When Webb readers receive this issue on Aug. 26 or 27, I’ll be in the throes of my first-ever week teaching college.

And yet I also officially retired more than six years ago.

Here’s what happened:

Regular followers of my movie pieces will recall that on July 31, I gave a talk at Brown Library on Jaws and other 50-year-old films. Well, not only did we have a high old cinematic time that night, but it just so happened that the head of the Lycoming College department of film and video arts was on hand for our discussion. I guess the school had an adjunct prof cancel out at the last minute, leaving one fully booked fall course with no teacher. And I also guess that without even knowing it, I somehow sold myself in roughly an hour — because she offered me that slot on the spot.

I was so taken aback that I had to follow her out to the parking lot to make sure I did not misunderstand — at which point, it became a no-brainer.

None of my eight published books are exactly “racing up the best-seller list” just now; so I’d recently decided to lean harder into teaching and public speaking. Plus, the course in question happened to be “Movie Masterpieces” — pretty much right up my alley.

Five days later — after, among other things, submitting a CV that included classes at the college more than 30 years ago — I signed a contract. Whereupon I pulled out much of my remaining hair trying to decide which “great movies” to cover in just 15 weeks.

What made this choice especially tough: The course was supposed to include not only Hollywood classics but also foreign and experimental films. With everything else going on — campus parking; ID badge & room-key; security training; new online account; mastering the A-V in my classroom — it took more than two weeks to finalize my syllabus.

Perhaps Webb readers might like to see what I finally chose.

We’ll start out with Singin’ in the Rain — not only a genuine classic, but also a movie about movies. And, since its plot involves the transition to sound, it makes a great segue into our true starting-point — namely, such silent masterpieces as Murnau’s Sunrise, a Chaplin short and two features from Buster Keaton: Sherlock Jr. and The General (all available free on YouTube).

After that, we’ll move into foreign gems: de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (also free on YouTube) and then a much later Italian Oscar-winner, Life Is Beautiful. At that time, we’ll also cover French director Jean Cocteau’s visually enchanting Beauty and the Beast (live-action, 1946).

Next, I stuck in Little Fugitive, the 1953 charmer about a boy lost at Coney Island — an independent film made at a time when indies were hardly even a thing as yet.

Of course, I had to include one Hitchcock — so I went with Psycho, one of the few films that’s both experimental and a classic. In fact, this 1960 thriller would almost merit an entire course of its own. (Dream on, Joe; maybe in some future college year….)

After that, we move into sci-fi: the French short La Jetee and my personal fave, Forbidden Planet. (I’m anxious to see if this 69-year-old beauty holds up with college kids raised on Alien, Avatar and The Avengers.)

While we’re on SF, I wanted the students to study one instance of how a full-length novel gets translated to the screen; so they will watch Blade Runner — after first reading Philip K. Dick’s equally brilliant and astoundingly prescient 1968 novel-basis, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. (Gotta love that title!)

Moving toward semester’s end, I tagged In the Heat of the Night — a virtually perfect film, and a fitting springboard for showing how films can work against racial stereotypes.

I also wanted one instance of animation, preferably something the students hadn’t seen — so I went with the dazzling stop-motion French tearjerker My Life as a Zucchini (2016). And then, as one final foreign film that’s also somewhat experimental: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). It’s the true story of a French journalist whose sudden stroke left him completely paralyzed — able only to blink one eye. Yet he lived a rich life, and even wrote a book!

Struggling to decide on a final Hollywood masterpiece, I left the last movie-slot open — with an eye on Rear Window, Some Like It Hot or It’s a Wonderful Life; as it happens, I’ll be at Brown again on 12/4 to discuss that latter title.

And who knows what might come of that!