Academic

Things I Scribble in The Night

By Curtis  |  2012/05/17 02:54 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

Fall 2012 Schedule Adjustments

Get the PDF of these pages.

 

I scribbled some notes about my course schedule for fall, trying to sort everything out and get myself to commit to a schedule. After reviewing program requirements, my commitments to faculty, course descriptions and other factors I have reduced my course schedule to four courses (12 hours) that seem reasonable to me.

The current working schedule is as follows:

MA-SOCY Admissions Letter

By Curtis  |  2012/05/16 01:00 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

Letter2

Accepted to Master of Arts in Sociology

By Curtis  |  2012/05/15 17:47 Posted in Academic, Graduate School, Sociology  |  Comments (0)

Fall2012Program

I was simply checking my grades today and reviewed my academic transcript and found that my primary program had changed since my last visit. My primary major was listed as “sociology”. I opened up the status of my application to reveal “decision made”. It seems as though I am now a Master of Arts in Sociology student.

Spring 2012 Papers

By Curtis  |  2012/05/15 03:17 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

All of my papers have been turned in and graded. As such, I have now released my papers publicly for reading.

Also, my new papers website is now up and running. My new paper site is at: http://papers.cmkularski.net.

You may retrieve this semester’s papers by using the address: http://papers.cmkularski.net/search.php?onProperty=Semester&value=Spring 2012

Or you may click on individual papers listed below:



Posted from Bessemer City, North Carolina, United States.

Why penetrative intercourse?

By Curtis  |  2012/05/04 01:47 Posted in Academic, General Life, Love  |  Comments (0)

It is late. This may be terse.

Why must gay guys engage in penetrative intercourse? Why does penetrative intercourse define what is gay? What does it bring to a relationship? To me it seems as though it is an attempt to appropriate heterosexual standards for relationships and sexuality. Is there not more to intimacy than penetrating your partner? Is there no other way to express passion? I have never looked at things this way, but in doing research for my queer theory paper I began thinking about the structure and gay identities portrayed in Latter Days. The scene where Christian and Aaron are happiest is immediately after they have had their first sexual encounter.

To me the act of penetrating one’s partner seems primitive and quite unnecessary for achieving emotional intimacy with one’s partner. I am reminded of a scene in Star Trek: First Contact, Data and Picard are interacting physically with the Pheonix and Data asks of Picard “Does physical contact make it more real?”. Picard evades the question and tells him that it was a childhood fantasy.  I understand the need for physical contact, as I do enjoy it a lot, but somehow the intercourse portion just doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps this is because I am a non-traditional gay. I am excited by emotional intimacy and more basic feelings and less by the idea of being penetrated or penetrating.

For me personally there is a different aspect of masculinity at work that I am attracted to. I am less attracted to the power of the penis and more attracted to the power of the man. The phallus serves as a nice indicator to confirm biological pre-requisites for manhood, but it is not the only object of my interest.

We are gay, can we not take a more evolved approach to sexuality that is less carnal?

Now that blast of mental energy is out there, I will either integrate it into my current paper (on social control of gay identity) or I will carry it over and complete it in another semester as another paper.



Posted from Bessemer City, North Carolina, United States.

My Life

By Curtis  |  2012/05/04 00:21 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

[Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1485]

Things Currently On My Mind

By Curtis  |  2012/04/15 09:30 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

imageimageimage

These are by far the major things that are bugging me and occupying my thoughts. A final paper for Queer Theory, a final paper for Cognitive Science and a revised course proposal for my directed readings.

4th Annual UNC Charlotte Philosophy Conference

By Curtis  |  2012/03/29 19:37 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (1)

All of the materials for the 4th Annual UNC Charlotte Philosophy Conference have been457487_387444597940791_186520684699851_1492721_1391053314_o released. This will be my first presentation at an academic conference. It is somewhat exciting to see my name and my paper title appear in the schedule for the event. I am also very nervous and unsure of myself. It helps that I know that I will be presenting in front of faculty and students that I am at least somewhat familiar with. I have been wrestling with myself over how to make the topic of my paper to an audience of philosophers, and I’m still not convinced that I have come up with the right answer, but they did select me, so there must be something relevant to them.

I am generally not comfortable speaking in public, and especially not on topics that are involved in my paper, but I have been allowing myself to be more expressive in classes recently, so I’m hoping that will result in me managing to figure out how to present my topic in an approachable way.  I think my biggest fear is that I will finish my presentation in the time allocated (20-30 minutes) and then no one will have any questions and I will be standing there feeling like I have failed in presenting my paper in an accessible way.

image

Visualizing Fall 2012

By Curtis  |  2012/03/22 01:55 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

image

 

I accept that WGST 6800 is a guaranteed course on my schedule, as I have opted in to it (and am becoming the guinea pig for the directed readings course).

Now, that leaves me with 9 hours to select. I can pick 3 courses from the blue and red groups.

Fall 2012 Registration

By Curtis  |  2012/03/20 16:26 Posted in Academic  |  Comments (0)

image

Next Monday I am due to register for classes, and I have idea what I want to take. The image above is my current planning guide as it appears in GITI. There are several classes that meet requirements in the Cognitive Science program, such as Linguistics, Intelligent Systems, Cognition and Philosophy of Mind. There are other courses that don’t apply to anything, such as Clinical Exercise Nutrition and Sex|Death|Religion, but would likely be fun to take. So far I have held myself to a policy of taking 9 hours that apply to something, and then giving myself the last 3 hours to play with. This year those last 3 hours were spent on undergrad courses, but for next year it seems like those will more likely be put toward hybrid classes.

For Cognitive Science I am pretty sure I want to take Philosophy of Mind, but am a lot less certain between Linguistics, Intelligent Systems and Cognition. I think that Linguistics might be interesting, but perhaps a bit difficult. Cognition may also be interesting, but I’m not sure that I would enjoy it. The material seems a little dull and the instructor is not someone I have had positive experience with (but have never had a course with her before). Intelligent Systems is the odd-ball. I’m sure it would be fun, but I don’t know the instructor and I don’t really know what to expect or how deep the material would be. Between those classes, I just don’t know, and I have less than a week to figure it out.

I have only one course left in the WGST program, but I do not know exactly how I plan to meet that requirement yet.  I could fill the space in with Language, Gender and Power this fall, but I am not sure that I wish to take 3 courses in the program with the same instructor. I am currently considering taking a course with a different instructor in the department next spring to meet the requirement.

The Directed Reading course has become more certain at this point. Dr. James has agreed to do a project on Subculture Masculinities with me during the fall. I am very excited about the potential for that project and really want it to go well. Ironically, I will be the first person to ever take a directed readings course in my department. The concept of the course is so foreign that presently I am waiting for my graduate coordinator and department chair to decide what forms and process will be utilized for authorizing the course (required before a registration permit will be issued for it).

I am not confident in my schedule for Monday, and I don’t presently know exactly what courses I will put on my initial schedule. As a grad student I have very little competition for courses, so there is a good chance that I will get into whatever courses I select.