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UPDATE 01/03 at 6:00PM: Bwog regrets that it accidentally misquoted Professor Bulliet by confusing Muslim and Jewish regulations concerning pigs. The correction has been made, and we note that, as Prof. Bulliet put it, neither religion includes ritual pig-kissing. Professor, thank you for reading Bwog. We love you.
His lectures might include elaborate graphs one day, a cavalcade of Arabic vocabulary the next. Occasionally, he’ll admit they were thought up only fifteen minutes before class. Yet Professor Richard Bulliet manages to synthesize so much disparate information into his Islamo-Christian Civilization course that, however many of his own books are on the syllabus, few could say students aren’t learning anything. As the first half of the semester comes to a close, however, Bwog realizes that it has taken far fewer notes on Sufism or the Crusades as on Bulliet’s more amusing anecdotes and witticisms…
On Religion
“People with individual spiritual philosophies are so strange, I think it’s better not to have one at all.”
“I’ve never been visited by the Holy Spirit, and I tend to ridicule it, partly because my cousin Martha is frequently visited by it.”
After reading a religion scholar’s exegesis on Jewish and Muslim meat regulations: “He said that if a pig drank from some water, Muslim couldn’t drink from it. But an orthodox Jew could french-kiss the pig. I think that’s the first and only time french-kissing pigs will come up in a scholarly dissertation.”
On heresy: “Once someone is burned at the stake, it’s sort of a buzzkill for everyone else.”
Paraphrasing some ascetics: “Tell you what, let’s have a constipation-in! We’ll sit and eat and see who will be the last to go to the bathroom.”
On Sufi chanting: “Pretty soon everyone is pretty stoned…um, on God.”
After the jump: on Writing, Scholarship, and Leaving Class Early to be on TV…
On Writing
After being trashed by a British orientalist book reviewer for not referencing the medieval “Book of Camels” for a book on that animal: “I asked him, where did one find the Book of Camels, and he said, ‘Oh…does it not survive?’ And I said, well, ‘Fuck you’.” Bulliet went on to note that he believed this incident alone proved the validity of Said’s thoughts on orientalists.
On popular religious historian Karen Armstrong: “She’s gifted at rewriting master narratives – on her own authority, which is a fairly successful way, when you compare her book sales with mine.”
On writing a midterm: “Concreteness is not always achievable. Bullshit is achievable.”
On Model Scholarship
On the book trade in medieval Baghdad: “Fiction was one of the least popular topics…it came just before postmodernist theory, which shows the basic rationality of the Muslim world.”
Upon listing all nine Crusades: “I have a bunch of dates here…but it’s so much easier to make them up.”
On Leaving Class Early to be on the Charlie Rose Show
“I’m not neglecting you. You’ll notice that I’ve been strategically keeping you longer each time than the duration of the class period. So I’m just collecting on my superrogatory professorial overtime minutes.”
After answering his cell phone in the middle of lecture, twice: “I thought it might be Charlie.”
Upon finally leaving class to be on the Charlie Rose Show: “My vanity is overwhelming.”
-CJS
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12 Comments
@boo ya on the animals that fail to survive in the wild:
“That may be the shadow of a hawk; however, I’m eating a carrot.”
@shira thanks for reminding me of this hilarious bulliet quote!
@andrew he spoke at the columbia coalition against the war teach in and rocked the house. to quote him :
“bring the troops home now– that’s a good slogan”
“send the troops somewhere else– that’s a bad slogan”
bulliet rules
@cjs thanks for taking these gems down!
@bulliet is great. he’s everything a college professor should be. he’s smart, entertaining funny, and intensly jealous of other professors. i’ll also hedge my bet that he wrote his own entry on wikipedia. i say this because it links to an article on his grandfather, whose biggest claim to fame is that he is richard bulliet’s grandpa.
@have you considered that his wikipedia entry might have been written by his grandpa?
@yes i am pretty sure c.j. bulliet did not write his grandson’s wikipedia entry, considering he died in 1952. i present the two entries for consideration that bulliet composed both:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bulliet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Joseph_Bulliet
@Anonymous what an amazing man. I’m so glad BWOG did this!
@frumph I have him for for a different class now and he is Teh Awesome.
@Bulliet is the most ridiculous CC teacher ever
@Anonymous Prof. Bulliet is rediculous only in the sense that his teaching style is non-orthodox. He doesn’t spoon feed his own take on the philosophers and forces you to think. I despised CC last semester because every class was nothing more than ignorant underclassmen stating their uninformed opinions. This was followed by the teacher speaking for 45 minutes, telling the class exactly what would be on the exam. THIS IS NOT HOW PHILOSOPHY SHOULD BE TAUGHT. Bulliet corrects this idiotic method of teaching .
@this is so overdue Bulliet is one of the top 5 best lecturers at Columbia, hands down.