RE 140: Islam taught by Professor Peter Wright began the way most 100 level religion courses do, full. The 100 level courses in the department are mostly introductory courses in the major traditions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Indigenous Religious Traditions, and Islam. They seem to be increasingly popular these days as all of them that …
Half Blockin’
Off the cuff: Winter break was good. Really good. I needed that. I did a lot of...sitting. Yes, yes, quite a bit of sitting. But lest the sedentary lifestyle infect me for good, I jetted back to Colorado where the people are active and the air is thin. And now, I suppose, I am a …
Life of Colin
There was one day in class when someone mentioned an episode of the TV show Portlandia (a parody of Portland, Oregon) where a couple in a restaurant is so concerned about where the chicken on the menu came from that they drive to a farm 30 miles south of the city to see exactly where the chicken, …
Ignorance, Knowledge, Dejection, Power, and Contextualization of Self in Outer Space. A Cycle.
We've just come to the end of third week, which means that we are approaching the dreaded FOURTH WEEK. This is when students survive on pizza, candy, and coffee. Lots of coffee. The end for my class in particular involves a systematic organizing of the concepts we've learned. Part of this is asking questions: Have …
Hellenistic Poetry and Philosophy
Last week we moved on from Herodotus and began to read selections of poetry from the Hellenistic period in Greece from around the fall of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. up until the eventual conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 B.C. The selections included Appollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, Theocritus' Idylls, and the Epigrams …
DATA
I sometimes find quantitative, number- and statistic-based data to be like porcupines: prickly, pointed, and good to look at but not so good to touch. But for the past week, our class has been using a lot of data, and I like it. In groups of two or three we were assigned a city where …
Ancient Multicultures Week 1
This picture has been haunting me for the past week or so. Ancient Multicultures is the first class for which I have had to read substantial amounts of text or write a paper since seventh block of the last academic year. Coincidentally, that class was also with legendary Professor Owen Cramer. Interestingly enough the …
Just Because You Drive a Prius Doesn’t Mean You Can Stop Worrying About the Environment (and other musings from week one of Environmental Sociology)
What are you doing right now? Are you eating food? Drinking coffee? Wearing clothes? What about shoes? Are you in a house? Is there a car outside? Whatever specific things may be happening, you can be sure that your arrival at the current situation has taken some sort of generalized toll on the environment. No …
Strange Beauty and the End(?) of a Block
During fourth week, we finished writing our catalogue essays for the Strange Beauty exhibition—a project that we were working on for essentially the full block. Writing the catalogue essay was a kind of cathartic exercise for me, the chance to articulate all the ideas, insights, and research of the last few weeks into a final …
Luncheons, Exhibitions, and Reflections
As third week began, we turned our attention from the Baroque objects we’ve been getting to know intimately over the last couple weeks to the contemporary pieces featured in the Strange Beauty exhibition. Researching current artists is surprisingly more difficult than those of the 17th century, as there is simply not the same vast quantity …
