Life, it is.

As I am working towards to goal of defining what my life passions are, different words, phrases, and ideas seem to fit together to create the larger vision. One of them comes from an email that wasn't written to me by a professor at Covenant Seminary. It is a broad question that shapes a lot of who Covenant Seminary is and their mission. This question makes me want to go to seminary there. "What do you see in terms of spiritual yearnings within contemporary (popular) culture (in the U.S.A. and globally)?"

I was sitting in my 'Cultural and Intellectual History of the US' class this morning and another image came to me. In contemporary church culture, so much is made of Acts 17, when Paul is preaching on Mars Hill. I think Christians enjoy the image of Paul citing the contemporary secular poets and thinkers to make his own case for the existence of one God and for salvation in Christ. It makes the case that the church shouldn't be a fortress on a hill, separated from society by huge walls of distrust and misunderstanding. It should be a city, with streets leading out, inviting trade and dialogue.

It just occurred to me that that is what inspires me too. My favorite part of being at Mizzou as a Christian is being in a sociology class and being able to see the image of God in the writers and other students as we all discuss culture and the nature of man in society. It's fantastic seeing that what the Bible says isn't all crap and that what it says about human nature and the way God created us in His image can be seen in everything we do. Even the ways we set up power elites and have class warfare speaks to our desire to have the God-like power that got us in this whole mess in the first place (Garden of Eden).

In my history class, my professor acts kind of like an Old Testament prophet, highlighting trends of thought that shifted the American culture. I want to learn how to do that. I want to look at a culture and say, "Here is the foundational issue. Here is where we do not believe God." That would be so cool.

Classes That Should Exist

Mizzou has a massive amount of classes that are offered each semester. I tried scrolling through all of the classes for next semester and there are literally thousands. I just found out that there are riding classes you can take at Mizzou - like horses. Who knew? But anyways, if I could invent classes at Mizzou that they would teach, these would be them.

Well, first of all, I would have them make a real Cultural Studies major (named after me - in the style of Stephen Colbert naming things after himself - Canadian hockey team mascot and Hungarian bridge). Having a real Cultural Studies major would make things a lot easier, who knows, it might happen in the future. But here are my classes:

Philosophy of Advertising
Sociology of Fashion and Trends
Sociology of Blue and Red States
Intro to Cultural Studies
Cyclical History
Postmodern Literature
MTV and Modern Media
Globalization
Geography for Americans
Current Events
Generational Interactions
Cultural Movements
Collective Behavior (as in, actual crowd behavior, not the sociology class on 'how to protest stuff' under this title currently)

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there's more. I've already taken most of the ridiculous I-can't-believe-this-is-a-real-class classes so far. Conspiracy Theory, the Amish one, I almost took a class called Grapes and Wines of the World where you do wine tastings a lot but I heard it's actually pretty hard and you have to do chemistry. Boo. I'm pretty excited about my Home Horticulture class next semester.

My Major

So I tell people that my major in college is Cultural Studies because that's the best way I can describe it. It's kind of a new field, and a thoroughly postmodern one at that. When I was working at a camp after my freshman year in college, my brother sent this article to me: "All Cultures are Not Equal" by David Brooks for the New York Times (read it here). In it, Brooks told me to "Go into the field that barely exists: cultural geography. Study why and how people cluster, why certain national traits endure over centuries, why certain cultures embrace technology and economic growth and others resist them." So I did.

However, a more descriptive definition of cultural studies (in this context as a Literary theory) came my way in a book assigned for class, Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory:

"Cultural studies is indeed so open in terms of what it studies and the methods that are employed, that even its adherents are not entirely clear (or united) regarding what cultural studies is. People who say they are "doing" cultural studies share, one could argue, a commitment to a radical or alternative political stance. That is, they seem to be exposing how culture works from an antagonistic or at least questioning perspective." (26)

Ha. Well, that's what my major turned into, at least. Now that I'm in upper-level sociology classes I'm beginning to question my major. Like every reasonable student with senioritis, everything is starting to seem absurd and far-fetched. It's not that I don't care, it's that I don't have the energy to radically shift my worldview anymore.

I'm starting to think that maybe social-psychology might have been the field for me, studying more about the individual needs of people and how they try to fulfill them in society. That sounds more like the cultural studies I was shooting for. Alas. There's always grad school.