Joanna
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All this is true, but I've had some fun days lately and Harvey's two lectures were pretty damned good experiences---so the nostalgic largess. What could be. What was for a few moments. Evidently the Geography Dept is cooking these days.
Anyway, I think departments are something like an organic thing that sometimes comes alive. I went to four different art departments, looking for that alive feel. I found it at CSUN. But I also found Anthro was even more so. At UCB the art department was pretty much dead meat. But Philosophy, German, and Sociology were alive at that particular moment. My ex transferred from Chemistry to Anthro and used to come home talking about Laura Nader and others. I was working by then and really envied her, wished I could go back. Then she got into the masters program in City Planning, and that was greatly alive, tied into to city politics, and the whole scene.
At Uni of Iowa the English and Drama departments were exploding about then and most of my friends were in one or the other. I used to sit in a couple of their best lectures. The best was a drama guy de-constructing Hamlet, moment by moment so you could see the dramatic structure. Got a contact high off what they were doing. The great attractor was an MA program for creative writing. SF State had one of these programs, and one of my friends from Iowa transferred to SF about the same time I got to UCB. His best prof at SF was a guy who also worked as an actor for A.C.T.
Sorry to sound so Polly Anna. Things are so fucking grim out there, I got to find some good somewhere. It's like deciding to have a hurricane party--maybe.
CG