400 posts! Woo hoo!
Also, I've now translated 319 lines of Beowulf, or 10% of the thing! Hwaet!
27 January 2007
26 January 2007
Psalms and Pedagogy
We're two days into the Psalms unit now, and classes are picking up fast. I don't know whether I've just packed the first two papers too closely towards the semester's beginning or whether my own classes are hindering my ability to expend energy on my teaching, but paper two's revision meetings start next Friday, and I still don't feel like I know my classes.
We've been close-reading thus far for parallelism (taught them some Lowth the first day) and sub-generic structure (lament, praise, didactic, etc.), then comparing them to 17th-century poems (Donne today). I'm hoping that writing this paper will give them enough poetry that they feel like they've been in a lit class, but frankly, I'm ready to get into David and Job. That's where the really good conversations and the really fun classes get rolling.
My three classes really are going to put me under if I get behind at all; I've been proactive and early-starting thus far; I've just got to make sure that I don't make it out of spring break without some pages written on my final papers. I'm almost certain at this point that I'm going to stop attending Latin in April to focus solely on term papers. I can pick up those Wheelock chapters and get ready to roll on LATN 2001 in the summer.
We've been close-reading thus far for parallelism (taught them some Lowth the first day) and sub-generic structure (lament, praise, didactic, etc.), then comparing them to 17th-century poems (Donne today). I'm hoping that writing this paper will give them enough poetry that they feel like they've been in a lit class, but frankly, I'm ready to get into David and Job. That's where the really good conversations and the really fun classes get rolling.
My three classes really are going to put me under if I get behind at all; I've been proactive and early-starting thus far; I've just got to make sure that I don't make it out of spring break without some pages written on my final papers. I'm almost certain at this point that I'm going to stop attending Latin in April to focus solely on term papers. I can pick up those Wheelock chapters and get ready to roll on LATN 2001 in the summer.
20 January 2007
I take it back
Okay, you know that last post in which I said my students were overly compliant?
Forget it.
On the class's online discussion board, the pro-Joseph brigade has made a charge. Let the games begin!
Forget it.
On the class's online discussion board, the pro-Joseph brigade has made a charge. Let the games begin!
Ambiguous Joseph
I spent a fair bit of time in my classes on Friday laying out my theories about agency and grammar and why excessive passive and expletive constructions hinder good academic writing, so we had too little time, as usual, to talk about Joseph.
This group of students, I think, tends too far towards malleability (or at least shows of malleability), and I'm going to have to watch it. When I focused our attention on Joseph's dark side, last year's classes fought me, clinging tenaciously to Joseph as a positive exemplar. I'm used to that; I can always get Socratic on them and make them think harder about it. This year's group almost immediately turned on Joseph, finding nothing but fault in him. I'm not sure whether they're doing this out of a genuinely shaky grasp on the story or to say what they think I want to hear, but either way, I had to give a talk to each class about Joseph's complexity and ambiguity so that they wouldn't leave this (very brief) unit thinking him an utter scumbag.
I collect the first brief paper Wednesday and get started on our Psalms and 17th-century poetry unit. I've got the skeleton of a lecture about English and Hebrew poetic conventions ready, but I need to spend some more time on it between now and Wednesday.
This group of students, I think, tends too far towards malleability (or at least shows of malleability), and I'm going to have to watch it. When I focused our attention on Joseph's dark side, last year's classes fought me, clinging tenaciously to Joseph as a positive exemplar. I'm used to that; I can always get Socratic on them and make them think harder about it. This year's group almost immediately turned on Joseph, finding nothing but fault in him. I'm not sure whether they're doing this out of a genuinely shaky grasp on the story or to say what they think I want to hear, but either way, I had to give a talk to each class about Joseph's complexity and ambiguity so that they wouldn't leave this (very brief) unit thinking him an utter scumbag.
I collect the first brief paper Wednesday and get started on our Psalms and 17th-century poetry unit. I've got the skeleton of a lecture about English and Hebrew poetic conventions ready, but I need to spend some more time on it between now and Wednesday.
18 January 2007
Fifteen bucks
I found a small, 128MB mp3 player at Toys R Us for fifteen bucks. Since I only use such devices when I run, and since an hour and twenty minutes' music covers more time than my out-of-shape legs can, it's a great purchase.
In Hebrew Bible teaching news, the first day of Joseph went entirely too quicly, so quickly that I ran out of time in both sections before I could get to writing instruction. I'll have to start next class with writing and then launch into discussions of the narrative and the Robert Alter chapter I'm having them read.
I'm looking forward already to teaching the Psalms again, and I think that the revision groups for that paper will once again prove most helpful.
In Hebrew Bible teaching news, the first day of Joseph went entirely too quicly, so quickly that I ran out of time in both sections before I could get to writing instruction. I'll have to start next class with writing and then launch into discussions of the narrative and the Robert Alter chapter I'm having them read.
I'm looking forward already to teaching the Psalms again, and I think that the revision groups for that paper will once again prove most helpful.
13 January 2007
How 'bout them Colts
Well, two playoff games and zero touchdowns given up...
And half a dozen (I think) Manning interceptions with one touchdown thrown.
I suppose the playoff season is a strange place to live.
Lord help our Colts!
And half a dozen (I think) Manning interceptions with one touchdown thrown.
I suppose the playoff season is a strange place to live.
Lord help our Colts!
12 January 2007
Let 'er Rip
Drop/Add period ended at midnight last night, and the semester proper is under way.
