This And That... And A Theological Lecture, Just For Fun

I've now been in NI for a whole month! It feels longer, but it also feels shorter, because of the time I've spent in class (not sure how that works, but, it does). I've been cooking for myself for a month, wandering around a strange city for a month, listening to people speak all kinds of strange accents for a month. At this very moment I am sitting in the kitchen - it's one of the few places in this house where we can pick up internet - listening to two of the other exchange students toast crumpets and talk to each other in Chinese.

I've also been seeing the first signs of spring. It isn't deathly cold the moment you open a window, for instance, and flowers are beginning to come up.

Just in time for me to finish my knitting project - yes, the "airplane" project:

Knitted wool lace is the funnest fabric to squidge your fingers in. Fact.

I have to find some more wool soon and start another project, because it's maddening sitting in lectures without something to do with my hands. If I don't knit, I take crazy frantic notes, and if I force myself not to take notes, I fall asleep. Knitting is a good thing.

And, just because:

Yes. I now own Harry Potter as Gaeilge.*

Speaking of books, and of general awesomeness, one of the things I did this past week was attend the 2011 Church of Ireland Theological Lectures. These are an annual event at Queen's. They're free, and you can have tea and biscuits if you come early to the Hub (the Anglican chaplaincy cafe). This year, the speaker was Michael Ward - the "Narnia Code" guy. Basically, he is a chaplain at Oxford and a C.S. Lewis** scholar/enthusiast who wrote his thesis on the way the symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia corresponds to the seven celestial bodies in pre-Copernican cosmology. That is, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe uses Jupiter-ish symbols, Prince Caspian uses Mars-like symbols, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader uses Sun-like symbols, etc. Which was yet another way Lewis was tracing different mythologies, traditions, and so on back to Christianity, if that makes sense (please... if this is interesting... read the book. Don't listen to me).

I found the lectures intriguing, and I think he's probably right - that there's a level of medieval cosmological symbolism in the Narnia books. The idea that they were written to showcase this symbolism (which I think some people may have gotten just by hearing of it) is obviously absurd, and he made a point of pointing this out. But the fact that it's there makes sense, at least to me, because I've read enough by and about Lewis to know that that's exactly the kind of thing he would've done (which is one of the points Ward made, for people who hadn't read the books - yes, there are people who haven't read the books, but who came to the lecture anyway, and of course were confused anfterwards... *sigh*)

This is how I ended up having tea at a table full of Anglican clergy, including a bishop and a retired missionary. Which was fun. The Hub was decorated in "Narnian" style, which meant a plastic fir tree in every corner, and a dorm wardrobe full of faux fur coats at one wall, with a quite adorable little plush lion lounging on top. The walls had papers with Narnia quotes written in marker, and they'd put up white Christmas lights, and put the first movie on the TV screens (which usually show news or sports or whatever).

And, when questions about Tolkien came up, as they do in conversations about C.S. Lewis, guess who was the only person at the table who knew the answers... being a fantasy nerd does come in useful in the real world sometimes.

Anyway, it was Janice and Ron from St Bart's Parish Church who told me about the lectures. I'll write more about them and the church later.

Ooh - just found the Planet Narnia website: http://www.planetnarnia.com/ I've yet to read the book. I bought it - the long version, of course - and he signed it "to Meghan, with Jovial regards." I have it, and an unread C.S. Lewis book, waiting for me once I manage to clamber over the mountain of sociology and history books that seems to have erupted over my desk.

*I think this is right for "in Irish"... but, needless to say, don't quote me on it.

**Who, for those who don't know, was Irish - from Belfast! More about that later, too (meaning, I'll probably take a tour, or wander around on my own, being a total creeper, and take pictures of plaques and statues and things).

The Lanyon Building

The Lanyon Building is the main QUB building. Though I've never actually been in any of the rooms inside it, you go through it to get most places, including the library, the International and Post-Graduate Student Centre, and more.

Lanyon was built in parts in the 19th century. And it looks it. It's hugely, grandly, painfully Victorian. A reader of this blog will have noticed by now that this is a feature of Belfast architecture.

And, for some reason, there's a statue of Gallileo inside. And at certain times of day there are high schoolers wandering around (if you're wondering who all those young people in uniforms are).

Find the subtle clue that indicates the Victorian origin of this wing!

A WWI memorial, I think.

Orientation Week

        I also feel at home with the seagulls. They’re everywhere, in the streets and perching on lamps and buildings. They’re confusing the students from inland cities, but they remind me of the ones that flock to the Williamsburg parking lots back home. I think Belfast has more in common with Tidewater cities than it does with Asheville.

