Well, it’s apropos that my cultural studies class is ending this evening, two weeks from Christmas, and that I started out the course discussing the Santa Pug as a cultural artifact. I’ve been getting more discontent with holidays, but most particularly Christmas. While the actual holiday itself began as a way of celebrating the birth [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Faculty Musings'
All I want for Christmas
December 13th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Tags: Culture · Faculty Musings
Cyborg Advertising
November 2nd, 2007 · No Comments
I’ve been very interested lately in what seems to be a fairly recent proliferation of cyborg advertising for things that have nothing to do with the internet, cyberspace, and/or advanced technology.
I ran across two such ads within a few blocks of the Columbia College Chicago campus recently. One was an ad by Svedka [...]
Tags: Culture · Faculty Musings
Cultural Artifacts
September 7th, 2007 · No Comments
The first week of classes went very well. I’ve got a great bunch of students in all three classes. In my Reviewing the Arts class, many students have already posted their responses to a reading by Plato on the class blog (I don’t typically have students posting so early in the week). And many of [...]
Tags: Culture · Faculty Musings
Nearly Fall . . .
August 27th, 2007 · No Comments
For me, fall begins with the start of classes in September. It’s a time I have always looked forward to, whether as a student myself or teaching. I’m particularly excited about my course schedule this fall, though I’m scrambling to get my syllabi completed. I ended up writing six out of ten chapters for that [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings
June 27th
June 27th, 2007 · No Comments
Sorry for the absence, but edublogs has been updating its site and getting on has proven nearly impossible for the last several weeks. While I understand why they might do this during the summer, it’s proven very frustrating . . . I have a class that I’m teaching this summer that utilizes the blog twice [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings
Post . . .
May 31st, 2007 · No Comments
In my Reviewing the Arts class, I asked that the students read Holland Cotter’s “Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?” The article focuses primarily on “multiculturalism” - a concept that Cotter cleverly describes as “more than an attitude but less than a theory.” Cotter’s examination of the history and significance of multiculturalism and its relationship to art is necessarily brief, but effectively explored.
I [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings
May 21st . . .
May 21st, 2007 · No Comments
So I’ve had a full week off now from teaching; summer classes begin today. I’m teaching Reviewing the Arts again, a class that I’ve really come to enjoy teaching. In the last section of the course, I’ve been having the students consider the burgeoning art in virtual worlds, specifically in Second Life. But having them [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings · Second Life
End of the semester . . .
May 11th, 2007 · No Comments
Ok, I know, I’ve been horrible at keeping up this blog the last month or so. What can I say? To teachers, all I have to say is: “the end of the semester,” and I get sympathy, knowing nods, responses like “enough said.” But the end of one semester leads very quickly into another. I’ll [...]
Tags: 1st Life · Faculty Musings · Second Life
Mean what you say — damn it!
April 17th, 2007 · No Comments
Well, last week was one hell of a week . . . one of those weeks that you wish you could just erase from the databases of memory, to be honest. Despite being in my 40s, I still obviously retain a certain naïveté that isn’t serving me well. No, people don’t often mean what they [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings
Virtual Reality Art
April 9th, 2007 · No Comments
Last Thursday evening, I brought my Reviewing the Arts class over to the Interactive Arts and Media department for a Visiting Artists lecture series presentation. Educator and artist, John Craig Freeman (a.k.a. JC Fremont in Second Life), flew in from Emerson College in Boston to talk about his current project “Imaging Place,” a “place-based, virtual [...]
Tags: Faculty Musings · Second Life