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This blog is for my various interests, such as bicycling, karaoke, clean living, internet memes, video games, roleplaying games, progressive politics, humor, and futurism.
Sometimes I worry that when I get older, all my fandom obsessions and “childish” habits will become an issue and people won’t take me seriously in the world of academia but then I remember that
My first professor at the university specialized in Jewish studies but taught a class on Sherlock Holmes because he really liked Sherlock Holmes
One of my current professors once owned a Viking ship which he manned by himself
Another current professor brings stuffed animals to class and lets students who answer questions correctly hold them
That first professor’s office is also full of Beatles memorabilia
Another professor teaches a class on the history of westerns just so she can teach Brokeback Mountain and Thelma and Louise to an audience who might not otherwise watch those films
Yet another professor based his entire career around his fixation on William Shakespeare
I knew a professor (but was never in his class) who taught a class on early American fashion, but his specialization was modern government
I once took a class entitled “History of Rock n Roll in America” that was taught by a journalism professor because he really liked classic rock
My Women in Africa professor spent literally 10 weeks talking about The Black Panther and how her favorite character was Shuri
Another history professor teaches a whole class on the “Modern American Musical” which I think would be a really fun class, but it hasn’t been offered in the whole time I’ve been here
So I think I’m good. Lol.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the English professor who wrote an entire book on a single scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and teaches a grad school seminar on that show.
I was wrong. The whole book is not about Buffy the Vampire Slayer but there is significant analysis of Buffy within the book. It’s called Life between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: US Culture in the Long Nineties by Phillip E. Wegner, and it’s about American entertainment in the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11.