[Chet has forced me to place a temporary moratorium on Memphis-themed posts to this blog. But it’s only temporary.] I was tied up with Merleau-Pontyans shortly after the Columbia University speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but I did actually watch his speech in its entirety on CSPAN and wanted to offer my $0.02 on…
Read MoreMy cable was out over the weekend and I had to have a repairman come by yesterday morning to check it out. Because the cable company gave me a window of 10-noon to expect him, I was at home still scrambling to prep for my 1pm class when he arrived. My cable repair guy was…
Read MoreI’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 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 MoreHere’s something we all need to talk more about: eros in the classroom. I was reminded of this just recently by an excellently written article in The American Scholar by Yale professor William Deresiewicz entitled “Love on Campus.” (If you haven’t read the piece already, please stop and read it now. The references follwing will…
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