Monthly Archives: March 2009

Greek Tragedy Meets Boethian Providence

Posted on 2009/03/31 by ngilmour

I gave my students a big old Middle English assignment over the weekend, all 2200 lines or so of Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale.”? I was surprised, frankly, at how little objection I got when I came to class this morning.? Some … Continue reading →

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The Best Holocaust Book I’ve Read

Posted on 2009/03/30 by ngilmour

I have a feeling that at least one or two of my readers will take this occasion to shoot me a bit of mockery for writing about a comic book.? (I don’t figure all three of you will do so.)? … Continue reading →

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The Good Kind of Elitism

Posted on 2009/03/28 by ngilmour

I read about T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers over on Jared Nelson’s blog a couple weeks ago, and the book sounded interesting enough that I laid down a few bucks and got … Continue reading →

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Introducing Utilitarianism

Posted on 2009/03/27 by ngilmour

It’s fun sometimes to introduce students to ideas that they’d already held but didn’t have names for, and the lights were going on as we took on Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of mischief-analysis as it pertains to legal questions yesterday.? Bentham … Continue reading →

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Guinevere, Get Thee to a Nunnery!

Posted on 2009/03/26 by ngilmour

Once again, I don’t feel like I taught an extraordinary lesson today, partially because of my selection of texts.? Malory’s Morte d’Arthur is a fun text, heavy on the storytelling and light on the allegory.? Although the moral philosophy is … Continue reading →

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Educating Children, Exploiting Children

Posted on 2009/03/25 by ngilmour

I taught what I think must have been my best philosophy lesson this semester yesterday. I’ve done better teaching writing, but the character of my comp classes is that I can stink one up while doing quite well on the … Continue reading →

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In the Den of Errour

Posted on 2009/03/24 by ngilmour

I didn’t teach a great lesson today over Spenser’s Faerie Queene, but it was competent.? I suppose I should have expected to hit a rough patch after going straight from Anglo-Saxon poetry into Milton and then hitting the first text … Continue reading →

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I realized something in Sunday school yesterday…

Posted on 2009/03/23 by ngilmour

Ruth is about three-quarters barking mad. Let me back up. ?Ruth, the eighth book of the Old Testament, is our text for the next several weeks of Sunday school. ?I’ve taught Ruth in churches and at UGA, and one of … Continue reading →

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On Dictionaries

Posted on 2009/03/22 by ngilmour

“English dictionaries are?collections of precedents, rather than official codebooks of meaning.” –Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Reader Over your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

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All-Stars and Saints

Posted on 2009/03/21 by ngilmour

The Roar of the Crowd – ChronicleReview.com. I would normally start out a reflection on an article like this with an admission that I’m just as avid a sports fan as the next guy, but then I have to remember … Continue reading →

Posted in Read it on ALDaily, Sports | 1 Comment

Must Perfect Be the Enemy of Good?

Posted on 2009/03/20 by ngilmour

I asked myself the same after I finished my lesson in our Enlightenment class yesterday. The paper my students are writing this time around, as I mentioned a couple days ago, has my students attempting some Enlightenment-era questions in whatever … Continue reading →

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Lending a Hand in Milton

Posted on 2009/03/19 by ngilmour

I finished a week of Paradise Lost today that went entirely too quickly. ?I know that some of the folks on the Milton-L listserv look with disdain on those Philistines who would teach excerpts from the poem without taking it … Continue reading →

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What Story Do we Tell?

Posted on 2009/03/18 by ngilmour

I’ll admit that I was preoccupied with other things when I taught comp yesterday, and I perhaps lost my patience.? But I do fear that my students’ failure (in most cases, I surmise) to read Postman yesterday might hinder them … Continue reading →

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MILTON!! I’m teaching MILTON!!

Posted on 2009/03/17 by ngilmour

I know this shouldn’t be this big an event (or perhaps it should!), but I taught my first lesson on Paradise Lost today.? It’s rather goofy, I admit, that someone who’s writing a dissertation heavily focused on Milton has taught … Continue reading →

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After twelve years in the minors, I don’t try out.

Posted on 2009/03/16 by ngilmour

Okay, I just did. I saw Internet Monk’s post this morning about his “Evangelical Untouchables” project, and it just seemed too interesting.? I sent off a couple paragraphs this morning, and I suppose now I’m waiting for the results of … Continue reading →

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Neoliberalism–How Does Stan Fish get Wrong what ISI Gets Right?

Posted on 2009/03/15 by ngilmour

Neoliberalism and Higher Education – Stanley Fish Blog – NYTimes.com. As I noted a few posts ago, I recently discovered the audio archive at Intercollegiate Studies Institute and have been listening to some of the lectures there.? I have a … Continue reading →

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Where Did Spring Break Go?

Posted on 2009/03/14 by ngilmour

I know full well, of course.? Adulthood swallowed half of it, and teaching ate the other half.? The first day of spring break I spent working my second job and driving Mary and Micah around (since we were down to … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 5: Why Not Heidegger?

Posted on 2009/03/13 by ngilmour

So here I’m going to end my little series on division one of Being and Time.? If you’ve not had a chance to read them yet, here are the first four posts: Why Heidegger? There’s the World, and then There’s … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 4: Truth

Posted on 2009/03/12 by ngilmour

I first read Norman Geisler in 1995 and heard well the trumpets’ call for Christians to rally behind “absolute truth.”? I hadn’t thought enough, back then, about the connections between scientific and philosophical language to ask what solvent might dissolve … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 3: Formal Morality

Posted on 2009/03/11 by ngilmour

Heidegger is at his most amusing, I think, when he denies what he’s patently doing. ?In Being and Time, influenced (if Hubert Dreyfus and Michial Farmer don’t lead me astray) by Kierkegaard and Buber, Heidegger does spend a fair bit … Continue reading →

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