Top o' the evening... um...

I keep meaning to post, and then forgetting. I meant to write this hours ago. Ah well, such is life.

At the busy end of a summer that has been full of work, I find myself returning to old vacation pictures. I have selected one of the dorkiest in my collection. I took this picture while on a solo whirlwind tour of England and Wales, visiting places that crop up in Arthurian literature. Here, I am leaning over the edge of a short cliff so that I can take my own picture with that rock you see next to my head. The rock happens to be next to the Camel river in Cornwall, and to get to it, I had to take several buses from the nearest train station to get to a small Cornish village, whence I hiked a few miles to a little Arthurian tourist stop on the side of the road, and then hiked the little trail they had marked out, all for this rock.

Why? Well, it's speculated to be (maybe, kinda, sorta) the burial place of the historical Arthur and Mordred. There's some very-difficult-to-make-out writing carved into the stone that looks like maybe it could be Arthur and Mordred. Maybe. I first learned of it from a footnote in the Penguin edition of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, (the editor also found his way there, and also thought it was really cool). This was the single spot in all of Great Britain that I most wanted to see (close runners-up being where Thomas More was beheaded, Alfred's capitol at Winchester, and Tintagel--where Arthur is most commonly said to have been born).

And as if all that didn't make me enough of a dork, I'm also wearing a flannel shirt. Flannel is my great weakness. It feels so right-- how could it be wrong?

Anyway, for my course theme, I'm planning on covering World Religion in Secular Media. I'm pretty stoked for it.

An introduction

My name is Meg and I thought I would follow everyone’s lead and try out this thing called blogging while also introducing myself to those I have not already met.

I am a first year PhD student with interests in cultural studies and feminist theory and well… any text ripe for exploring those frameworks. I do have a preference for material that tends to make people squeamish or, as I like to think, bring us into liminal spaces. Please e-mail me at lemay.15@osu.edu if you have seen the documentary Zoo! I also am a new vegan and am increasingly drawn to the field of Animal Studies which I hope to tie in somehow to the interests listed above. My course theme is the rhetoric of gender in pop science.

What else? I hail from Boston, but I grew up in the lakes region of Maine in a wee little town called South China. South China is not even equipped with a stoplight! Shown is a photograph of an early morning on China Lake where I spent my formative summers (and icy winters) being a playful kid.


Currently, I am living in the German Village just south of Schiller Park. I recommend seeing Shakespeare in the Park before it ends this weekend! I brought with me my partner and our puppy, Prudence, who is also a partner to both of us in many ways. Exceptionally happy with her new surroundings (Schiller is her boundless playground), she is making the adjustment easier on us. And so is the workshop! After two weeks of living here with nothing to do I am thrilled to be socially interacting with all of you!

Intro to me...and the end of the world

Hello all, I'm Alex and I'm a first year fiction writer. I'm going to try to be fancy here by adding a picture or two (videos are beyond my, and my computer's, technical capabilities). Figuring out how to put the pictures where I wanted took way too long. I came to Columbus from Columbia, Missouri and I am originally from St. Louis. Until now, and aside from a brief stint in Italy, I've lived my entire life in Missouri. I have a dog and she moved here with me. She's a puppy and she rocks.



That's my dog, Tarkio, sleeping in one of my guitar cases. I play guitar and I sing and I'm trying to learn how to play the accordion. I listen to a lot of folk music and some rock and some jazz...all sorts of stuff, really. I'm a bit of a nerd about beer and I've recently started brewing my own beer.

My theme is the rhetoric of apocalypse/end of the world...kind of. It's an evolving thing. Zombies may play a part in the course.

Heroes in Popular American Media

I thought I'd share some of my course materials with you in the hopes that you would have suggestions about how I could supplement them.

As part of my course, I'd like to show them how the image of American superhero evolved over the years. My hope is to get them to make a connection between the characters and the societies in which they were produced. I'd like them to be able to articulate how they connected with contemporary society's values, its desires and fears. I'd also like them to be able to critique those representations of the heroic, to determine whether or not they were effective, productive, positive.

I was thinking I would start with some basic 1940s war-time cartoons, such as Superman vs the Japanese Threat .

There are even more egregiously racist comic covers and panels from that period.

I know that none of those artifacts are exactly timely, but in the past I've found it helpful to introduce students to new processes via material to which they aren't particularly close, from which they can have some analytical distance. I guess I could bring it around by discussing their new rhetorical context, why they are still out there on the internet, why they're now presented as humorous when once they were deadly serious.

I was also toying with the idea of showing them the (amazing) opening credits from Watchmen, which are set a song that might be slightly familiar to some of you after today. My one concern is that it covers a lot of history in a very oblique way, so I might have to spend too much time teaching Vietnam, the Cold War, etc. So, I probably won't do that in the end.

I'm almost obliged to include the trailer for the Dark Knight, right? I think it's very interesting in that it's 80% Joker, which may suggest that villains are the new heroes.

From that, I was thinking of transitioning into sporting heroes. I was planning to segue by showing them adverts where the athletes seem larger than life or superhuman in some way:

- Nike "Fate" Advert
- Patrick "Chewing" Advert
- Nike "Good vs Evil" Advert

Anyway, these are just initial thoughts. I may change things a lot before the end.

Anxiety...

Am I the only one nervous about clicking on all these anonymous youtube links for fear of being rickrolled?

Hwæt!

I'm Karen Bruce, I'm originally from South Africa, and I'm a second year MA student in the department. I'm a medievalist, and I work on both the Anglo-Saxon period and the High Middle Ages. My recent research has been on constructions of disability in Alfredian England.

When I'm not busy being a grad student, I'm your standard issue girl geek. I enjoy comic books, science fiction and fantasy, and am currently dividing my "fun" reading time between Bill Willingham's brilliant Fables and Neal Stephenson's equally brilliant Anathem. I am also a gamer, who is currently obsessed with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

I also am secretly a crazy cat lady, whose kitten Hobbes really thinks that she is a tiger and stalks her around the apartment.

Fortunately, my fiance Phil thinks all of that is cute.

I've been having far too much fun setting up my blog, and playing with templates and widgets. Originally, I was going to become a programmer, and I still have moments when I miss coding. So, if you have any technical questions about the blogs, I'd be more than happy to help.

Blog Virgin.

Hi everyone. I'm Allison Davis, poetry MFA, Ohio born and raised. I've never written on a blog before, but it's not as painful as I thought it'd be. Outside of writing I do a lot of listening to records, vegan cooking, and Middle East peace activism. My theme is the rhetoric of American protest songs, so today's class was helpful. I'd love song recommendations if anyone has any, and thanks to those who have already shared their insights. Have a good day!