Sometime back in the Plestiscene Epoch, Meta Cranky took an exacting class on Feminism and Romanticism at the New Jersey School for the Impoverished. What MC mostly remembers is revision upon revision of her essay on Frankenstein and hysteria. Exacting Professor has now moved down the turnpike to the New Jersey School for Hedge Fund Managers; there, her web page states, "I care about literary aesthetics and remain a `close reader' of its complex forms." We were all about complex forms at the School for the Impoverished, and MC was slightly hysterical herself by the time the essay was completed and, eventually, published.
MC was successfully repressing this part of her sordid past until she received a phone call from Righteously Indignant California Co-ed. "Are you the Meta Cranky who wrote an essay on Frankenstein?" she asked. MC went by "Cranky Graduate Student" then, but on the whole, yes. If you thought that people of California were Righteously Indignant about property taxes, being defrauded by Enron, or having a $20 billion budget deficit, you have yet to hear them on the topic of plagiarism. California Co-ed found MC's essay reprinted in the book pictured above. Except that it is no longer attributed to MC. Instead, it's written by a scholar called Dr. S.P. Swain, Head of the Department of English, Rourkela Municipal College, Rourkela, India. On her end of the phone, MC heard California Co-ed doing a very good imitation of Nora Charles as she forwarded correspondence from Indian publishers and the U.S. copyright office. Clearly, she had sleuthed this matter for days and was aghast that this book, now selling for $45 in its second printing, was apparently being sold to Indian undergraduates. Just for fun, compare MC's 1993 version with the Indian essay, copyright 2002. What a coincidence!
MC doubts that she's missing out on a financial windfall here. But she is bitter that S.P. Swain, comfortably ensconced on the Indian subcontinent, merrily puts his name on her work without ever having set foot in the Exacting Professor's class at the School for the Impoverished. If names like Learned Hand, Sonia Sotomayor, or Judge Judy count for anything, then justice will be exacted from Dr. S.P. Swain, Head of the Department of English, Rourkela Municipal College. If MC gets to choose the manner of her vindication, it will be this: Dr. Swain will need to become a close reader of the complex forms of literary aesthetics. And MC knows just where he can take lessons.
--MC
As the great Sir Isaac Newton might say, "Dr. Swain is, without a doubt, standing on the shoulders of Meta Cranky!"
ReplyDelete--PG
Sincerest form of flattery, what?! You have clearly ascended to the ranks of the widely read. This is much juicier than identity theft. I do hope you will pull rank on Dr. Swain and exact the proper justice, which is, of course, signing the plaigarist up for classes at the New Jersey School for Hedge-Fund Managers where the registrars practice their own brand of extortion. Even if Dr. Swain might feel a little too cozy among other aspiring white-collar thugs, I can only hope Exacting Professor would thoroughly drill through Swain the imperative of original research and thought. The injustice! I am aghast.
ReplyDeleteSo did he write any of the other essays ascribed to him in the volume? I note that there is a prominent copyright notice at the front of the volume forbidding any reproduction of the contents except for short, properly attributed quotations. Ha.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I'm comforted that it doesn't appear to have been a woman who ripped you off (of the two identifiably female contributors, one is identified by the credential-less title 'Ms'; the other is 'Dr [Mrs]').
I'm pleasantly surprised by the undergraduate's passion for academic integrity. We're living through a rash of academic misconduct charges leveled against upper-level English majors on my campus, so I may have grown cynical.
So, what path will your case take? Will Studies in the Novel's attorneys contact the book's publishers? Will you write an informative letter to the plagiarist's Head of Department/University President? Will you write it all up as a case study in the uncomfortable, permeable boundary between feminism and post-colonialism?
Enquiring minds, you know...
I clearly am not a sufficiently close reader. I see that Dr Swain is his own Head of Department.
ReplyDeleteAny updates on this story?
ReplyDeleteI think he left the best portions of YOUR essay out of his...although I only perused the first two paragraphs of his before judging him. I wonder if he just Googles all his work? Maybe the students at his "university" could just complete their assignments online! Oh, right, THEY CAN.
ReplyDelete