push-pinned to a cacophony of other literature. I removed the pin and took one. It read:

Call for Papers

Postmonohistoricism and Transaltern Surrealities:

Anti-Contemporaneity in a Post-Narrative World

The Third Annual Hypothetics Studies Conference

Hosted by Warren Woodward University

March 27-30, 1985

All Academic Disciplines (and Even a Few Pseudo-Sciences) Welcome!

Deadline for Submissions: January 30, 1985

Sponsored by the Acculturational Studies Program, Warren Woodward University; the Historical Ramifications Department, City University of Ypsilanti; etc., etc. …

“You … you want me to submit a paper?” I asked. “For this conference?”

“It should be right up your alley, I should think,” said Dolores. “It aligns fairly well with your own research interests. Read the description, and see if you don’t agree.”

Hypothetical Multimensionality as an epistemological turn captures our cultural global moment across academic boundaries and global communities. Fraught with implications for subversion, revolution, and overthrow (and career advancement for scholars seeking tenure in relevant fields of study), Multimensionality offers Utopian models of crossover, creatively destroying post-capital, post-colonialism, and post-patriarchal paradigms with transformative fissures.

Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to offer papers and form panels around relevant topics to be presented at this year’s conference, hosted by Detroit’s premiere commuter campus and conference center (available for weddings, too). Topics that presentations may wish to address include (but are not limited to):

The Multimensional Turn and Neoliberal Political Economy Subaltern Surreality in Popular Culture Queering Literary Genders and Sexualities Postmonohistoricism and Anti-Hegemonic Narrativities Race, Ethnicity, and Miscegenation in Variegated Dis/Contemporaneity Aesthetics of Representation in the No-Longer-Always-Already Real and General Resistance Spawned of Apathy and Ennui

“Oowee!” I said. “Such big words!” I wondered what any of them could actually mean. “Is this legit?”

Dolores smiled. “I don’t keep up with all the latest intellectual fashions,” she said. “But it appears to be the shape of our field to come. With a young, elastic mind such as you have, Clarissa, it wouldn’t hurt to get your feet wet early. It seems the perfect opportunity, since we happen to be hosting it this year. Of course, if you don’t have time this semester …”

“I’ll find the time,” I said. I had no idea where, but I didn’t want to disappoint my theses advisor on you the first day.

“It’s completely up to you,” said Dolores. “If you’re interested, you should speak with Burke Kornbluth downstairs in the Acculturational Studies Program.”

***

Being a grad student as well as a teaching assistant was already two full-time careers; delving into the research necessary to craft a paper for a high-profile Hypothetics conference would amount to a third. As I left Dolores’s cramped office, my mind reeled: I could probably pursue a topic in one my grad seminars or courses that could double as a rough draft for a conference paper, but which one? Deindustrialization of Rust-Belt Cities? Disembodied Labor after Capitalism? The Abstraction of Modern Life? And which of my professors would be willing to go along with it?

Since the Acculturational Studies Program was on the floor below, I decided to duck in on my way out and see if this Burke Kornbluth was in his office and had a minute. He was and he did, just barely.

Burke Kornbluth might have been in his late twenties, but had the harried academic look of a white guy pushing forty. The Acculturation Studies Program wasn’t so much a program as a mismatched assortment of course offerings from different departments is search of an organizing principle, and one on a shoestring budget at that. I found Burke shuffling meaningless paperwork in a claustrophobic cubby hole shoved between Womyn’s Studies and the Modern Linguistics cubicles.

I introduced myself and enquired about the Third Annual Hypothetics Studies Conference.

“You a postdoc?” he asked. He was distractedly sorting through a shelf of old course catalogs he’d inherited and was arbitrarily throwing out the ones from before 1964.

“No, I’m a first-year grad student,” I replied.

“What program?”

“Urbanization policy and societal planning.” I said.

“Who’s your advisor?”

“Professor Finch.”

“Hmm, Old School,” he said. “You’re doing something practical.” I felt he said this with some disdain. “Most of our students are in more avant-garde intellectual disciplines, you know—political economy, social criticism, literature. Are you planning to apply for the Acculturation Studies certificate?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “What’s that?”

“You can get it along with your master’s or PhD, assuming you take courses that participate in the program.” He pulled out a list of courses: history, philosophy, art history, sociology, languages—mostly the humanities. “Lots of departments are involved, but it’s mostly up to the professor. I have a list here somewhere, but I may need to make copies.”