We did get-to-know-each-other stuff today, mainly so we could get into the texts with a little less tension in the air. Monday we begin Joseph, and I've already forgotten my Harper-Collins Study Bible in my office for the first time this semester. For this text that's no big deal; I can plan my lesson with just the text in front of me, and the narrative is long enough that we'll only be able to discuss a couple episodes in depth anyway.
In the final hours of drop/add, my class numbers dropped to 20 for 8:00 and remained at 22 for 9:00. I imagine I'll lose some to brown-bottle flu (those early Friday mornings will do that), but at least I begin with fewer than the maximum 44-paper sets to grade. Once again I've got a preponderance of sophomores in my classes; I never got that many for "regular" ENGL 1102, but both times I've tried special sections, the sophomores (and juniors) have showed up. I just hope that they can remember that the class is for freshmen and not infect my younger students with boredom (as my juniors last spring did).
Beowulf is going to be interesting; in our first week, we translated ten of the fifty-two assigned lines of poetry as a class. Next week we have another sixty to take on; I wonder whether we'll dip into the first week or start where the syllabus starts on Wednesday or just do the good episodes. Dr. Evans also assigned critical articles that we're to present to the class, and I drew the one on medieval poetry and patristics, so that part should be fun.
Now I must settle in to the task of reading two hundred pages of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit for Wednesday night. The first chunk (that is to say, seven pages) hasn't been nearly as painful as I remember Hegel being when I was a senior in college. I suppose I've grown in my reading ability since then.
We did get-to-know-each-other stuff today, mainly so we could get into the texts with a little less tension in the air. Monday we begin Joseph, and I've already forgotten my Harper-Collins Study Bible in my office for the first time this semester. For this text that's no big deal; I can plan my lesson with just the text in front of me, and the narrative is long enough that we'll only be able to discuss a couple episodes in depth anyway.
In the final hours of drop/add, my class numbers dropped to 20 for 8:00 and remained at 22 for 9:00. I imagine I'll lose some to brown-bottle flu (those early Friday mornings will do that), but at least I begin with fewer than the maximum 44-paper sets to grade. Once again I've got a preponderance of sophomores in my classes; I never got that many for "regular" ENGL 1102, but both times I've tried special sections, the sophomores (and juniors) have showed up. I just hope that they can remember that the class is for freshmen and not infect my younger students with boredom (as my juniors last spring did).
Beowulf is going to be interesting; in our first week, we translated ten of the fifty-two assigned lines of poetry as a class. Next week we have another sixty to take on; I wonder whether we'll dip into the first week or start where the syllabus starts on Wednesday or just do the good episodes. Dr. Evans also assigned critical articles that we're to present to the class, and I drew the one on medieval poetry and patristics, so that part should be fun.
Now I must settle in to the task of reading two hundred pages of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit for Wednesday night. The first chunk (that is to say, seven pages) hasn't been nearly as painful as I remember Hegel being when I was a senior in college. I suppose I've grown in my reading ability since then.
11 January 2007
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.
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.
09 January 2007
Post-Christmas Revisited
First, I'd like to thank the folks who commented on my first, haphazard post-Christmas post for reading and thinking with me. The following (still haphazard) reflections will attempt to respond to some of those comments.
When I talk about a group's appropriating a common symbol and making it a shibboleth for one faction, I don't necessarily need to assert an all-encompassing conspiracy or even to attribute agency to any one strategist. For instance, when the Qumran community (the Dead Sea Scrolls folks) appropriated the biblical prophets and made them weapons in polemics against the Jerusalem hierarchy, I don't necessarily think that the council got together in some sort of "strategy meeting" to vote on using the prophets, and I don't think that the intellectual architects of the War Scroll or the Temple Scroll had some cynical plan in mind to win political points. In that case I think that the folks who claimed the prophets genuinely believed the prophets to be on their side, and the Sadduccee rejection of the prophets as Scripture must have had at least something to do with an analogous rejection of Pharisaical and Qumranish politics.
In the case of the so-called "War on Christmas," I imagine that, were one to trace its origins, one would find not a Washington think-tank but nostalgic old-timers who remember when "Merry Christmas," a bit of benign cultural carry-over from the old English ways (where John Lennon and Harry Potter alike can muse about Christmas) that seemed to be fading into the past as retailers (who, after all, are all about making money) began to forge a more specifically American neutrality. (Christmas has been around for hundreds of years in England, whereas in America nothing has been around for hundreds of years.)
I do think that when mass-media personalities grab hold of those old-timers' nostalgia and turn it into something akin to the "Freedom Fries" embarrassment, one can assert more strongly that something cynical is going but still need not posit a global conspiracy.
On the other hand, I think that most calls of "Merry Christmas" are in fact friendly or at worst benign. I don't think that the "enemies" in the so-called "War on Christmas" are Muslims and Hindus so much as Democrats. (I'm fairly certain that the same was the case with "Freedom Fries.") The political logic there is, I think, cynical and cyclical: One dares those who don't celebrate Christmas to take offense by means of more and more public assertions about "Judeo-Christian traditions" and such, taking the traditions away from an inherited Britishness and recasting them as vestiges of a former, more pristine "Christian America" that may or may not have at some point existed. The polarizing effect of such appropriation forces elected officials, who in fact have to live with both camps of culture warriors, to take safeguards against litigation (more often at the hands of Democrats than Hindus). Then one points to the safeguards, says something about "political correctness" (which nobody, in my experience, can define well), and increases the air of paranoia, playing to the fears of those who remember fondly the "old days" before the instigation began. In the meantime, those of us who don't have a horse in the culture wars race are forced to live in a world in which "Merry Christmas" is no longer something from a Dickens story, friendly enough and contentless enough not to threaten, but now the code word of a certain faction, something akin to a self-apellation as "pro-family" (who isn't?) or "values voter."
