London as Metaphor

Syllabus

Metaphor Projects

DAY 1: These four freshmen have done something rare and necessary: they have looked at words the way a surgeon looks at tissue, the way a geologist splits rock to find the fault line running through it. They have taken the metaphors we breathe like air—the racing sperm, the guns-or-butter binary, the feminized nation awaiting violation, the alien tide crashing our shores—and held them up to the light until we could see the machinery inside, the little engines of assumption grinding away, shaping how we think about women’s bodies, about war, about human beings crossing borders with nothing but courage and need. This is not easy work. It requires you to distrust the familiar, to stand in the classroom and say, this language we inherited is not neutral, it is not innocent, it is doing something to us. Caitlin asks us to see fertilization as conversation, not conquest. Chendan refuses the forced choice, the illusory either/or that keeps us poor in one way so we can kill in another. Neha traces how nations cloak themselves in masculinity and mark their enemies as rapable. Aymara shows us magazine covers from 1912 and 2018, the same terror, the same dehumanizing flood, and she says, when I see these cartoons, I don’t laugh—I worry. They are eighteen, nineteen years old, and they are asking us to wake up, to notice that the words we use are not just words but blueprints, instructions, permissions. They are asking us to be braver with our language, clearer, kinder—to stop sleepwalking through sentences that do violence while we nod along. This is what the first-year students can do, if we let them: they can see what we have grown too comfortable to see.

DAY 2: Alex brought us wabi-sabi whole—not as design trend but as philosophy, tracing how “wabi” moved from destitution to wisdom in the 14th century, how Sen no Rikyu’s tea ceremony chose simplicity over perfection, how broken pottery and dented water bottles hold more truth than flawlessness ever could, celebrating an aesthetic that gives value to impermanence and imperfection as a counter to modern materialism, and his peers leaned in with questions because he had given them something real to hold onto. Chloe started with her mother saying “I’ve hit my wall, it’s time to go to bed,” showed us the Google Ngram explosion of the phrase since the 1970s, traced it from marathon runners to five-year-olds crumbling under classroom pressure to graduate students shutting down, and then gave us a generous solution: talk to people, don’t bottle it up, and reimagine the wall as something small enough to walk around. Marianne questioned the shoe metaphor, the beloved fantasy that we can step fully into another person’s pain, and she gave us neuroscience and the beautiful revision—empathy is listening to someone else’s song—because a song has rhythm and tone and specificity, and listening requires attention and humility, not the flattening projection of trying to become someone else. Aarav showed us the short leash, the collar, the power dynamics we import from pet ownership into human relationships, and he did something bold—he replaced “animal” with “person” in red font in headlines about cruelty so we’d see what we’d been saying all along, then offered us “you’re in the ideation phase” as a metaphor that promotes equality and allows for failure and growth instead of perpetual subjugation. These four—one celebrating a philosophy of imperfection, three dismantling metaphors that harm us—all showed us how language shapes the way we see the world, and how paying attention to that language is the first step toward living more deliberately.

Day 3: Savannah gave us “fish without a school,” not fish out of water gasping and dying, but fish separated and vulnerable yet still capable of survival, still able to find their way back to comfort, and she showed us real people displaced and struggling who don’t fit the metaphor of certain death when they’re just temporarily out of place. Chase started with neuroscience, showing us the hippocampus and amygdala lighting up when we process metaphors, and then used that science to dismantle burnout, proving how the metaphor shifts blame from organizations to individuals, and he gave us “my ecosystem is out of balance” instead, relocating the problem from the person to the environment, and her audience loved “stress is a signal of an imbalance” because it freed them from the burden of failure. Lizzie walked into grief and stayed there, listening to her peers’ definitions of grief, giving us two interviews that showed how “moving on” lands differently on different people, and she asked the essential question “what does healthy mourning look like?” without rushing toward an answer, letting the difficulty sit in the room, and her peers were moved because she had given them permission to grieve without a destination. Clarissa showed us the immune system as an army and then proved why that metaphor exhausts instead of energizes, why it makes sickness feel like personal failure, and she gave us the garden instead, the ecosystem, imbalance instead of invasion, and when she said “the metaphor doesn’t energize, it exhausts” you could feel the room recognize the truth of it. These four took metaphors that harm and offered us alternatives that insist on survival, on systemic responsibility, on staying present, on gardens instead of battlefields, and they did it with research and specificity and the kind of attention that changes how we see the world.

