Biographing

I've spent the last couple of days going over the faculty bios of various English programs across the country. Most bios are fairly predictable - two to three paragraphs long, outlining the basic trajectory of the faculty member's education, listing a few books, and describing whatever that person is currently working on. Some bios, though, either intentionally or accidentally, are just awesome.

This is simply a spectacular idea for a bio picture. I wonder if she either works in some field like "Death Studies," or if she's ugly. Or maybe, like DF Wallace's Madame Psychosis, she's too beautiful. I can imagine a floundering English department demanding that their homely faculty replace their bio pictures with other people younger, more attractive pictures. Could you resist someone who is both hot AND studies representations of the undead in late medieval literature? I know I couldn't.

There's poet James Tate, whose "Areas of Specialty" section seems aghast that you even have to ask. Should be replaced with, "Specialty? Being motherfucking James Tate."

This man is simply tired of your questions.

Although the process is arduous, expensive, and nerve wracking, applying to grad schools allows me to look forward to the day when I'll have my own out-of-focus picture and confusing, generic-sounding bio on a faculty web page.