So to cut off this rambling (and still haphazard) reflection, I'd say that ninety-nine out of a hundred wishes of "Merry Christmas" have nothing to do with rendering Hindus "other," and ninety-nine out of a hundred wishes of "Happy Holidays" are not trying to obliterate American Christianity. The sadness that inspired the first post has less to do with most folks and more to do with the poisonous appropriation and negation that some folks are willing to undertake for the sake of controlling Congress.
When I talk about a group's appropriating a common symbol and making it a shibboleth for one faction, I don't necessarily need to assert an all-encompassing conspiracy or even to attribute agency to any one strategist. For instance, when the Qumran community (the Dead Sea Scrolls folks) appropriated the biblical prophets and made them weapons in polemics against the Jerusalem hierarchy, I don't necessarily think that the council got together in some sort of "strategy meeting" to vote on using the prophets, and I don't think that the intellectual architects of the War Scroll or the Temple Scroll had some cynical plan in mind to win political points. In that case I think that the folks who claimed the prophets genuinely believed the prophets to be on their side, and the Sadduccee rejection of the prophets as Scripture must have had at least something to do with an analogous rejection of Pharisaical and Qumranish politics.
In the case of the so-called "War on Christmas," I imagine that, were one to trace its origins, one would find not a Washington think-tank but nostalgic old-timers who remember when "Merry Christmas," a bit of benign cultural carry-over from the old English ways (where John Lennon and Harry Potter alike can muse about Christmas) that seemed to be fading into the past as retailers (who, after all, are all about making money) began to forge a more specifically American neutrality. (Christmas has been around for hundreds of years in England, whereas in America nothing has been around for hundreds of years.)
I do think that when mass-media personalities grab hold of those old-timers' nostalgia and turn it into something akin to the "Freedom Fries" embarrassment, one can assert more strongly that something cynical is going but still need not posit a global conspiracy.
On the other hand, I think that most calls of "Merry Christmas" are in fact friendly or at worst benign. I don't think that the "enemies" in the so-called "War on Christmas" are Muslims and Hindus so much as Democrats. (I'm fairly certain that the same was the case with "Freedom Fries.") The political logic there is, I think, cynical and cyclical: One dares those who don't celebrate Christmas to take offense by means of more and more public assertions about "Judeo-Christian traditions" and such, taking the traditions away from an inherited Britishness and recasting them as vestiges of a former, more pristine "Christian America" that may or may not have at some point existed. The polarizing effect of such appropriation forces elected officials, who in fact have to live with both camps of culture warriors, to take safeguards against litigation (more often at the hands of Democrats than Hindus). Then one points to the safeguards, says something about "political correctness" (which nobody, in my experience, can define well), and increases the air of paranoia, playing to the fears of those who remember fondly the "old days" before the instigation began. In the meantime, those of us who don't have a horse in the culture wars race are forced to live in a world in which "Merry Christmas" is no longer something from a Dickens story, friendly enough and contentless enough not to threaten, but now the code word of a certain faction, something akin to a self-apellation as "pro-family" (who isn't?) or "values voter."
So to cut off this rambling (and still haphazard) reflection, I'd say that ninety-nine out of a hundred wishes of "Merry Christmas" have nothing to do with rendering Hindus "other," and ninety-nine out of a hundred wishes of "Happy Holidays" are not trying to obliterate American Christianity. The sadness that inspired the first post has less to do with most folks and more to do with the poisonous appropriation and negation that some folks are willing to undertake for the sake of controlling Congress.
08 January 2007
04 January 2007
A Haphazard Post-Christmas Thought
If ever anyone actually fought a War on Christmas, I think they won this year. For the first time in my 29 years, I started feeling uneasy when people wished me a Merry Christmas. The greeting, friendly or at worst benign throughout my years, started in 2006 to sound like a Republican code word.
I never called myself "pro-life" for very long, and I thought that "family values" sounded a bit squirrelly even back in high school. But in the moment when I realized that "Christmas" had been tainted, claimed as property by a political party, I got mad. And when I get mad, it tends to last only a couple minutes, and then I start to think.
The booger about Christmas is that every stage of its development is contested territory. Its origins might or might not have something to do with Saturnalia, and the historical tradition that links it with Saturnalia might or might not have its own agenda. The consumer orgy might or might not be a deviation from a pristine ur-Christmas with all the Advent fasts and proper piety, and the urge to return to that pristine Christmas might or might not be a quasi-liturgical neo-Puritan impulse. Of course, I tend to see complexity where others don't. (Hate the phrase "over-think.")
The lazy but literate part of my self wants simply to fall back on Dickens and Irving, to claim some easy "middle ground" in which Christmas is at once sacred and secular and in which the archaeology of genetic moments is an unnecessary trifle and for which the proper response is not thought but revelry in whatever happens to be there. (BTW, "A Christmas Carol" is the obvious Dickens reference; Irving's Sketch-Book has a number of Christmas chapters.)
And then I realize that I've wandered far afield from the suspiciously-partisan-sounding insistences that in fact it's time for Merry Christmas and not for a Happy Holiday.
And then I realize that the spring semester begins in four days. Thank the heavens I can think about something simple then, like Old English participles or Heidegger.
