Days of Denim...

Some days are just jeans days. I am always thankful to work in an environment where I have the personal freedom to be who I am in the process of doing my job. I try not to overdo it, but I’m happy that my ink is not something that to be covered, I can wear 9 earrings, and (on days like today) I can wear jeans. It’s refreshing to work in surroundings where the powers that be realize that my outward accoutrements do not impact my ability to do my job and, in some ways, may actually enhance it. I have never felt judged or restricted because I’ve chosen these augmentations, nor did I back when I used to change my hair color every few months just for fun. There is an incident that comes to mind that speaks to this even more acutely. The President of the college was sitting with me at a conference table in the Academic Support Center of one of our campus centers and she tilted her head at me for a moment and said something to the effect that it was pleasant to sit and have an intellectual conversation with me to remind her that tattoos have nothing to do with our mental capacities or our abilities in any way. This was early in her career here, and I’ve always remembered that – not because I felt like she was judgmental or troubled by my ink, but just that she is human and she is not all that different from me in terms of our goals and our desires for this place and the students here. As a society, we are psychologically trained – especially dependent on our age – to look at tattoos through a particular lens. That is changing, and to have her say that felt like an affirmation of what I’ve known all along. For me, my ink is just the creative expression of a creative mind. I’ve designed my tattoos and each one means something to me. They are not indicators of rebellion or counterculture to me and it’s consistently invigorating to be able to just be me whether I’m at home or at work. I don’t have to hide. And more and more, my presence is perhaps a gentle reminder to people that they need to constantly question the lenses through which they view the world.

In counterpoint, there’s the situation of a friend of mine. He has more ink than I do and while I understand the reasoning at some level, it sometimes irks me that he must wear long sleeves every day, even on those rare days when Upstate New York is blessed or cursed with hazy, hot, and humid days. He is in security, so it kind of makes sense that he would need to present himself in a particular way. There are numerous arguments we can make from the fields of psychology and sociology, but suffice it to say that I get it at some level. The Bohemian in me, however, rails on his behalf because I know that he is the same security guard whether his arms are colored in or not. But, I digress.

Education, if occurring in the right place, is the passionate conveyance and exchange of knowledge and ideas. I am forever thankful that I work in a place where I’m allowed to foster that passion and share what I know and love with the students around me. I’m teaching a class in The Lord of the Rings this semester and, together, the students and I are playing a massively multiplayer game online. I’m contemplating teaching a Harry Potter course next spring, and I’ve had a course proposal accepted to co-teach a class in mythological, literary, and real women who feel that murder is their only option. At a community college. I’m not really sure where I am going with this – other than to be thankful to be supported and encouraged to be myself, to explore and share my interests, and to express who I am. I am allowed – even expected – to find that joyous nexus where my intellect, my passion, my creativity, and my individuality come together to augment, enhance, and celebrate my role as an educator.

And, on days like today, I can wear jeans.

Course Catalog I...

It's time for me to post something a little less heavy, and since it's going-back-to-school time, I thought it might be fun to share some teacher things.  Don't worry, if you're not a teacher or a student, or are one of those and don't want to be, this isn't heavy-handed with the pedagogy.  I love that word, though it gets used far too often throughout the course of my work...

Without further ado, I present to you a catalog of courses I would someday love to teach...

Gender Roles and MMOs - Some of you know me wholly through online games, and have often heard me talk about the fascinating experiences I've had as a 'bio girl'.  It seems that once someone figures out that I'm really a girl, I become their confidante, learning more than I ever really wanted to know about their relationships, their goals, and their failures.  Or I become instantly incapable of playing the very game in which I've out-leveled them on every character I've played.  Or I become a target for wooing.  Either way, I'm often over-protected, laden with gifts, and something of a curiosity.  Usually.  The strata of 'gamer chicks' is an interesting one and I would love to study, with a group of like-minded students, just who these 'girls' are and what their experiences have been.  I would also love to explore the psychology of gamers and gender.  What makes a male pay a female?  What draws that same male to see the revelation of his 'true' gender to be something akin to a confessional?  What is it about gender that is so (for lack of a better word) heavy in games that are, at some level, about role-playing?  What does this say about gender in society as a whole?

