It’s a little anticlimactic when the first class of the semester (Harlem Renaissance Literature) is cancelled because the professor didn’t make it to class. Oh well. I made the most of the unexpected free time and got some work done. There will be many, many more classes this semester, so I shouldn’t be too upset. Except, of course, I didn’t find out the class was cancelled until I actually went to class. Annoying.
I have two classes tomorrow, neither of which I anticipate being cancelled. It makes for a long day, having two classes back-to-back, but it should (hopefully) be interesting. We’re discussing Daisy Miller in American Lit, so I suppose I should finish it. This semester is not getting off to the best possible start. I need to work on my enthusiasm before the real work starts.
Oh, grad school. How I will miss you when you’re gone.
It’s 95 and sunny, but fall officially starts for me today as another semester begins. I’m taking two classes this semester: U.S. Pop Culture (an interdisciplinary Humanities/English class) and Teaching College Composition. I will thoroughly enjoy the first; the second scares the hell out of me . I know I can write, I’m just not sure if I can teach someone else to write. Time will tell. Or, rather, sixteen weeks will tell.
The reading list for both classes is more than manageable, especially after the eighteen books I had to read during the six week summer semester. I still can’t quite believe I did that to myself (meaning taking two literature classes concurrently during a summer semester), but I lived to tell the tale and-- I have to say-- if I can survive that, I can survive anything. Anything academic, anyway.
Let the semester begin…
Thinking about graduate school? Then you should know what you’re getting into: The work load will be intense, the reading will be heavy, your peers will be as smart if not smarter than you and your professors will be intimidating, demanding and, at times, awe-inspiring. However, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear a very respected, very intelligent, very reserved professor of American Literature utter the following sentence:
“What [Walt] Whitman was saying is ‘The world looks like my balls.’”
No kidding, he really said it.
I am about five-ish pages from finishing my paper on Lilith for my Humanities class. You may remember me mentioning Lilith way back when the semester started in January. Here I am, three months later, with the semester nearly over and Lilith books and Lilith articles and many copies of the rough draft of my Lilith paper piling up on the kitchen table. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have Lilith on the brain and I’m seeing her everywhere. In fact, she’s turned up in some of the sources for my research paper on Edgar Allen Poe and the femme fatale, which is convenient.
I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time at the Barnes and Noble Cafe lately, presumably writing my Lilith and Poe papers, as well as stories for all those other writing deadlines that I’ve been ignoring while doing research on Lilith and Poe. It’s not all work-- and don’t let me try to convince you otherwise-- I do a lot of coffee drinking and book browsing, too. It’s surprising how often Lilith turns up in a wide range of books. She is referenced 24 times in a book I picked up last week, The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power of Red Hair. I wasn’t even looking for Lilith, but there she was.
Of course, I was starting to think my preoccupation with Lilith was getting out of hand when I decided the woman on the Starbucks logo looks like Lilith. Curious (and a little afraid I was going a little crazy with my Lilith obsession), I did a Google search and found this interesting article about the Starbucks logo. It turns out the Starbucks woman is actually a siren and the original logo was most likely copied from a 15th century engraving. Sirens have two forms: half-bird/half-woman or half-fish/half-woman. In the case of the Starbucks logo, she is a half-fish/half-woman creature known as a melusine, which differs from a mermaid in that she has two tails. So, she’s not Lilith. But guess what? Lilith was often portrayed as having the wings and claws of a bird, which would make her and the Starbucks melusine siren-sisters.
Think I’m crazy? Take a look at these two pictures:
The image on the left is a Sumerian terra-cotta relief of Lilith, circa 2000 BCE. The image on the right is the familiar Starbucks logo, circa 2006. Four thousand years separate these two pictures, but the family resemblance is unmistakable, isn’t it?
Life. Love. Writing. Friendship.
Sex. Books. Movies. Travel. Politics. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Rants. Raves. Chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Some names have been changed, some stories have been embellished. Thanks for stopping by and beware of the dog. Read more...