I never called myself "pro-life" for very long, and I thought that "family values" sounded a bit squirrelly even back in high school. But in the moment when I realized that "Christmas" had been tainted, claimed as property by a political party, I got mad. And when I get mad, it tends to last only a couple minutes, and then I start to think.
The booger about Christmas is that every stage of its development is contested territory. Its origins might or might not have something to do with Saturnalia, and the historical tradition that links it with Saturnalia might or might not have its own agenda. The consumer orgy might or might not be a deviation from a pristine ur-Christmas with all the Advent fasts and proper piety, and the urge to return to that pristine Christmas might or might not be a quasi-liturgical neo-Puritan impulse. Of course, I tend to see complexity where others don't. (Hate the phrase "over-think.")
The lazy but literate part of my self wants simply to fall back on Dickens and Irving, to claim some easy "middle ground" in which Christmas is at once sacred and secular and in which the archaeology of genetic moments is an unnecessary trifle and for which the proper response is not thought but revelry in whatever happens to be there. (BTW, "A Christmas Carol" is the obvious Dickens reference; Irving's Sketch-Book has a number of Christmas chapters.)
And then I realize that I've wandered far afield from the suspiciously-partisan-sounding insistences that in fact it's time for Merry Christmas and not for a Happy Holiday.
And then I realize that the spring semester begins in four days. Thank the heavens I can think about something simple then, like Old English participles or Heidegger.
02 January 2007
Back from the North
11 days, 2200 miles, four family get-togethers, one stomach virus, and a case of strep later, and we're back!
Christmas pictures will be coming soon, but since Micah's contagious for one more day (he's doing quite well on an antibiotic and never, as far as I can tell, realized that he was sick), I'm not going to have any little-hands-free computer time tomorrow, so the impatient will simply have to learn patience.
Christmas pictures will be coming soon, but since Micah's contagious for one more day (he's doing quite well on an antibiotic and never, as far as I can tell, realized that he was sick), I'm not going to have any little-hands-free computer time tomorrow, so the impatient will simply have to learn patience.
19 December 2006
Hoppin' Hegel, Batman!
I knew that next semester was going to be rough, but my professor for Hegelian and post-Hegelian literary theory just posted his reading list along with a Darth Vaderesque warning about the reading load. Yeesh!
I just ordered Eagleton's book for an early January brush-up (hopefully it'll show up while I'm out of town) and the Hegel tome to get cookin' over that. Fitzner told me this professor is a good one; I just hope my tail holds out.
All of a sudden translating two hundred lines of Beowulf a week started looking like the easy part of my semester...
I just ordered Eagleton's book for an early January brush-up (hopefully it'll show up while I'm out of town) and the Hegel tome to get cookin' over that. Fitzner told me this professor is a good one; I just hope my tail holds out.
All of a sudden translating two hundred lines of Beowulf a week started looking like the easy part of my semester...
18 December 2006
Weekly Standard's Damage Control
"Don't Cry for Pinochet"
His embrace of economic reform seems unlikely to have sprung from a commitment to freedom, given the overarching contempt for liberty that characterized the rest of his government. Rather, in order to insulate himself from the consequences of his murderous seizure of power, Pinochet sought out political allies, and his free market reforms helped him to garner support domestically on the right, and also among members of the international community. One must be careful not to fall into Pinochet's trap--accepting his brutal seizure of power and tyrannical rule as a natural accompaniment of free market reforms. Propagandists on the left lost no time in seeking to discredit economic freedom by associating it with Pinochet. To this day, we hear from Moscow that it takes a Pinochet to implement economic reforms successfully; Vladimir Putin seems all too willing to have Pinochet's uniform taken in a few sizes so he can try it on.Stalin does in fact discredit Leninism, and the Cultural Revolution does in fact discredit Maoism. Fascism was not corrupted by Hitler, and Milton Friedman's neoliberalism is not warped but embodied by Pinochet. Don't let any of the twentieth century ideologues try to bury their monsters in unmarked graves, especially not those who wound up on the winning sides of the world wars.
Back to the Classics
After a frenzy of post-Marxist theory and post-Freudian analysis--that is to say, after reading up on the last decade's scholarship for my end-of-semester papers--I've dug into Robert Fagles's translation of Homer's Iliad. To say that such a shift is a relief simply does no justice to the joy of reading old books without the nattering critics and their little academic careers. (I'm harboring no illusions--I'm certain that during my comps year I'll be sending off my own forgettable little articles to attempt to shore up my own little academic career.) I dusted off a reread of Virgil's Aeneid last Christmas, and if I have a few quiet hours this year, I'm probably going to consume another ancient epic.
Speaking of old books, my Plato course's evaluations came in today, and they were even better than the ones I got for last Spring's Hebrew Bible and/as Literature class. (Not sure if the latter link will work; I'll update it when I get access to the department page to post spring syllabi.) I could claim some sort of grand skill in teaching freshmen, but a year ago, I got some of the most wretched reviews I'd ever gotten. (That was my fourth year teaching college.) The change is not in my ability but in the texts at hand; college students know good books from mediocre ones, and when I started teaching Job and Republic instead of "Divinity and Pornography," they started reacting better to my classes. Now, as I gear up to teach Joseph in January and the Psalms in February, I know that I don't have to be a fabulous teacher to make this work, and I also know that if I do perform fabulously, I'll be leaping forth from the shoulders of great texts.
