1. When a person's income has been slashed and she can no longer afford her fabulous tattooed hairstylist the question remains: much shorter or much longer? I'm leaning, of course, toward shorter.
2. How much Coke can a grad student choke if a grad student would choke Coke?
3. Appeals to place. This rhetorical theorist talks about how place and time are intertwined--he cites Leslie Marmon Silko talking about storytelling, telling stories about the places where people still live and the things they still see and how place, then, becomes layered--the place we are, the place it was then, or then--and time twines through those layers instead of marching on linearly. I was thinking about how this applies (or not) in the Judeo-Christian tradition: how Judaism was always on the move, and how does that change ideas of progress or time (both). And how Mormons place the Garden of Eden in the Midwest. How Jackson County is Zion. What happens when traditions revolve around actual instead of mythical place? Why have Mormons adopted such a progressive worldview when our beginning and end points are already mapped?
4. Thesis topic candidates--Civil Discourse and New Media: something pithy about humans and computers. Beginning, Middle, End: Narrative, Rhetoric, and Meaning-making. American Lit: Poetry? Feminism? something.
5. Dan Muhlestein. I never took him as an undergrad, avoided him on the basis that his followers (disciples they were, adulating) were dismissive and cynical. Now that I'm dismissive and cynical I love the guy. Love this theory class because it's introductory so is theory when is just sort of nosing toward problematic. But is not actually problematic. (Or maybe I just love it because it's theory.)
6. The fall! Rainstorms and leaves changing and I'm always overwarm because I'm wearing my sweaters already. Love it love it love it.
etc.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
What I'm thinking about
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 2:57 PM
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5 comments:
I promise that Matt Wickman disciples are cynical and dismissive too. It's a pitfall of theory. And I hate it. It fast becomes not worth it.
That said, 452 was one of the best classes of my undergrad experience. The only two that rival it in any way are the course I took on postmodern lit from Dr. Cronin, and Phil's Cormac McCarthy seminar. :)
As for the beginning and the end of Mormonism... maybe it's just that we (Mormons, the world in general, whatever) messed up so much and strayed so far from the beginning that the end is merely a return to a beginning. A regeneration of sorts. The Savior describes Himself as the beginning and the end anyway, Elder Maxwell says God lives in an "eternal now." Maybe we think we're being all progressive when really we're just trying to be Godlike (not that that isn't progressive, but more that our purpose in progress is a bit different from other groups of people).
I don't know if any of that made any sense at all.
Re #3: add Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso to your reading list. :)
I am pretty sure that the general rule about hair is that the shorter the more often you need to get it cut. Therefore, longer would seem more economical. Just a thought, although I do love your short dos!
Dan Muhlestein saved my life.
I've always wanted to say that.
Keep us posted on how you decide knowing where Eden is/was/will be affects us a Church. It's an intriguing idea.
It made me wonder how that might influence "our" search for the BOM's vague "narrow neck of land?" (See, e.g FARMS). Does knowing one erstwhile mythical location make us less likely to accept other vague geographic descriptions?
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