I’m Caught Up!!!

I’m sipping wine and watching Bionic Woman. 

Due to my having worked all the way through my fall break I am, for the first time this semester, caught up with all of my grading.  I have never had a semester like this.

Tomorrow the schedule includes the first instance of what we hope will be a series of public academic conversations.  My friend and colleague Steve over at Semeiotikos came up with this awhile ago.  We are hoping to model, as another colleague called this, “how cool it is when smart people talk about interesting things.”  We hope that maybe this might turn on a few students to academia.  At the least we hope it will model a type of public discourse other than the competitive shouting or constant sermonizing they are used to.

Of course, another colleague has referred to this as a “nerd-off”.

The plan is that Steve, our Associate Dean Mark, and I are going to attend tomorrows regular Thursday Coffee Hour in the Library and hold a public conversation.  There will be a sign so that people know what is going on and that we really want them to listen in or, even better, to participate.  Our first topic – my idea – is “Postmodernism is dead and I don’t feel so good myself.”

In the afternoon I’m helping Steve cover our colleague Dana’s film class where we are going to have a presentation and discussion of the film “Little Big Man.”  I want to talk about whether subverting one set of myths creates truth, or if it just creates another set of myths.  We are also hoping to get the students to talk about how this otherwise unconventional western has very conventional Hollywood depictions of gender.

This could be the most fun day this semester.