It makes one want to get back to school, no? :)
Speaking of old books, my Plato course's evaluations came in today, and they were even better than the ones I got for last Spring's Hebrew Bible and/as Literature class. (Not sure if the latter link will work; I'll update it when I get access to the department page to post spring syllabi.) I could claim some sort of grand skill in teaching freshmen, but a year ago, I got some of the most wretched reviews I'd ever gotten. (That was my fourth year teaching college.) The change is not in my ability but in the texts at hand; college students know good books from mediocre ones, and when I started teaching Job and Republic instead of "Divinity and Pornography," they started reacting better to my classes. Now, as I gear up to teach Joseph in January and the Psalms in February, I know that I don't have to be a fabulous teacher to make this work, and I also know that if I do perform fabulously, I'll be leaping forth from the shoulders of great texts.
It makes one want to get back to school, no? :)
14 December 2006
The Feminisation of Chile
The strong women of a generation ago were not the product of an evolving society, but created by events – and I don’t mean Allende’s experiment, in which women were mostly helpmeets. Mónica González, the country’s top investigative journalist, who was jailed for her human rights stories in the 1980s, credits the dictatorship for that brief awakening. ‘Since the people killed, imprisoned and disappeared were mostly men, women had to confront authority as never before. Facing up to the army and the police in search of husbands or sons, joining forces and speaking out politically, going to work for the first time.’In the wake of Pinochet's death, this article about the years since his regime lost power was pretty interesting. That feminism arose out of the ashes of neoliberalism is quite interesting; I don't spend a great deal of time thinking about gender issues (sorry to my feminist theorist and gender theorist colleagues), but this is one of those moments in which power and (bad) government and gender come together in ways that deserve some thought.
11 December 2006
Pinochet Dead
Mixed Reaction to Pinochet's Death
Another of the Cold War's monsters now faces divine judgment. May his years as dictator of Chile serve as a warning to empires--God knows with whom you ally.
School of the Americas Watch
Another of the Cold War's monsters now faces divine judgment. May his years as dictator of Chile serve as a warning to empires--God knows with whom you ally.
School of the Americas Watch
09 December 2006
Oh Dear
It seems that I've accidentally wiped out a fair bit of my blog's goodies while fiddling with BetaBlogger. I suppose I should treat this as an opportunity rather than a curse, so check back frequently for the new look of Hardly the Last Word!
We're doomed!
We're doomed!
Casting for Nativity Plays
I'm thanking the heavens as I type that I've never had to cast one of these legendary affairs, but the article is just too funny:
Come Christmas, there are always those cynics who dismiss infant nativity plays as pointless charades. What lessons, they ask, are to be learnt in the modern age from watching kids trying to work out what a "virgin's womb" is and how not to "abhor" it? The answer is many, for all concerned – not in the tale itself, but in the telling."Anyone can be a Shepherd, but there's only One Mary"
Hit Counter
I have to republish to get the hit counter to show up, so here goes...
(It's right below the "my library" bit.)
(It's right below the "my library" bit.)
05 December 2006
04 December 2006
Crapula
The sermon went well yesterday, and in the process of researching for it, I ran into one of the most fun vice-words I've ever seen, the Latin crapula.
My Latin class ends tomorrow (exempt from the final), and my students upload their portfolios tomorrow evening. Friday is the Old English exam, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem since I've got Thursday completely off. I've got a genuinely good head of steam on my Spenser paper, and if I play my cards right I might just get it turned in this weekend.
I know the last few entries have been grocery lists, most containing the same items, but my grad student readers know that such lists, and the gradual deterioration of such lists, keep us going in these closing days of the semester.
My Latin class ends tomorrow (exempt from the final), and my students upload their portfolios tomorrow evening. Friday is the Old English exam, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem since I've got Thursday completely off. I've got a genuinely good head of steam on my Spenser paper, and if I play my cards right I might just get it turned in this weekend.
I know the last few entries have been grocery lists, most containing the same items, but my grad student readers know that such lists, and the gradual deterioration of such lists, keep us going in these closing days of the semester.
28 November 2006
December 8, here I come
The last sprint is on. I've taught my last class (we're still meeting, but it's all peer revision from here on out), Spenser class has seen its last meeting, and only four Latin and four Old English classes remain. I can't remember a semester coming to a crashing halt as fast as this one is about to, but that's probably my bad memory more than anything else.
The Spenser paper is going to get done, though it's going to kill me getting there. The final exams will come and go, and once they're in the books, they're in the books. I still have about twenty-five papers and eighty portfolios to grade, but those also eventually get done.
I'm going to make it!
The Spenser paper is going to get done, though it's going to kill me getting there. The final exams will come and go, and once they're in the books, they're in the books. I still have about twenty-five papers and eighty portfolios to grade, but those also eventually get done.
I'm going to make it!
25 November 2006
Gearing up for Final Paper
For the first semester in a long time, I'm only going to be working on one paper during the home stretch, and I've already got that half-written. I'm going to try to force myself through a Marxist history of early-modern pre-capital and use it in my analysis (just to pacify the professor), but I'm mainly going to be focusing on the virtue of temperance in Platonic and Aristotelian molds, the permutations that happen in Calvin's Institutes, and how money fits into those ethical systems in into Guyon's encounter with Mammon in book 2 of Faerie Queene. Undoubtedly my take will be a hair "conservative" for folks with (what I call) faddish tastes, but I'm to the point now that "conservative" (still not sure what that means) just has to be the way I do things. I'm good at it.
Mary's father and uncle are coming in tonight and leaving tomorrow for Mississippi. That'll cut off my access to a fair chunk of the house, but one morning won't kill me or Micah. The house is pretty much ready for company, and I know Mary is looking forward to seeing people.
