Back to the Grind

All of my spring classes have now met, and the semester's going to be a rough one. I'm already feeling tired thinking of all the hours I'm going to spend reading Hegel and translating Beowulf. But when I make it through, I'll nearly be a Jedi.

My Hebrew Bible and/as Literature classes have met twice, and at midnight tonight the rosters get finalized so that I can start the genuine class on Friday. We spent yesterday's class period close-reading Genesis 12 and giving the students a taste of what is to come over the course of the semester.

I'm going to try to make the focus of this semester's instruction the concept of intellectual traditions, those practices within which people have lived and live that make sense of things like texts and life and God. We discussed them briefly in the first class and really dug into what sort of tradition that Genesis 12 (the beginning of the Abram/Abraham narratives) constitutes as opposed to the opening chapters of the gospel of Mark or the opening lectures in a political science-type course.

I really hit a stride and connected with the students while teaching Plato last semester; I hope that I can do likewise this spring.