(no subject)

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

What does this symbol mean?


I've seen it around tufts a lot lately.

(So we've determined it's a Chi Rho, A Christian symbol)

does Tufts have a Chi Rho, a Christian Co-Ed Service Fraternity?

or is it used by a different Christian Organization on Campus?

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

It's a chi-rho, a symbol referring to Jesus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_rho

[prog.livejournal.com]

Thou shalt have no other posts before me.

[goodkittieavril.livejournal.com]

Don't pee on the X? LOL

[sylviarr.livejournal.com]

We have no Chi Ro. No idea who is using that symbol.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Chi Rho shows up an awful lot in churches, regardless of affiliation with the organization. Maybe folks are starting to feel that the fish is a little tired?

[ifotismeni]

is it vandalized or something?

this symbol is very common in the orthodox faith but i have no idea why someone would randomly put it around a college campus.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

I've seen it in chalk on sidewalks and walls, and someone puts it up in my classroom every day before our class. (it's there when we get there)

[jenskot.livejournal.com]

It's a religious symbol? Really? Looks like a stick figure of a man with a really long schlong... obviously a paternalistic Western religious symbol, I guess.

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

There must be some admin somewhere who knows what is scheduled for that room - assuming that there is a group using the room before your class, and it's not some random person.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

it seems like a random person just putting up a symbol. similar to the other random people who draw on the chalk boards advertising for their groups.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

The letters "chi" and "rho" (superimposed in that symbol) are the first two letters of "Christ" in Greek. It's a very, very old one.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

or, you know, it's 2 letters :P

[coorr.livejournal.com]

You don't remember the huge one of those that Nate-san painted in the staircase near the library in our high school? They painted over it several times but it never seemed to quite go away.

[jenskot.livejournal.com]

Vaguely... but I'm sure I thought it was a man with a giant schlong back then too. :P

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

Looks like you've got yourselves a Blair Witch.

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

I'm flashing back to art history classes in college, when we talked about the Book of Kells, and the chi-rho appearing in the illuminated pages...those were a lot prettier than this, though.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah...but they probably didn't do the Book of Kells in Microsoft Paint.

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

I think they used Adobe Photoshop.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

You, madam, are made of win.

(Also, I see you just started at GSLIS? Dude, so did I. And post-literate oral culture! You have to tell me more about that interest. I did classics so I know something about Homeric epic, but that would be pre-literate...)

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

Get out! I started last spring; I'm in my second semester. A word of advice: if you're not already, for the love of god, take cataloging with Joudrey; it will rock your world.

It was sort of born out of a project I turned out to totally not be able to do for the intro archives class--I picked oral history for a research topic, as it has an interesting and complicated relationship with archives, and really was interested in investigating the idea that a fully literate society is not the norm (I first encountered that in a New Yorker article from last December), and that the gradual decline in literacy might be inescapable, because of the sheer bloody mental difficulty of learning to read really well, which probably more people than not never do, even if they're functionally literate. Given what a big deal literacy efforts are to librarians and teachers, it's a bit heretical to shrug and say, "maybe maintaining high literacy levels isn't actually possible," and most of the lit I found dealing with literacy dealt with promoting it, not contemplating the possibility of long-term failure. Also, it was kinda off-topic and probably would be better as a thesis, not a ten-page paper.

But anyway, the topic as I'd like to better explore it, if I ever have actual free time again (not while I'm taking cataloging with Joudrey!), would be what kind of oral culture would become dominant in a world where literacy has seen its peak and is declining again. TV (and radio, sort of) and the internet and all sorts of shiny new technology, and the ongoing existence of written communication, would all surely create a new kind of oral culture. How would it be different from pre-literate oral culture? How would it be the same? Etc.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

This semester = 415/Joudrey and 403/Benoit. And that sounds like an awesome project. I am all about theses that contest conventional wisdom or values, although the research does then get tricky. Have you read Ong's _Orality and Literacy_? It's mostly about the transition *into* literate culture, but it's fascinating. (Actually the only book I've ever written in, ironically -- spent the whole time arguing with the author.)

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the coolest project I don't think I'll be doing anytime soon. And I haven't read that, although the title rings a bell, but I'm now putting it on the Big List O' Books to Read.