Mary's father and uncle are coming in tonight and leaving tomorrow for Mississippi. That'll cut off my access to a fair chunk of the house, but one morning won't kill me or Micah. The house is pretty much ready for company, and I know Mary is looking forward to seeing people.
21 November 2006
On Education and the End of the Semester
We wrapped up the discussion part of the semester yesterday with a conversation about John Milton's treatise "On Education." As I usually do when I teach that fun little text, I started by having the class list all of the things Milton would have Englishmen learn by the time they're 21 years old. One class came up with 46 things, the other 48. Take a look at the treatise, and you'll see that these are not simple things: Milton would have us all know trigonometry, agriculture, sword-fighting, Aramaic, metaphysics, medicine, and law among others.
But the overall aim of the piece is more ambitious yet:
We talked about the significantly less-ambitious aims of our own university as an introduction to the portfolio's reflective essay, in which each student will attempt to articulate what exactly happened since August 16.
Since the part of the semester in which I lecture is over, I've been doing some thinking about the course of things. First of all, if I do freshman comp next fall, I'm almost certainly doing Plato again; the text just begs to be taught to eighteen-year-olds. Second, I'm going to do some fiddling with WebCT and write a series of quizzes to keep the little boogers honest. Requiring discussion questions assumes that I'm going to take class time to check them (which I didn't); if I set up quizzes on WebCT, the honesty check should take care of itself. Finally, I'm going to ask the class whether the reading load was too heavy. If not, I might just teach Machiavelli's Il Principe alongside Plato's Republic as an introduction to all kinds of moral questions. But I'll ask my classes first; I wouldn't want to presume a greater importance for my class than what the class warrants.
But the overall aim of the piece is more ambitious yet:
The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.That's right. Education, properly done, ought to come pretty darn close to reversing Original Sin.
We talked about the significantly less-ambitious aims of our own university as an introduction to the portfolio's reflective essay, in which each student will attempt to articulate what exactly happened since August 16.
Since the part of the semester in which I lecture is over, I've been doing some thinking about the course of things. First of all, if I do freshman comp next fall, I'm almost certainly doing Plato again; the text just begs to be taught to eighteen-year-olds. Second, I'm going to do some fiddling with WebCT and write a series of quizzes to keep the little boogers honest. Requiring discussion questions assumes that I'm going to take class time to check them (which I didn't); if I set up quizzes on WebCT, the honesty check should take care of itself. Finally, I'm going to ask the class whether the reading load was too heavy. If not, I might just teach Machiavelli's Il Principe alongside Plato's Republic as an introduction to all kinds of moral questions. But I'll ask my classes first; I wouldn't want to presume a greater importance for my class than what the class warrants.
15 November 2006
The end of Republic
It would be kind of cool if this blog post landed on some Star Wars fan's google search.
That aside, we actually finished up Monday with his bizarre section on reincarnation. I'm still not sure whether the story of Er is allegory or doctrine or some clever combination of the two, but I do think that Plato's joke at the very end is just silly.
In today's class we looked at the unapologetically empiricist first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and I think the class got a genuine grasp on that ancient difference between idealists and inductivists. After three months of Plato, Aristotle's moral conservatism is almost jarring, and I wonder which way my classes leaned.
The rest of the semester will have to do with constructing and revising the portfolio. That disappoints me somewhat, but I know that I should be focusing on my Spenser paper anyway, so I'll not cry too much.
Now I've got roughly three hours to work until I have to talk to the composition pedagogy class about special sections. I've got a basic working idea of what I'll talk about, and I've only got to fill up eight minutes, but it's still a hair nervewracking.
That aside, we actually finished up Monday with his bizarre section on reincarnation. I'm still not sure whether the story of Er is allegory or doctrine or some clever combination of the two, but I do think that Plato's joke at the very end is just silly.
In today's class we looked at the unapologetically empiricist first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and I think the class got a genuine grasp on that ancient difference between idealists and inductivists. After three months of Plato, Aristotle's moral conservatism is almost jarring, and I wonder which way my classes leaned.
The rest of the semester will have to do with constructing and revising the portfolio. That disappoints me somewhat, but I know that I should be focusing on my Spenser paper anyway, so I'll not cry too much.
Now I've got roughly three hours to work until I have to talk to the composition pedagogy class about special sections. I've got a basic working idea of what I'll talk about, and I've only got to fill up eight minutes, but it's still a hair nervewracking.
11 November 2006
09 November 2006
Better Ways
We finished what I would call the ethical part of Republic in class yesterday, and I'm pleased with the bulk of the semester's discussions. Even if some (or most) of the folks in my classes never pick up a copy of Plato again (I hope they do), they've been exposed to and had to think about questions of goodness, justice, human community, idealism, and half a dozen other things.
And now that we've covered what we covered yesterday, they all know that morality is not only better than immorality but 729 times better than immorality! (Republic section 587e) The next time my freshmen are tempted to immorality, and their WWJD bracelets are out of morality-batteries (moratteries?), they can remember what Plato told them, and they'll say, "Why would I want to do that? To do the good thing would be 729 times better!"
Perhaps not.
Plato finished up this section with quite a vivid metaphor: the one who is satisfied with apetite-pleasing pleasure is as one who climbs halfway up a mountain and congratulates himself on reaching the top, only to return to the bottom, then go up halfway, and so on. The one whose pleasures are philosophic reach the height of the mountain. We had some good times discussing why Plato thinks philosophy is better than sex, but I think that everyone present could appreciate this image.