Day 4: They examined the achievement gap that blames students instead of systems, the oldest profession that makes exploitation seem inevitable, the goldfish memory that justifies cruelty to animals, and the silver lining that can comfort or silence depending on who’s speaking and who’s listening. This work requires you to question what sounds reasonable, to ask who benefits when we call something a gap or a profession or a memory or a lining. Saanvi asked the room what achievement means, got twenty different answers, and conducted her own study showing students develop career goals only after exposure to possibilities—then proposed we abandon umbrella terms for accurate language that doesn’t flatten complexity. Sophia told us about Kika selling herself for three dollars in pink shorts and a black bra, made her real before making her a statistic, and ended with “for Kika” so we couldn’t look away from the girl the metaphor erases. Emily showed us the goldfish brain next to her laptop, proved that fish remember pain despite what we tell ourselves to justify keeping them in dirty bowls, and gave us “my memory is a sassy child” instead of putting down another species. Andrew traced “silver lining” from Milton to COVID, showed us the usage spike during the pandemic, and gave us both the real hope and the toxic positivity, refusing easy answers about whether comfort helps or harms. They are asking us to see who gets blamed, who gets erased, who gets hurt, and who gets silenced when we reach for familiar phrases instead of looking directly at what’s in front of us.

Day 5: Ben showed us how “suck it up” traveled from 1907 military chests and WWI acidic fumes into a phrase we use to quell everyday complaining, turning a life-or-death directive into a way to silence people who need help, and he gave us “find a way to win” from his dad as an alternative that builds agency instead of suppression. Faiza traced “playing devil’s advocate” back to the Catholic Church’s careful testing of sainthood and showed us how it drifted into a phrase that frames dissent as subversive, pushing us toward groupthink and blind following, and she gave us “challenger” and “playing the opposite hand” in green like doors opening, reminding us that advocacy is a privilege and disagreement drives invention. Tommy dismantled “wheelchair bound” by showing us a Paralympian and asking if we see him as bound, then proving that wheelchairs are keys that open doors to cities and classrooms, that the problem is architecture not accommodating bodies rather than bodies failing to fit spaces, and he interviewed Ben about accessibility challenges so theory became lived experience. Victoria gave us the ouroboros across millennia—Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus, Greek spells, Norse serpents, alchemical seals—and traced how the snake eating its own tail moves through cultures as a map of cycle and rebirth, showing us her research frustrations honestly and connecting ancient philosophy to modern AI consuming human creativity. Jonathan used stereotype threat to prove that expectation shapes reality, that when we’re told a test reveals gender differences we perform worse than when we’re told it’s fair, and he gave us a list of limiting metaphors we use and empowering alternatives that reframe obstacles as mental workouts, closing with “I will build my own doorway and create my own luck.” These five took phrases we say without thinking and showed us the weight they carry, the doors they close, the expectations they create, and they offered us language that opens instead of confines, that names the system instead of the person, that insists we can author our own stories even when the world moves the goalposts.

