I recently taught an eight-week course at Trinity Episcopal Parish in Searcy, Arkansas, on architectural and liturgical semiotics. I sought to answer this question: “What are the recurring motifs and movements that occur in this space, and what do they tell us about the kind of people that inhabit the space?” In other words, who do we become when we allow the space to function as intended? Trinity is on the National Register of Historic Places, and features an architectural style called Saxon Parish, which is essentially a compressed form of the Neo-Gothic style. The Saxon Parish style is fairly rare in the United States, earning Trinity its place on the register. The Neo-Gothic style is characterized by a number of distinctive features (ornate tracery, buttresses, stained glass, intense verticality, etc.), but the simplest and most identifiable is the pointed arch. Hundreds of iterations of the arch can be found around Trinity, and I quickly latched onto its symbolism and theology as I explored the more composite motifs in the space. Anglo-Catholic liturgy, especially the expression I experienced at Trinity, involves a great deal of movement, ranging from processions to kneeling, genuflections to reverences. I combined the idea of the pointed arch with the prominent movement of the liturgy and found the greatest symbolic resource for approaching the implications of my original question: the doorway.
I think that the idea of the doorway can also be applied to the graduate student experience. The graduate student inhabits a liminal space between student and teacher in which qualities of both are expressed, but this isn’t a space in which one is intended to stay forever. I’m reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House, which is conveniently located just down the road from me at Crystal Bridges. Wright used a technique that he called “Compression and Release” to design the spaces between spaces in the house; I noticed this most in the entryway. When one enters the house, the ceiling is low, the hallway is narrow, and darkness looms, but just ahead one can see the living room with its openness and abundant natural light. Wright designed the entryway in this way because he wanted inhabitants to congregate in the spaces intended for congregating (living rooms and outdoor spaces primarily), rather than stagnating in cramped hallways and at uninhabitable thresholds. Similarly, the graduate experience is not supposed to last forever; the openness of life as a philosopher is just ahead, but there still is an entryway to pass through.
I envision this series as a sort of guest book, a record of the people who are passing (or have already passed) over the threshold into life as a philosopher. Heraclitus’ oft-quoted “No man steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man” comes to mind: the recent graduate who enters into the master’s or doctoral program is not the same when they exit. The graduate experience involves a great deal of growth in the individual; many are truly on their own for the first time, having to navigate the complexities of the real world like their lives depend on it, all while being confronted by a world’s worth of ideas.
In Ancient Mesopotamia, many kinds of court cases were decided by river ordeal. In these trials by ordeal, at least one party would be exposed to a specific substance, usually a river, to determine the winner of the case. The god of the river ordeal was called Idlurugu, which can mean “the river that receives man” or “the river that confronts man.” The river-doorway-threshold that is the graduate experience is also a trial by ordeal, and one that shares the wide semantic range of Idlurugu; a program is designed to confront and challenge the student, to take them outside of their comfort zone in the pursuit of truth, while simultaneously receiving them into the fold of the philosophers with open arms. (I noticed the Heraclitian river reference when reviewing this post after some time and the Assyriologist in me couldn’t resist the connection.)
All of that being said, I’d like to invite current graduate students (and those who have completed a graduate program) to share your stories; these can be anything from a general reflection on your experience in a graduate program to a more focused look at a particular course, professor, or insight that you gained. I hope that a record of our experiences can support and inspire future philosophers, and I would greatly appreciate your help in compiling this record and continuing to develop this resource.
Isaac Raymond
Isaac Raymond is a teaching assistant and graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Arkansas. He holds a Bachelor of Science (2024) in Interdisciplinary Studies and Theological Studies from Harding University, where he focused on philosophy through literature, comparative religion, linguistics, and computer science.