This Friday we're discussing Plato's famous attack on poetry, and Monday, in addition to the semester's customer satisfaction surveys, we're talking about Plato's funky reincarnation chapter. Both ought to be fun.
In other realms, I finished up Chesterton's Orthodoxy during my office hours today. I hate to alienate any readers who love the Inklings and their ilk, but I wasn't all that impressed. The book itself just did not live up to the glowing recommendations that came before. In one chapter, I found myself thinking, paragraph by paragraph, "Okay. He's a Humean empiricist. He's surprised every time the door opens to the same street outside, and he thinks it's foolish to assume that the same door will do the same thing tomorrow. He can get on to the next chapter." In another, I thought, "Okay, he's a moral relativist. He thinks that Enlightenment wars are awful but that Christian wars are great. Next chapter, please." None of the chapters left me speechless in the ways that Augustine or Dante or even Barth leaves me speechless; I just wanted to get past his logical-fallacy-for-this-chapter and finish. But I suppose now I can say that I've read Chesterton and found him wanting rather than admitting that I've never read Chesterton. That's a little bit better.
And now that we've covered what we covered yesterday, they all know that morality is not only better than immorality but 729 times better than immorality! (Republic section 587e) The next time my freshmen are tempted to immorality, and their WWJD bracelets are out of morality-batteries (moratteries?), they can remember what Plato told them, and they'll say, "Why would I want to do that? To do the good thing would be 729 times better!"
Perhaps not.
Plato finished up this section with quite a vivid metaphor: the one who is satisfied with apetite-pleasing pleasure is as one who climbs halfway up a mountain and congratulates himself on reaching the top, only to return to the bottom, then go up halfway, and so on. The one whose pleasures are philosophic reach the height of the mountain. We had some good times discussing why Plato thinks philosophy is better than sex, but I think that everyone present could appreciate this image.
This Friday we're discussing Plato's famous attack on poetry, and Monday, in addition to the semester's customer satisfaction surveys, we're talking about Plato's funky reincarnation chapter. Both ought to be fun.
In other realms, I finished up Chesterton's Orthodoxy during my office hours today. I hate to alienate any readers who love the Inklings and their ilk, but I wasn't all that impressed. The book itself just did not live up to the glowing recommendations that came before. In one chapter, I found myself thinking, paragraph by paragraph, "Okay. He's a Humean empiricist. He's surprised every time the door opens to the same street outside, and he thinks it's foolish to assume that the same door will do the same thing tomorrow. He can get on to the next chapter." In another, I thought, "Okay, he's a moral relativist. He thinks that Enlightenment wars are awful but that Christian wars are great. Next chapter, please." None of the chapters left me speechless in the ways that Augustine or Dante or even Barth leaves me speechless; I just wanted to get past his logical-fallacy-for-this-chapter and finish. But I suppose now I can say that I've read Chesterton and found him wanting rather than admitting that I've never read Chesterton. That's a little bit better.
07 November 2006
Tyranny
We had some pretty good discussions yesterday in class. Plato finally got to the dictatorial personality and the dictatorial community. The contrast between the two is sharp: in a dictatorial society, the dictator is the most fearsome person Plato describes. In a dictatorial psyche, the picture is more like Beavis than like Stalin. The insight is wonderful: any community, in the Platonic imagination, exists sub specie aeternitatis. Thus the best sorts of communities exist knowing and submitting to the Good, while those that deny or defy the Good are the worst, the tyrannies.
I hope that my students take this section well in mind as they work on their papers; a philosophy of the good, be that philosophy theological (as it is when I do politics) or Marxist-historical or Nietzschean or consumeristically relativistic, is going to determine to some extent what freedom looks like. I'm curious to see what this round of papers will look like.
I hope that my students take this section well in mind as they work on their papers; a philosophy of the good, be that philosophy theological (as it is when I do politics) or Marxist-historical or Nietzschean or consumeristically relativistic, is going to determine to some extent what freedom looks like. I'm curious to see what this round of papers will look like.
04 November 2006
Freedom and choice
I've got my routine down for teaching academic writing, but teaching philosophy is still before me.
I tried to teach the philosophical distinctions between positive freedom/freedom-for and negative freedom/freedom-from yesterday, and I'm not sure I was clear at all. The context for the conversation was Plato's comparison between democracy on one hand and true aristocracy on the other--his contention seems to be that democracy offers more raw choices in any given moment and thus might seem freer but that, given the undisciplined soul's tendency to seek pleasure even in spite of goodness, such "freedom" actually enslaves the better parts of our communities and our souls to the worse parts. My students seemed to get Plato's logic, but I still had trouble breaking down the iron bond that connects freedom as abstraction with autonomous choice as action. My students still seemed to regard Plato's option as not-freedom rather than a different sort of freedom. That's not necessarily bad; perhaps my grasp on the English word "free" is too tenuous and lets in too many sorts of connotations. All the same, I'm still wondering whether I could have taught it better.
I've finished grading the class's research papers. Some really stepped up and articulated intelligent analyses and argued theoretical and ethical points. Others gave me catalogues of observations. I suppose I should expect that from a class of freshman writers; not everyone is going to get it now, and not everyone is going to get it when I'm teaching it. That some have encourages me.
Monday we finish up Plato's chapter on corrupt communities with his discussion of madman's rule. Waterfield, our translator, calls it dictatorship, but it reminds me more of Animal from the Muppets running the city--whatever whim strikes the madman, he chases after it. There's really neither past nor future for this leader; there's only his whims. Such is the embodiment of absolute immorality in Plato's imagination. And in the same imagination, such atemporality is just one step further down the road from democracy.