Pumpkin Pie Open Mic at Dr. H’s Hampstead flat: 23 students, 3 evenings, 60+ poems and songs:

Light Metaphor

Light Metaphor: Critique

• Emily
• Jonathan
• Alex
• Erin
• Savannah
• Saanvi
• Andrew
• Chase

Light Metaphor: Nuanced/Complicated

• Caitlin
• Victoria
• Clarissa
• Chloe

Intersectional Critique

• Elizabeth

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Cancer Metaphors

Cancer Metaphor: Critique

• Chendan
• Neha
• Faiza
• Aarav

Cancer Metaphor: Contextual

• Marianne
• Tommy
• Sophia
• Ben

Oxford Bonfire reunion: January 25, Dr. H’s home! Mark your calendars

The British Museum Scavenger Hunt, September 28

You came back from the museum with photographs of gods and weapons, pots meant to be shattered and statues weighing several tons. The assignment asked you to find visual metaphors for power and spirituality, and you delivered: a fish carrying a shrine on its back, the divine rescuing knowledge from cosmic flood. A goddess made of bones and skulls where transformation is written in death itself. A female deity standing on her husband’s chest. A mummy whose wrapping became metaphor for how we all get wrapped up in emotional turmoil and the chaos of everyday life. A lotus where separate parts combine into one structure that is both spiritual and powerful. Red skin that signals not anger but fierce compassion. Samurai armor displayed in a box marked with a coat of arms, funded by tobacco money from a company embroiled in scandal. The Rosetta Stone as metaphor for how language becomes a tool of control, literacy withheld to maintain class separation. You found the sacred and the political braided together in clay, stone, bronze, and bone.

Then you turned to repatriation, one of the assignment’s central questions. Should the pots go home so a grandmother’s soul can finally pass into the afterlife, or does preservation matter more than spiritual practice? One argued that tobacco money—2,420 acquisitions funded by a company known for smuggling and deception—taints every object it touches. Another traced wealth back to Jamaican slave plantations and said let Jamaica decide what justice means. Someone else noticed the African galleries hidden beneath other floors, accessible by a single staircase, and realized the architecture itself confesses imperial priorities. They compared interpretations: the same artifacts yielded different ethical conclusions, the same fish told stories of both salvation and flood. Twenty-two students, one minute each, learning that objects tell their stories when we stop long enough to listen. The fish speaks of protection. The pot speaks of a soul waiting. The museum’s marble columns speak of performed legitimacy. The Venus speaks of our power to watch. The armor speaks of blood money disguised as culture. The phoenix carved into stone speaks of rebirth. The hidden staircase speaks of what institutions hope we won’t notice. What matters is whether we’re paying attention.

🏆 Most Research Repatriation Case: Andrew For investigating the British Museum’s ongoing acceptance of JTI tobacco funding—2,420 acquisitions purchased through reputation laundering from a company embroiled in lobbying, deceptive advertising, and smuggling. Andrew expanded what repatriation critique can mean: not just historical theft, but present-day ethical compromise that’s happening right now.

🏆 Most Egregious Institutional Critique (The Meta-Repatriation Award): Chase For using the museum itself as an artifact of colonial power. Chase exposed the spatial politics of hidden Native American exhibits and underground African galleries, connected “educating the layman” to “White Man’s burden,” and asked whether the entire institution should be reimagined. Five classmates cited her work—she fundamentally changed how we see the building.

🏆 Most Spiritually Egregious Case: Sophia For revealing that the British Museum’s “preservation” of Ghanaian clay pots is actually soul imprisonment—these objects were meant to be smashed so the deceased could reach the afterlife. Museum protection becomes profound spiritual violation.

🏆 Most Legally Sophisticated Argument: Chendan For the nuanced “dirty money” analysis of the Xi Wang Mu statue—distinguishing cultural repatriation from financial repatriation, and centering Jamaican agency in determining what justice looks like when objects were purchased with wealth from slavery.

https://forms.microsoft.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=nPsE4KSwT0K80DImBtXfOKeohWQYtiZDt_t7a1ItmcJUM0NWR1BMNklHNlROOTNNTUkyTVNGUTJGNC4u

https://emory.zoom.us/j/98948288952

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Silver bullet
Bite the bullet
Ride Shotgun
Straight-shooter
Hot-shot
Shot in the dark
Go ballistic
Shoot from the hip
Gun shy
Shoot your mouth off
Under the gun
Pull the trigger

“Kill two birds with one stone”

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