Wheaton professor chronicles a week at bowling camp for Slate magazine

Associate Professor of English Paula Krebs writes about the pleasures and perils of a distinctly non-academic summer vacation--bowling camp--in this week's Slate.com, the online magazine of politics and culture.

A specialist in Victorian literature and culture, Krebs is the guest writer for Slate's Diary, which features a different writer and subject each week. She is writing about her experiences attending a bowling camp in Ithaca, NY, with her mother.

''I'd recently taken up bowling, and my mom has bowled for years,'' Krebs explained in the first installment of her online diary. ''My bowling league had become a real source of pleasure for me, and I found myself wanting to become a good bowler. So few other areas of my life offered trophies.'' To read more of her week-long series visit Slate.

While Krebs' writing typically examines Victorian literature and pedagogical issues, she has written about bowling before. The Chronicle of Higher Education published an essay in 2001, I Bowl, Therefore I Am (registration required) in which she explained the appeal of the sport.

''The other day, using some of my mother's good coaching, I converted the 6-7-10 split,'' she wrote last year. ''Let me tell you, it's a feeling not dissimilar to reading a refereed journal's acceptance letter. I like getting better at something as concrete as bowling -- something with numbers, something that lets me aim and throw a heavy object legally.''

For more on Professor Krebs, please visit her online profile