DTB starts classes---as if there's anything I have to learn!

As I anticiapte the first line of a new chapter of my life--a chapter which will no doubt include many ups and downs, lessons learned and assumptions abandoned, and which will change who I am and shape who I will be--I suppose everyone is wondering, "How does he feel?" Well, after an exhausting self-examination, I've managed to put my state of mind into words: I feel okay (BRB might have seen that one coming).

For anyone who's curious, I've posted my classes (with descriptions) below. Very interesting reading, I'm sure.

BIOS 10110. Biological Issues and Paradigms. 12:30-2:20, MWF Students must
confirm their registration with their instructors by the
second class meeting or their registration may be canceled.
This course addresses the question "what is life?" with a
discussion of topics that range from the essential properties
characteristic of all life to the complexities of evolution
and interactions between all forms of life in the biosphere.
Students in the course develop a broad common core of
understanding of the nature of life through lectures, small
group discussions, writing, and laboratory investigations.
Laboratory fees apply. A second biology course (listed under
"Topics Courses below") builds on this core knowledge,
focusing on a specialized topic of biological inquiry. Autumn,
Winter, Spring.

14000-14100-14200. Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel,
Exchange. 10:30-11:50, TTh This sequence introduces methods of literary,
visual, and social analysis by addressing the formation and
transformation of cultures across a broad chronological and
geographic field. Our objects of study range from the
Renaissance epic to contemporary film, the fairy tale to the
museum. Hardly presuming that we know definitively what
"culture" means, we examine paradigms of reading within which
the very idea of culture emerged and changed. Autumn, Winter,
Spring.

14000. Reading Cultures: Collection. This quarter focuses on
the way both objects and stories are selected and rearranged
to produce cultural identities. We examine exhibition
practices of the past and present, including the 1893 World's
Columbian Exposition and the University's own Oriental
Institute. We read Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights,
and collections of African-American folk tales. We conclude by
considering modernist modes of fragmentation and
reconstellation in Cubism, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane.

14100. Reading Cultures: Travel. Focusing on the literary
conventions of cross-cultural encounter, this quarter
concentrates on how individual subjects are formed and
transformed through narrative. We investigate both the longing
to travel and the trails of displacement. We read several
forms of travel literature, from the Renaissance to the
present, including Columbus's Diario, The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the
African, Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, and
contemporary tourist literature.

14200. Reading Cultures: Exchange. This quarter works toward
understanding the relation (in the modern and post-modern
periods) between economic development and processes of
cultural transformation. We examine literary and visual texts
that celebrate and criticize modernization and urbanization.
Beginning with Baudelaire's response to Paris in his prose
poems, we then concentrate on novels that address economic,
social, and cultural change in the 1930s, including
Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt and Richard Wright's Native
Son. As the quarter concludes, students develop projects that
investigate the urban fabric of Chicago itself.

12100-12200-12300. Self, Culture, and Society. 10:30-11:20, MWF PQ: Must be
taken in sequence. M. Postone, B. Cohler, W. Sewell. Autumn,
Winter, Spring.

12100. In this quarter, we explore the nature and development
of modern society through an examination of theories of
capitalism. The classic social theories of Smith, Marx, and
Weber, along with contemporary ethnographic and historical
works, serve as points of departure for considering the
characterizing features of the modern world, with particular
emphasis on its social-economic structure and issues of work,
the texture of time, and economic globalization.

12200. PQ: SOSC 12100. In this quarter, we focus on the
relation of culture, social life, and history. On the basis of
readings from Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Sahlins, Foucault,
Benjamin, Adorno, and other anthropologists and cultural
theorists, we investigate how systems of meaning expressed
through metaphors, symbols, rituals, and narratives constitute
and articulate individual and social experience across a range
of societies, including our own, and how those systems of
meaning change historically.

12300. PQ: SOSC 12200. In this quarter, we concern ourselves
with the question of how personhood is constructed socially,
culturally, and historically. Our considerations include
issues of gender, sexuality, and ethnic identity, through the
study of the wide range of approaches found in the works of
Freud, Goffman, Vygotsky, de Beauvoir, Fanon, and others.

Aren't you jealous? It adds up to three classes this quarter (the sublistings are descriptions of each quarter in the sequence). Although that may sound like I'm being lazy, I assure you that three classes is a full load. I just want to ease into things, and if I do well with three, then I'll add a class next quarter. Is that good enough for you?

As snotty as I may seem, I am open to advice and encouragement. Soon I'll let you know which RSOs (Registered Student Organizations) I'm getting involved with. Could it be The Model UN? The Feminist Majority? Tune in next time.