For students, shopping period (though not christened as such) is a time for self-exploration, stress, and belly butterflies.  For professors, it’s a time to show off  remarkable wit and sometimes-sexy whimsicality.

Prof. David McKenna in Auteur Studies: Clint Eastwood:

“Don’t e-mail me.  I repeat, DON’T E-MAIL ME.  I have the Internet to follow San Antonio Spurs games and also I watch pornography.”

Maura Spiegel, Intro to American Studies:

“Keep it real, and stay black, man.”

Prof. Lydia Goehr in Philosophy of History:

“The future of the present is the futurity of the past.”

David Yerkes in Archaeologies of Language:

Introducing the first assignment: “I am a merciful God.”

“I LOVE catching plagiarists.  It really gets my adrenaline going.”

Richard Bulliet in Islamo-Christian Civilization:

“When I proposed this course to the committee on instruction, they said, well, you’re just making students read your own books, aren’t you? And I said, well, yeah…”

On the Great Books curriculum: “Cicero is not discussable after a potluck meal.”

And on the power of historians: “Historians rule the world, because they rule the past…The gullibility of the readers of history is almost unlimited.”