Things are starting up

Sorry I haven't posted much in the past few days; my academic season is starting to take shape and it's going to take up a significant chunk of my time. Today was the first meeting of my Shimer core course, Humanities 3 (The Philosophy of Theology, to the uninitiated). Stuart, the itinerant Shimer professor in Oxford with us this year,, is facilitating the course and he decided to meet in the Red Lion, a pub near central Oxford, so it was cider and Socratic dialogs for me this afternoon. Nice.

I'm also doing quite a bit of preparatory reading work for one of my Oxford tutorials on Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory. My tutor is at Balliol College and I think he and I should be getting together at the start of next month, which is the beginning of Oxford's academic year. Starting a class in October feels crazy, but unlike American universities, Oxford uses a rather archaic academic calender. The year is divided into three eight week terms-- Michaelmas Term, Hillary Term, and Trinity Term--with 'vacations' in between. And as relaxing as the vacations may sound, one is expected to do all the preparation and reading for the next term over them.

Stuart and I are still working to find a tutor for my other "Archaeology of Vision" tutorial. The don we had lined up ended up getting a post at another University just before I came over. He (Stuart) and I spent some time today getting to know the folks at Oxford's Visual Studies Department and seeing whose research interests meshed well with my own. I met a couple of professors there who are doing some really exciting work and who seemed genuinely interested in working with me.

As far as my French tutorial is going, I'm translating my way through Georges Bataille's "Histoire de l'oeil." It's turning out to be really ridiculously smutty. Those French.

Anyway, I know I've been posting pictures of what I've been doing, so not to disappoint...
Ok, it's still disappointing.