There are also flocks of schoolchildren in uniforms.

          The strangest thing about the city streets, though, is the way people park. In the States, you would see people in a narrow street simply parking in the middle of it. But in Europe, they’re more... polite? Accommodating? They park halfway in the street, so as to keep it clear - and halfway on the sidewalk. When pedestrians walk around the city and there are cars driving down the street, they have to skirt tilted parked cars, like these:

        The First Day

On our first full day, we were introduced to life and school at Queen’s, and enrolled in classes. We’re encouraged to attend both the tutorials and lectures – as one Professor Niall Majury was so kind to inform us:

“Research suggests that students who do not attend lectures do badly.”

I am enrolled in three modules for 60 CATS points, which is equivalent to four courses for 16 credits. They are:

Module Title: Irish Studies 11: The Modern History, Politics, Sociology and Anthropology of Northern Ireland

Course Contents :This level 1 module will use a variety of historical, political, sociological and anthropological perspectives to look at key issues relating to Northern Ireland. The course will provide an overview of the history and politics of the state of Northern Ireland. It will use anthropological understandings of ethnicity and nationalism to examine how Unionism and Irish Nationalism developed. It will look in detail at the various political solutions which have been applied to ‘the Province’, with a particular focus on the Peace Process. It will examine the realities and legacies of the conflict since the signing of the 1998 Agreement. It will explore the development of cultural and political 'traditions' examining, in particular, change and continuity in Irish society.

Module Title: Politics, Law and Power: From Duties to Rights

Course Contents :This module is concerned with politics in different kinds of societies throughout the world. It asks what 'politics' itself is, how it is related to other aspects of social life and to what extent it can be separated from them. With particular reference to non-Western societies, it investigates how political relations are maintained and reproduced in the absence of Western-type institutions. In particular, it addresses questions of power and subordination, authority and the legitimating use of (invented) traditions, and resistance, especially in relation to gender and colonial or postcolonial conditions. International debates about human rights concludes this module.

Module Title: The Irish Revolution, 1917-1921

Course Contents :The module will explore revolutionary politics in Ireland between 1916 and 1921. Key themes will include the rise of Sinn Fein following the Easter Rising, the establishment of Dail Eireann, the Irish Volunteers' military campaign and the British government's response to these political and military challenges. The course will make use of a wide range of local and thematic studies to investigate controversial questions relating to the Irish revolution: what factors motivated republicans, how important was sectarianism in revolutionary violence, why did some areas of the country see little fighting and how important a factor was the north?

The School of History and Anthropology is one of the academic schools in University Square, a row of very thin and tall houses in a compact line, past the School of Music. It’s beside the film theatre, and the seven of us who had to register there climbed up several narrow flights of stairs to wait in the hall for the one professor who had as all. When I sat in one of the chairs, the arm popped off – it’d been balanced in place. We agreed that this was a good indication, if we hadn’t know already that this was the history building, where we were, because historians don’t mind when things are old and falling apart.

I finished my registration with everyone else in the Peter Froggatt Centre. The information we had to provide was fairly straightforward, apart from one question I had trouble with: whether or not we’d like our contact information provided to the appropriate QUB chaplaincy. I said, sure. Then I looked down the dropdown list...

...!?

At Wilson, our chaplain and chapel are, at least, nominally Presbyterian. There is one small Christian student group. Here, most everyone and everything is Christian - but split over and over into who knows how many sects. There were FOUR different options for “Presbyterian.” This isn't as surprising when you walk around the city - in the Protestant areas of the city, there's a Presbyterian church every other block. But it's still a very different arrangement than in the States (where the church every other block would be Baptist).

After that, the tour. I won’t write at length about Queen’s University and its buildings and statistics – that’s what the website will tell you. However, I can provide some website links and some of my so-far photos.

Queen's University Belfast: http://www.qub.ac.uk/

Warren Wilson College: http://www.warren-wilson.edu/external_index.php

Some pictures from around the city, mostly buildings (the gardens aren't too impressive this time of year):



7 College Gardens - my front door. My room is on the 1st floor (that is, the second) and faces the back.



 Some back views of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church. Like I said, there are churches like this one - big, beautiful stone buildings - every other block.


The corner building is the School of Music.




Just in case you forget you're in the UK.





A view of some houses... not the front car parked up on the curb.




Looking up at the right-hand archway at the Union Theological College of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland.



And, because this is Belfast, all this lovely Victorian stone-and-brick architecture is set with iron bars or topped with barbed wire...