Bulletin Board of the Brain » Mars Hill Graduate School

Kj’s Corner: Mythopoeia, Monsters and Jesus Oh My!

Kj — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:27:10 +0000

For my second Kj’s Corner in “Theology & the Artistic Impulse” I explored the concept of Mythopoeia as described primarily by George MacDonald, JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis. For part of the lecture, (screenshots below) I also used a scene from the documentary Monster Camp (see the trailer below) and the preview for the documentary We Are Wizards (also below), to look at some cultural examples of how we attempt to inhabit the narratives that either enchant our lives or drive us to escape our lives. Thanks again Chelle for the opportunity to teach a bit, and thanks to the class for your gracious engagement and conversation around my little corners.

(This image is “Lucy & the Lampost” by Bridget Beth Collins. I have a copy hanging on my wall.)

Suggested reading on Mythopoeia:

C.S. Lewis: “On Stories” & “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”

George MacDonald: “The Imagination” & Lillith

JRR Tolkein: “”On Fairy Stories” & The Lord of the Rings (duh)

Kristin Johnson: “Tolkein’s Mythopoesis” in Tree of Tales

The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken

William Emmert On My Wall

Kj — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:04:46 +0000

While at MHGS, I spent three years on Student Leadership. Part of what my particular team (Sacred Space) did was to curate the two art galleries in our building. The main floor gallery is for local artists and the upstairs gallery is for artists from the MHGS student body. For my final summer as a student, I was stoked to get to bring in my buddy William Emmert as the main floor gallery artist.

Having worked with William for two years, I’ve been witness to the many hours he spends meticulously drawing and painting the images that fill his extensive body of work. I love the mix of nostalgia, strangeness and specificity in what William does. The materials he uses, the images he collects and his crafting process all contribute to the themes of identity, absence and American culture that his work engages. You can see most of his work on his flickr page.

Many of his pieces he showed at MHGS are not framed, but rather, constructed in actual desk drawers hung against the wall. This effect is especially cool for his pieces that use baseball cards. Its art but its also just a drawer full of someone’s card collection.

I enjoy William’s work for a lot of reasons, many of which have to do with my own obsession with nostalgia, collections, pop culture, repetitive images and adaptive reuse, but I also enjoy his work because of how much I enjoy William himself. He’ll be leaving to get his MFA in San Francisco in a few weeks, and I will absolutely miss how much he lets me annoy him with loudly sung pop songs in his very close proximity. Lucky for me, he let me pick a piece to keep! I choose this two piece work which utilizes a 1930’s yearbook. I can’t believe how good it looks in my room! Thank you William.

“Fast Times” By William Emmert

On my wall

More William Emmert links:

The Weird World of William Emmert on ThinkFaest

Unstage.com

Beautiful/Decay

“Reach for the Stars” “Stepping Towards Tomorrow” “Graduating Into Life” and other speech titles I did not use.

Kj — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:55:13 +0000

I graduated a month ago and if the blog has seemed quiet its because I’ve been catching up on four years of sleep and generally avoiding sitting at my computer as much as humanly possible. Slowly but surely, though, I’m returning to (or arriving) at whatever it is my life will be now that I’ve completed graduate school. Emphasis on the slowly.

But graduation was amazing. I had the honor of being one of the three class speakers this year. Here’s a link where you can hear and read all three of our speeches. And thanks to Joshua for the photos.

And That Makes 108

Kj — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:08:48 +0000

I just turned in my final paper of graduate school. I took fewer classes this spring and summer. The “extra” time went to finishing my integrative project (#1 on the list) and being a research assistant for “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.”

Also, I did some research that spanned more than one class, hence two papers that look at the same thing (Jane Eyre) from two different perspectives.

So here’s 2010, the last of these oh so listy of lists.

“WHY ARE YOU APOLOGIZING FOR BLEEDING?”
Confronting The Evangelical Embrace Of Stephenie Meyer’s
Twilight Saga

“GOD DID NOT GIVE ME MY LIFE TO THROW AWAY”
Reading Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre As Theological Articulation of Salvation in Light of Women’s Experience:
An Introduction

CHARLOTTE BRONTË, THEOLOGIAN:
Charting The Constructive Theology Of Jane Eyre

THE SHADOWS THAT GLORY REVEALS:
Spiritual Formation Through The Fiction Of C.S. Lewis

[SUBJECT] TO AN UNKNOWN GOD:
Postmodern Philosophy And The Transcending Of Our Human Claims On The Transcendent God

Kj’s Corner: Real Presences & Adaptation

Kj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:38:16 +0000

This summer I had the opportunity to serve as research assistant to Dr. Chelle Stearns for her course on “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.” This meant I got to give two lectures on the class material. (At MHGS we don’t use student TA’s due to dual relationship concerns- so research assistant is a kind of newish thing). Struck with the utter surprise and amazingness of this opportunity, I sort of wondered out loud about it to Chelle, and her response was, that since I’m likely heading into academia moreso than ministry proper, it makes sense that as I got to practice pastoring in my program, I should also get a chance to try on teaching before I graduate. I guess its a good sign that the thought of having two whole hours of class to do with what I wish felt like receiving a ticket to DisneyWorld. Frankly- i would have loved even more time, but two lectures was PLENTY work for this crazy final term. So twice I got to facilitate classtime, focusing on any aspect of the readings- through whatever lenses I felt like bringing to it. Chelle dubbed the time “Kj’s Korner.”

