Where We Are With Beauty

Been a great (but busy!) quarter, especially with my Freshman Seminar classes. We're again examining different accounts of the relationship between beauty and knowledge.

Spent a nice afternoon at the Seattle Japanese Garden last week.


And last night we saw a very, very odd shadow puppet and silhouette-based modern-day adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. The show (Shadow Odyssey) was pretty raunchy and definitely a loose translation of Homer, but how could anyone resist this description from their website:

Picture this: you walk into a dimly lit tent. You sit back in a chair or get comfortable on a pile of pillows. Then, the show begins: on all four walls surrounding you (plus the roof above) live actors in silhouette, shadow puppets and hand drawn projections interact to bring to life Shadow Odyssey.

I don't see the students until next week, but I can't wait to find out what they thought!

Finally, have you seen this video clip?

It's a version of Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, from the 2001 movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and I absolutely love it. Showed it in my classes just yesterday.