I tried to teach the philosophical distinctions between positive freedom/freedom-for and negative freedom/freedom-from yesterday, and I'm not sure I was clear at all. The context for the conversation was Plato's comparison between democracy on one hand and true aristocracy on the other--his contention seems to be that democracy offers more raw choices in any given moment and thus might seem freer but that, given the undisciplined soul's tendency to seek pleasure even in spite of goodness, such "freedom" actually enslaves the better parts of our communities and our souls to the worse parts. My students seemed to get Plato's logic, but I still had trouble breaking down the iron bond that connects freedom as abstraction with autonomous choice as action. My students still seemed to regard Plato's option as not-freedom rather than a different sort of freedom. That's not necessarily bad; perhaps my grasp on the English word "free" is too tenuous and lets in too many sorts of connotations. All the same, I'm still wondering whether I could have taught it better.
I've finished grading the class's research papers. Some really stepped up and articulated intelligent analyses and argued theoretical and ethical points. Others gave me catalogues of observations. I suppose I should expect that from a class of freshman writers; not everyone is going to get it now, and not everyone is going to get it when I'm teaching it. That some have encourages me.
Monday we finish up Plato's chapter on corrupt communities with his discussion of madman's rule. Waterfield, our translator, calls it dictatorship, but it reminds me more of Animal from the Muppets running the city--whatever whim strikes the madman, he chases after it. There's really neither past nor future for this leader; there's only his whims. Such is the embodiment of absolute immorality in Plato's imagination. And in the same imagination, such atemporality is just one step further down the road from democracy.
02 November 2006
My Anti-Democratic Rant
No, I've not become a Republican. At least not the kind that wears elephant pins.
Yesterday in class I made up for my lost Thoreau time and took on the role of Plato, arguing with some force that for the really important things in life, people didn't trust democracy. Nobody wants to admit and deny medical students based on a county-wide popular vote, and no college is going to let the students vote for the office of English teacher. I railed at the class, telling them that their insistence that the less able have an equal say in who governs indicates an apathy towards justice. Some were amused by my bad acting, but some got genuinely mad. I like that.
Of course, there are good and intelligible reasons to prefer popular elections for political officers. But I wasn't going to give them those reasons; part of the challenge of being an American college student ought to be the struggle to articulate the good, not just to jot down the teacher's definition of the good for the sake of reproducing it on the final exam.
Yesterday in class I made up for my lost Thoreau time and took on the role of Plato, arguing with some force that for the really important things in life, people didn't trust democracy. Nobody wants to admit and deny medical students based on a county-wide popular vote, and no college is going to let the students vote for the office of English teacher. I railed at the class, telling them that their insistence that the less able have an equal say in who governs indicates an apathy towards justice. Some were amused by my bad acting, but some got genuinely mad. I like that.
Of course, there are good and intelligible reasons to prefer popular elections for political officers. But I wasn't going to give them those reasons; part of the challenge of being an American college student ought to be the struggle to articulate the good, not just to jot down the teacher's definition of the good for the sake of reproducing it on the final exam.
31 October 2006
Library Thing
My lovely readers might have noticed yet another toy on the sidebar. I discovered LibraryThing.com on Julie Clawson's blog, and I've been fiddling with it intermittently since. Right now I've got the blog gizmo set to random because I don't particularly like the "most recently added" setting. Anyway, check out the site--it's easy to use and doesn't involve coughing up any personal information beyond the contents of one's bookshelves.
30 October 2006
Educating the Guardians
I love talking with freshmen about what the heck they're in college for. That was the subject today, and as usual, Plato provided us a clear, theory-heavy model against which students could push.
Without much effort at all I got both classes thinking about atoms and electrons and the fact that, even though none of us has actually seen an electron, we all believe in them and in fact live electricity-powered lives, secure within a theory no less theory-laden than Plato's theory of justice.
My hope is that we'll get some good freedom papers cooking. We finish up the education section Wednesday, then get into Plato's exploration of false justice/freedom/goodness.
Without much effort at all I got both classes thinking about atoms and electrons and the fact that, even though none of us has actually seen an electron, we all believe in them and in fact live electricity-powered lives, secure within a theory no less theory-laden than Plato's theory of justice.
My hope is that we'll get some good freedom papers cooking. We finish up the education section Wednesday, then get into Plato's exploration of false justice/freedom/goodness.
26 October 2006
Resistance to Civil Government
I stayed away from my standard manner of teaching Thoreau's anti-government essay, and my delivery suffered. In the past I've spent the whole period "playing Thoreau," taking what I take to be his position and answering students' questions in-character.
This semester, because we've spent so much time with Plato, I decided instead to focus the discussion on how Thoreau agrees with and departs from Plato. I think the intellectual content might have been better, but I fear that I took the sting out of Thoreau, and to take the sting out of Thoreau rather negates the primary benefit of reading it as a class.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to get all thirty-five remaining essays graded and marked. If I can manage four an hour, that's a work day. Then, in November, I can devote my time almost exclusively to finishing my own semester's projects. Here's hoping...
This semester, because we've spent so much time with Plato, I decided instead to focus the discussion on how Thoreau agrees with and departs from Plato. I think the intellectual content might have been better, but I fear that I took the sting out of Thoreau, and to take the sting out of Thoreau rather negates the primary benefit of reading it as a class.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to get all thirty-five remaining essays graded and marked. If I can manage four an hour, that's a work day. Then, in November, I can devote my time almost exclusively to finishing my own semester's projects. Here's hoping...
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