'Blasphemers: Depictions of Religion in Popular Culture' - This one is developed enough to have a name -- though I also like the colon-phrase of 'Irreverent Believers'.  There are a number of popular texts out there that offer a stolid belief in the core of religion but do so with such a fundamental shift in some important aspect of that religion so as to become the target of picketers and angry believers.  These are some of the texts I would consider including in such a course.

• Dogma directed by Kevin Smith - "He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the s**t that gets carried out in His name - wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it."
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - "Nothing in Christianity is original"
  
• Eddie Izzard - "“I think on the seventh day, God was running around, going, 'Oh, my God! What haven’t I…? Rwanda! I better create Rwanda!'
• Lamb:  The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore - ""It's very difficult to stay angry when a room full of bald guys in orange robes start giggling. Buddhism."
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman - "Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers and triumphs overall opposition."
• Monty Python's Life of Brian - "I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! 'You're cured, mate.' Bloody do-gooder."
• Monty Python and The Holy Grail - Where god himself says "Every time I try to talk to someone it's 'sorry this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'..."
• "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" - Published in The Onion right after 9/11- "'To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?' God said. 'So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad.'"
• South Park and the Muhammad debacle

Can you imagine the conversation in such a course?  Tricksters alive and well -- dancing in the realm of fiction but still causing waves.

The Medicine of Laughter:  Humor as a Tool of Healing -- This would be an honors course that explored the power of humor as a tool for coping and healing.  The role of the Trickster as a tension-breaker who gets us to laugh and think at the same time, who makes darkness more palatable, and gives us the momentum to move on in the face of tragedy.  It's also used as a coping mechanism by those faced with tragedy, addiction, and darkness all time - gallows humor, dark humor, morgue humor.  The horrible things said that aren't meant that just help us get through the everyday trials and tribulations of a difficult life.  I've talked about this with my friend Mary -- a co-taught course.  Humanities/English/Mythology and Chemical Dependency Counseling.  I love it.

Zombie Lit - Oh, wait...

"A Horrible End":  The Search for Meaning in the 21st Century - There has been, lately, a rash of long running (or sometimes not) television shows with endings that have frustrated many the viewers of said shows (though not all, of course). Shows like The Sopranos, Seinfeld, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Lost have ended in ways that have raised questions, ire, and dissatisfaction for many.  Others have simply not even tried to end -- such as Millennium and Brimstone.  I haven't gone far with this one, but I've had a number of conversations with friends where I posited the idea that these shows were trying (consciously or not) to give us a unifying mythology and, as such, they could not easily be neatly ended to the satisfaction of the wide range of people who faithfully followed them.  We live in a time when many are seeking meaning -- a time when some of the old systems aren't working anymore.  Joseph Campbell summed up what I think these shows are trying to do.  Or what I think their followers wanted them to do:  "And what [the new myth] will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with - the maturation of the individual, from dependency through adulthood, through maturity, and then to the exit; and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos. That's what the myths have all talked about, and what this one's got to talk about. But the society that it's got to talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don't have anything."  And so, the stories keep trying and the followers keep waiting...


Women Who Kill - Murder and the Role of Women - This one has just popped into my head.  It would be an exploration of the history of women who kill and how society placed them in a predicament wherein they felt there was no other option.  Infanticide, patricide, mariticide.  We would look at famous cases and not so famous, and look at some fiction as well like the play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner.  I'd also use the book Women Who Kill:  A Vivid History of America's female murderers from Colonial Times to the Present" and explore the archetypal figure of the Mother and her negative image.  We would talk about Kali, Demeter, Medea, and others.

Courses change often and registration starts early, so please contact your adviser soon...

-T