Things are a little hectic here in the windy city. Grr.
The temp has dropped from “cold” to “damn.” It’s our hope that it won’t go down to “fuck.” Needless to say, I’ve gotten soft. You would think after years of doing the quarter mile at RIT I’d be ready for the walk to campus. No such luck. However, word is that Rochester is getting buried with snow as I type this… so I will complain no further.
Classes are good. Here’s the official breakdown of my winter quarter:
Monday & Fridays – Reading and Thesis Work
Tuesdays & Thursdays:
Social Psychology
9.00am – 10.20am
This course examines social psychological theory and research based on both classic and contemporary contributions. Among the major topics examined are conformity and deviance, the attitude-change process, social role and personality, social cognition, and political psychology. J. Cacioppo, Winter.
Language in Culture II
11.30am – 1.20pm
This two-quarter course presents the major issues in linguistics of anthropological interest. Among topics discussed in the first half of the sequence are the formal structure of semiotic systems, the ethnographically crucial incorporation of linguistic forms into cultural systems, and the methods for empirical investigation of “functional” semiotic structure and history. The second half of the sequence takes up basic concepts in sociolinguistics and their critique, linguistic analysis of publics, performance and ritual, and language ideologies, among other topics. M. Silverstein, Autumn; S. Gal, Winter.
Rewriting the Past: Narrative, Ritual, and Monument.
1.30pm – 3.00pm
This course focuses on the manner in which we make use of the past, the personal past, and the collective past, as well as the place of social and historical change in retelling and rewriting life-history and history. We begin with a discussion of memory, conceptions of the personal and historic past, and such related issues as nostalgia, mourning, and the significance of commemoration in monument and ritual. We explore these issues in topics that include twentieth-century war memorials, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, high school and college reunions, the Holocaust’s representation in contemporary European society, the construction of the Israeli national tradition, and the construction of Abraham Lincoln as an American story of loss and renewal. B. Cohler, P. Homans. Winter, 2005. (B)
The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing).
3.00pm – 5.00pm Thursdays
This course teaches the skills needed to write clear and coherent expository prose and to edit the writing of others. The course consists of weekly lectures on Thursdays, immediately followed by tutorials addressing the issues in the lecture. On Tuesdays, students discuss short weekly papers in two-hour tutorials consisting of seven students and a tutor. Students may replace the last three papers with a longer paper and, with the consent of relevant faculty, write it in conjunction with another class or as part of the senior project. Materials fee $20. L. McEnerney, K. Cochran, T. Weiner. Winter, Spring.
Wednesdays:
Crowds and Publics
9.30am – 12.30pm
There isn’t currently a write up for this…
So thats about it for the moment. I’ll have more stuff tomorrow.
In the five years I was involved with kodak.com’s