Conferences plan

 Waiting to hear back from ncte

and from International Conference on Religion & Film

in March? 

for May>>already asked for

Register for conference money in August

Either for ncte?

Upcoming course schedule change and plans

 Fall 2024

Submit for Fall 2025 Sabbatical

EN 210 Online (cross-listed with EN 399 and RG 300)

EN 101 MWF 9:00-9:50

EN 101 MWF 10-10:50

EN 300 Online nursing emphasis

 

Spring 2025

MWF 8:00-8:50 EN 300

MWF 9:00-9:50 EN 206

MWF 11:00-11:50 EN 300

Mon. 5:30-8:00 EN 190/390

 

 

Fall 2025

sabbatical

 

 

 

Spring 2026

Beginning Poetry (206): Etzel

Superhero Films 

Fall 2026

EN210

Spring 2027

Beginning Poetry (206): Etzel

Beginning Nonfiction (207): Etzel

 

 

Fall 2027

EN210

Spring 2028

Beginning Poetry (206): Etzel

Fall 2028

 EN210

At the Movies

 Themes

Genre

Mythology and religion and philosophy and psychology

Vietnam

Two lesbian mothers

Neuroqueerness

Superheroes

Everything everywhere all at once

Mental rom-coms

Places that movie theaters are

The positive Trickster

Self-care Cinema therapy

I'm from Topeka Kansas and so are you

Art Plus capitalism equals emptiness

What does it mean to write a memoir, film as memoir

Generative Poetic Practices like the HBO guide and analyzing it back and forth and everywhere

Phenomenon philosophy, indie VS corporate, loss of the Dickinson theater, while Atchison rallied

In a dead end job

At the movies in December, the best movies come out, reflection, snow storms and the beauty of Silence

Approach

 I know I should really think about writing pieces that are funny, smart, in other words have wit.

In other words, write pieces that I would love to read out loud and to an audience.

Think of pacing, think of ways that a story engages with a listener.

Comedic memoir

 Leaving Louise's reading and how she affirmed that a lot of life is about pain but the comedy helps relieve that or at least make it approachable. And how difficult it is to write comedy as I'm talking to Eric and he remembers the piece that I wrote called against masculinity in the comedy I had written about after writing about the angry men I had survived when my mom came out after her divorce and said I don't think I like men and I responded me either! And then how I then run into Roger who took a fiction class with me 8 years ago and he remembered what I said about there's a story and everything and he even mentioned the story recently wrote called sticky notes. He now has a couple of Memoirs written. And a couple of novels. And here's the thing it's toward the end of the semester and I was feeling down and sometimes that little depression comes back but then here are these notes as I'm thinking about writing memoir and that I have to remember is to bring back that comedy. I love how my mom said I always used to tell jokes and I was always being humorous but I also know that was partly the disguise of the sadness I was feeling. Eric told me about another time when we were both students at Robinson Middle School and somehow someone told him about when I was in Randolph Elementary School that I asked someone in the back do you want to see me jump out the window? And I had then showed a piece of paper with the word Jump On It. I waited for the teacher to turn back around and threw that piece of paper out the window!

I'm wondering that comedy will be a part of my memoir?

Dreaded EN300

 I'm telling you, I'm ready to go to the next level and talking about students about their writing. I'm going to be on the next level about talking about safety and belonging. I'm going to talk about engagement and how students need to find a way to engage with the course and not just left it off. And most importantly the idea of ethics. We all need a moral compass and ethics means not using chat gpt. It means truly finding a way to engage.

And when I tell them I'm using trauma informed basis for their field of study, I'm definitely going to talk about what that means. It doesn't mean calling people snowflakes. It means the reality that there are people who would benefit from having empathy and the use of ethics that they could be trusted and everyone could win.

Let me tell you about my friend Tony who's into real estate. He was having a hard time closing on a house as the sellers all of the sudden decided to raise the cost a slight bit just as the buyers knew they really wanted that house. The sellers wanted more money. On the day at the closing. 

So Tony got with the seller realtor and said let's take a cut out of our paycheck. Let's just write off what we would normally make because we want to make these people happy. 

Really the time and money the Realtors put in, the time the buyers put in, everyone would win win even though the Realtors weren't going to make as much.

But really Tony did it because he wanted these people to get the house. These are people he spent time with and got to know on that personal level that people can choose to have or not to have.

So I know there are car sales people who are taught that it's all about the sale and the scam, to see how much money you can get. And I know there are sales people out there who just want to get someone in a car they can afford.

Your moral compass and ethics which will sell them have to do with how much money you can make off of someone. If you're already trying to scam someone or get the most out of someone, you are probably compromising your ethics.

Great TEXTS 200

Jericho and I are so excited to offer TX200: Movies, Myth, and the Mind this Fall! In a nutshell, our course is exploring how films—esp. in a movie theater--are contemporary mythology, can be sites for self-care, and can be like a religious experience. It is a mashup of cognitive and social psychology with therapy, religious studies, mythology, and poetry, examining why we can feel like kids again, feel deep empathy or relate to characters that we don't feel as so alone or an outcast, or leave transformed by a movie in conjunction with a theater experience.