I’ve been immersed in the long “orientation” process for the past week. Although much of that process is tedious and mind-numbing, I found at least one part particularly interesting. My new academic home operates on an Honor System, something that used to be de rigeur for liberal arts colleges, but is unfortunately not so much…
Read MoreStill registering over 100 degrees every day here in Memphis. My own heat-related misery was coumpounded in 2 ways yesterday, leading me to believe that the end (or my end, anyway) is nigh. First, we had Convocation yesterday afternoon. It was about 107 degrees when the “procession” started, during which we make about a quarter-mile…
Read MoreI went to my first Roller Derby match last weekend. It was a double-header– the Women of Mass Destruction vs. The Angels of Death, followed by the Legion of Zoom vs. the PrissKilla Presleys. I expected it to be campy and entertaining, which it was, but what I didn’t expect was to learn that this…
Read MoreAs I mentioned a little while ago, I am in the process of teaching The Epic of Gilgamesh. One of the themes we are concentrating on in my seminar this semester is “friendhip,” so the relationship between the epic’s two protagonists, Gilgamesh and Enkidu (pictured above), is a wonderful example with which to begin. Our…
Read MoreI always appreciate it when colleagues of mine share from their bags of pedagogical tricks, so I thought I might pass on a recent experiment that generated an eminently “teachable moment” for me. I’ve just begin teaching the Iliad in my course, which is a small seminar-tpye class. Yesterday, I decided to utilize an exercise…
Read More[Note to readers: Please keep reading. I promise there is a payoff at the end of this entry!] Now that I’ve finished up the Iliad, we’re moving on to a three-week study of the Bible. Although I actually began college as a theology student (and I am a preacher’s kid), I’ve never actually taught the…
Read MoreI am, again, inadvertantly competing with a couple of (bad) film versions of texts that I am teaching in my classes this semester. First, there’s the mega-blockbuster Troy, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles. Now, I haven’t seen Troy (though I have recently resolved to do so ASAP), but my understanding of it was that the…
Read MoreWe’ve moved on to the story of Cain and Abel, which is actually one of my favorites in the Bible. There are so many unexplained details in that story. Why didn’t God like Cain’s offering? (I mean, Cain and Abel were only the 2nd and 3rd human beings ever… it’s not like there was an…
Read MoreWhen I was in grad school, we used to regularly play a game called “Celebrity” at parties. It’s a fairly standard name-guessing game with three rounds in which the clue-giver is allowed fewer and fewer words to decsribe the “celebrity” whose name his/her teammates must guess. There aren’t many rules to “Celebrity.” However, the game…
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