1st lecture: The week’s reading was George Steiner’s “Real Presences,” an incredibly difficult but fascinating text. The amazon review gives a good idea of what I had to work with: “Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a “necessary possibility.” Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture.”

As I do with all things, I read, asking myself, “What else does this bring to mind? Where do I see this applied in a way that makes sense to me?” I quickly landed on Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. I used quotes from the book to explore scenes from the film and scenes from the film to explore concepts from the book, etc. Here’s some images my my lecture, as well as the opening scene of the film.

Kj — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:52:53 +0000

Do You Remember?: Exile, Identity and Prince Caspian

Kj — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:01:38 +0000

For the C.S. Lewis class, four of us did a presentation on Prince Caspian. We focused on the novel’s theme of exile and return, viewed through the lens of Isaiah. Since I first read the book in 1999, I’ve been haunted by the image of the Penvensie children wandering around the ruins of a castle only to slowly realize its their former home of Cair Paravel, but somehow hundreds of years have passed. That feeling of being in a place that was once home, but is now completely unfamiliar or in ruins is resonant of other characters in the book who have been living exiled from their culture or identity. The tree spirits have gone dormant, the animals have gone wild and forgotten how to speak, or hidden their speech if they’ve not gone wild, dwarves have had to “pass” for men, and even the children have trouble recovering the memories of their Narnian identity.

We wanted to offer our classmates an aspect of this experience in the context of our own lives. We did this in three ways. First we completely demolished the classroom. As people entered the room, they had to sit amongst the ruins, or as some identified, the “war zone” remains of the classroom. Then, with many people on the floor next to turned over chairs and tables, we began by hearing portions of Isaiah 44, which in the context of the Narnia story and our sitting in the rubble of our classroom, held more potent meaning than I’d expected. Here’s a bit of the text.
Isaiah 44:21-28

21 Remember these things, O Jacob,and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. 22 I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you. 23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel. 24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth; 25 who frustrates the omens of liars, and makes fools of diviners; who turns back the wise, and makes their knowledge foolish; 26 who confirms the word of his servant, and fulfills the prediction of his messengers; who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins”; 27 who says to the deep, “Be dry— I will dry up your rivers”; 28 who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose”; and who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”

Then, still in the dark and destroyed classroom, we played this video.
(It had music but we can’t seem to get it to play).
It works best (is most emotionally manipulative) if you play some wordless soundtrack music with it. We used Max Richter.
And the video ends at 3:32, but the powerpoint continues after it.

The Caspian Experience from Kj Swanson on Vimeo.

Then we led a more formal presentation and discussion time, but as we spoke, two of our group members slowly returned to classroom to its proper shape, so by the time we were done, the room looked normal again, except that no one was sitting in their usual place. Everyone was spread out along the edges or in clumps at some tables. Many of us had been “exiled” by the disruption of the space.

Hard to say how much of our ideas came across in the presentation or even in this blog post, but we loved doing it. I realized in the process that this was probably my last group project ever at MHGS, and I loved getting to work with people I’d never partnered with before. I felt like I was the old timer getting to work with the energetic whippersnappers who will be at MHGS long after I’ve graduated. Kind of like old Professor Kirke getting to hear Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy tell about the world they found in the wardrobe. It was wonderful.

I Like Getting Paid in Gift Cards

Kj — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:36:48 +0000

Because then I “have” to buy stuff.

I did a few jobs for school that resulted in some Amazon.com money. Can’t wait till these folks show up at my door!

We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rules, Partners, Rivals
By Gillian Gill

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
By Sandra M Gilbert & Susan Gubar

Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing
By Karen A. McClintock

How (Not) to Speak of God – Marks of the Emerging Church
By Peter Rollins

Slings & Arrows: the Complete Collection

It’s all pretty much research/resources- but oh so good to have my own copies!

We’re On The InterWebs!

Kj — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:56:10 +0000

Here’s my 9 & 1/2 minutes on my Twilight & Evangelical culture research. Click here or on the links below to see more MHGS MDiv Integrative Project Presentations.

MDiv Integrative Projects – Kj Swanson from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.

Life on Venus

Kj — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:27:50 +0000

This is part of my last assignment for my last spring of seminary/grad school. It’s an image showing my current theological space. I’ve been inhabiting a different planet for some time now. I could call it Planet Lent/Holy Week/Resurrection. I could call it Planet People In My Room Late At Night. Or Planet Not-Submarine.

But the easiest term has been Venus.

Voices, faces, words, stories, prayers, tears, hands, gratitude, perseverance, sunrises, full moons, icons, incarnation, conversations, photographs, papers, books, songs, hot fudge sundaes, embraces, car rides, questions, histories, movie theatres, women, men, beloved friends.

Six weeks left…I wish I could fit all of your faces on this page.

…and yes, Sofa Square made it into my theological space collage. I love you Sofa Square.