Thursday, April 23, 2009

Courses and more

Only a few posts ago, I listed my courses for next semester, fall 2008, which is now last semester. At this point, I’m almost through with the current semester, spring 2009. I suppose for the sake of continuity I’ll list the classes I have now:

MWF 10.00 ENG214 World Literature II

MWF 12.00 PHIL316 Logic and Critical Thinking

MWF 13.00 GRK322 Classical Greek II

MWF 14.00 ENG322 American Literature II

TR 09.30 PHIL310 Philosophy of Science

It’s been a good semester. In World Lit, I’ve written papers on Voltaire and Borges’ “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,” and the process of writing them was a great learning experience. In Logic and Critical Thinking, I’ve brushed up on my fallacies, and in about a week I’m going to debate the resolution “Christians should be involved in politics in order to change society.” My team is negative – and my personal position is the same. In Greek, we finished the book of abridged readings from Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and others, and now we’re reading from the JACT anthology, starting with unabridged (though bountifully glossed) Homer. It’s challenging but rewarding. American Lit has been a lot of fun – I’ve read some American authors who I didn’t know existed, and some who I knew existed but whom I had never read, and who wrote some really good stuff. Philosophy of Science has probably been my most challenging class, because of the sheer volume of material presented and its difficult nature. But it’s been an incredible class as well, even though it’s responsible for my present epistemological (and hermeneutical) crisis. More on that later, perhaps.

At any rate, next semester (fall 2009) I have the following:

MWF 10.00 ENG325 Advanced Prose

MWF 13.00 SPAN321 Latin American Culture and Civilization

MWF 14.00 PHIL313 History of Philosophy I

TR 12.00 BIB337 Christian Theology I

TR 15.00 ENG331 British Literature I

I’m taking some of the best classes that our best faculty members have to offer – needless to say, I’m excited. I’m also leading a small group of freshmen guys (which involves one hour of academic credit) and helping one of our English faculty with ENG420, which I took last semester. It should be a great semester.

And I should note too that the URL of this blog needs to change. I no longer consider myself a future medievalist. For several reasons, my interests have shifted from literature itself to pedagogy (in general and applied to languages), applied linguistics, and theory (rhet/comp theory, literary theory, writing center theory . . .). I’m looking at graduate programs in TESOL, rhet/comp studies, and applied linguistics. We’ll see what happens. I’ve got another three semesters at my current school, so I have time to figure things out.