He asked me what courses and seminars I was taking this semester, and I told him.

“Yeah, I’m sure a couple of those are on the list,” he said. “If you take a one every semester, you’ll earn your certificate easily.” He found an application and handed it to me. “Here, fill this out and bring it back.”

“Great,” I said. “A fourth career.”

“Now, as for the conference, usually people don’t submit papers until they’re farther along in the program. But you’re welcome to give it a shot, though. Have you taken the Common Seminar yet? Of course, you haven’t; that’s only offered in the spring. But you’ll want to get that out of the way as soon as possible. Plus, you take five other grad courses or seminars that are ASP-approved. That’s for the PhD; four for the MA.”

ASP, the acronym for the Acculturated Studies Program, made me think of Michele Selket, whom I hadn’t seen all summer …

Burke found some brochures for the program on his desk that looked like they’d been used as coasters for coffee mugs, along with a list of courses. We went over to the Womyn’s Studies cubicle. He made me a set of copies and set them on the armful of books I was already carrying.

“You’ll also want to pick up the Zane Hancock Guide to Linguistic Criticism and Hypothetical Terminology, fifth edition,” said Burke. “It’s the style guide for everyone writing papers in the program.”

I told him I’d get my application back to him in a few days.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll pass it onto the director. You’ll hear back in a few weeks.”

“You’re not the director of the program?” I said.

“Lord no,” said Burke. “I’m just the administrative assistant.”

***

Avie took one look at the flyer for the Third Annual Multimensional Studies Conference. “Postmonohistoricism? Transaltern Surrealities? The No-Longer-Always-Already Real?” she read aloud. “Are those even real words? Sounds like a bunch of hyper-intellectual nerds jacking off while padding their curricula vitae.”

“I’m sure they mean something, Avie,” I said. “They wouldn’t offer college credit for it if it didn’t. I thought you’d approve—it’s just the kind of indoctrination into disgruntled Leftism we’re going to college for.”

“Yeah, but I’m an activist,” she said. “Takin’ it to the streets. All this Hypothetics stuff is just overly-educated mumbo-jumbo.”

“But I have to know this stuff anyway, Avie, if I’m going to be an urban policymaker and social planner. I have to at least be familiar with the terms.”

“I doubt if anyone in city government uses language like this,” said Avie. As an example, she read aloud from the ASP brochure, composed by whomever Burke Kornbluth worked for:

The Hypothetical “shift” in our current epistemological awareness suggests / summons / demands both a playful thoughtfulness and thoughtful playfulness in our agonized / agonistic contemplations, in an attempt to avert a necessary intrusion of unrequested alternative realities upon our quotidian perceptions. Longing for simplification may be the natural response, the desire for recrudescence of (a) lost and unrecoverable past(s), present(s), and/or future(s) of the always-already arrived at, a predestined before and after (as well as before the after). This centerless awareness of an originary non-binary may be the non-negotiable but nevertheless freely undertaken attempt at a boundless creative imaginary. This seeking of the (un)desirable among the dislocated offers us strategies for collective resistance across platforms of the newly multiple, a praxis of tactical intervention in/to postcontemporaneity enactment / intersecting / intervening in/to the impersonal apolitical.

“I rest my case,” concluded Avie.

“I don’t how practical it is,” I said. “But it’s what they’re giving degrees and certificate for.”

“Are you kidding? It’s not even grammatically correct,” said Avie. “Good Lord, I hope I become famous before I have to go to grad school.”

“I have time to decide,” I said. “I’m not committed to anything. The deadline isn’t until January. Dolores said I didn’t have to submit a conference paper if I find I’m overcommitted—which I will be, for the next several years. But there’s no harm in giving it some though. First, I have to find a copy of the Zane Hancock Guide to Linguistic Criticism and Hypothetical Terminology, fifth edition. Who knows? Maybe these Hypotheticians know a thing or two I don’t. In any case, we’re lucky to have such a prestigious conference being held right in our back yard.”

“Sissy, you’ve actually been to alternate realities,” said Avie. “These people are only theorizing. They have no practical experience with anything; they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s merely book-learning.”

“That’s what Hypothetics is, Avie,” I said. “It’s book-learning. On steroids.”