I took a class in grad school taught by Harold Bloom. I think it was 20th century poetry, but he mostly held court at the seminar table and recited his favorite lines of poetry. Once in a while he would swig mightily from his Nalgene bottle, then sigh, “Alas, it is only water.”
At the top end of the spectrum, I took a study of painting and sculpture class with early Pop-artist Wayne Thiebaud, be still my beating heart. He came to class every day in an excellent suit, right down to natty hat and folded handkerchief in the breast pocket. He lectured and doodled and wrote some amazing notes in my sketchbook which I will treasure 'til the day I die.
Also sculptor Lucy Puls and writer Pam Houston, both of which remain complete inspirations and between the three of them were worth the entire rest of the experience of my undergraduate education insofar as what they taught me that affects my life today.
This is a stretch, but Hugh D. Young http://www.amazon.com/Sears-Zemanskys-University-Physics-10th/dp/0201603225 taught my Physics 101 class.
Also, one of my TA’s was Paul Hilfinger, who is pretty well known in CS circles…
When I was a grad student in English Lit at the University of Colorado, Denver, one of my professors was mystery writer Rex Burns.
While at UCD, I also took a film class with Howie Moshovitz, who was the film critic for the Denver Post.
[QUOTE=tofergregg]
I took an awesome class during graduate school at Harvard that was taught by Stephen Jay Gould and Alan Dershowitz (and also by Harvey Cox, a theologian at Harvard who isn’t afaik famous). The class was called Thinking About Thinking and it really was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken (oh, and Natalie Portman was a fellow student…). Here’s a link describing the class:
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/04.13/think.html
-Tofer
p.s. Sadly, Stephen Jay Gould died a few days after our final. He had been sick most of the term but he still presented at most of the lectures.
[/QUOTE]
Harvey Cox isn’t famous now in popular culture, but he was a little while in the 60s with his book THE SECULAR CITY.