Archive - Readings and Class Meetings

Class meetings: Jan 10-14

1/10 - Introduction. Reflection on: liberal studies and the virtues of Engl 121;  literariness and non-literary texts -  Exhibit: Varieties of Texts.
1/12 - Review of syllabus. Introduction to the CPB - completion of first example in class. Discussion of readings: review of Toolbox C1 natural facts, assumptions, unstated and stated theories. Some questions for discussion: Frederick Douglass.
1/14 - Douglass' fashioning of himself as a representative: a fugitive slave, an orator, an author, a leader.  How the issues of establishing authority are complicated for Douglass. Introduction to the Blog.

Class meetings: Jan 17-21

1/17 - MLK
1/19 - Discussion of Douglass' Narrative in relation to authorship and authority. In-class writing activity. Review of Blog.
1/21 - Check of blogs and group assignments (9:15, 10:30, 2:15). Discussion of Gilman's "Yellow Wall-paper" and issues surrounding authority, gender, and fiction. In-class activity.

1/24 - Concluding discussion of Gilman's "Yellow Wall-paper" and issues surrounding authority, gender, and fiction. Power of the author (deference and challenge; traditionally empowered and disempowered voices). Does authorial "intent" shape, complement, or determine our "readings" and how should it?
1/26 -Continuing discussion of The Awakening. Introduction; in-class-writing on a topic from the  Discussion Guide. The Nocturnes and Impromtu (local) played by M. Reiz: MP3s - F. Chopin
1/28 - Continuing discussion of The Awakening. Further review of discussion guide questions from Wednesday. See Sherwood's blog - discussion on narrator and the mode of self-development implied by the title metaphor and associated figures.

Class Meetings Jan 31-Feb 4

1/31 -Chopin discussion. Group 1 closes discussion with presentation of final questions. Final thoughts on Chopin, especially as related to "Author/Authority" and the effects of a narrator.  Our responses to the "significance" of Edna's transformation and final acts: what is our role as readers in completing the meaning? 
2/2 - Close reading of a contemporary poem; the role of the reader. Discussion
2/4 - Introduction to drama, differing author/reader and actor/audience dynamics.  Lorca and early-20th century Spain. The cultural and gender issues in the play to which we might respond and its initial audiences. 

Class Meetings Feb 7-11

2/7 - Discussion of "indeterminate" moments in "Blood Wedding."  In what ways do Saura/Gades explore particular "readings" of such moments in the film version?
2/9 - Conclusion of Lorca discussions, Group 2 presentation (Student Prompts).  Readings and the production of meaning: a few views of Lorca (church, Republic, Franco, Abe Lincoln Brigaders, feminists). Saura film.
2/11 - Discussion of "subjectivity" in Lorca, Saura film, and "folk" literature. Discussion Prompt. Preview of Gregorio Cortez - Legends, myths, songs: how the texts of a community, culture, or nation reflect subjectivity. Big Bend

Class Meetings Feb 14-18

2/14 -  CPBs - Discuss Cortez in terms of legends, myths, songs, history; how the texts of a community, culture, or nation reflect subjectivity.  Listen to the Corrido: Corridos sin fronteras (Smithsonian Exhibit: music and text).  Corridos de Hombres Valientes, (Flamazo Norteno 2004) Sample
2/16 - Reading: how we deal with variants and the evolution of a text; Subjectivity: the uses of a song/legend. Activity.
2/18 - Finish Wednesday's activity, considering clips from the film as further variants--reproducing and/or reflecting subject positions.

This week: Gregorio Cortez. We'll read and listen to several versions of a famous border corrido, along with background and analysis by the folklorist Américo Paredes, who "collected" it.  Your homework reading is on e reserve (password SheENGL121). You should print out these pages, bringing the two files in the first folder (Cortez - The Legend) for monday; and the second (Cortez - the Variants) for Wednesday. Remember you can print these from any computer with the software Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or 7.0.

Class Meetings Feb 21-25

2/21 - Poetry.  Group readings and brief presentations of three poems (Addonizio's "Chicken" (15-16), Pafunda's "RSVP" (187), and Tate's "Bounden Duty" (233-4)) in terms of authority (and the author), reading (and the production of meaning), and subjectivity. See Class Activity. 
2/23 - Review assignment: in-class exam. Poem/recap. Introduction to Antigone (legend, and prologue).
2/25 - Antigone continued. Relation to "culture."
Read Toolbox Ch. 5: Culture for Monday. We'll continue with Antigone and relate it to issues of "culture."

Rachel Blau Duplessis
	Public Reading: Monday, March 14, 2005 8pm - Commonplace Coffeehouse (University Square on Grant St.) ~ ~ ~  Monday at 10:30am, there will be a dialogue with the author (Leo 218), instead of the regular class meeting.

Class Meetings Feb 28-Mar 4

2/28 - Antigone and "Culture"

• Culture as a whole way of life names the context within which we read, within which subjectivity is formed. Can it be outlined in regional, national, ethnic, religious, or temporal terms?

• If its borders are drawn through processes of inclusion and exclusion, how do we see this at work in the classical Antigone or in the changes Brecht introduces into his version?

• How might a screenwriter adapt a new version to our cultural moment and space?  What would an advertisement for Antigone 2005 look like?

3/2 - Contemporary poetry: Duplessis, subjectivity and the author. Reading four poems.

3/4 -  Duplessis continued; introduction to House of the Spirits.

Next Week: Read Toolbox (Ch 6/"Ideology") for Monday. Groups 6, 7, and 8 should be ready to "present" commonplace quotations from their respective chapters on Friday. (Members of other groups should, of course, read ahead through at least chapter 8). [As the syllabus notes, the English Department is holding a professional development conference on Wednesay; so classes have been cancelled.]

Class Meetings Mar 14-18

3/14 - DuPlessis

3/16 - Allende, House of the Spirits.
The first two chapters not only establish the framework for the narrative, but set up some  contrasting spaces and groups. The terms of subjectivity and culture (we/they) might lead us to focus on the respective households (del Valle, Trueba), as much as individual characters.  We could think about what factors distinguish the two families, constituting them as separate classes. Allende shows a series of cultural forces at work, establishing the expectations within each zone - even as some characters step outside of or exceed the expected. How defining are these groupings? Would it be enough to know the last name of a Trueba or a del Valle, to largely understand what made an individual character tick?  Are characters subject by their birth?

3/18 - Group 3: type a CPB (quotation and 1-2 paragraph commentary) from chapter three, selecting a passage that has to do with the special upbringing of Clara or the fierce will of Esteban. Group 4: type a CPB (quotation and 1-2 paragraph commentary) from chapter four, selecting a passage related to the possibility of taming or even escaping one's nature or background. Group 5: type a CPB (quotation and 1-2 paragraph commentary) from chapter five, selecting a passage related to forces of change and growth.

Class Meetings Mar 21-25

Mon - Ideology (Ch. 6, Toolbox). (See: Silence,  Destination Earth, Atom Bomb, Make Mine Freedom)

Sept. 11th, 1973 - BBC Historical Website | NewsHour Link on Chilean History and the Coup

Class Meetings Mar 28-Apr 1

Mon - Further discussion of group CPBs; comparision of internal "ideological confrontations" in the book and the film adaptation.

Weds - Discussion of Blogs: in what ways does Allende's novel present to us "foreign" ideologies that render our own "common sense" visible or even throw it into question? 

Fri - (further discussion of Blogs / ideology). In the final chapters and epilogue, women's subjectivity takes center stage (with the celebration of a kind of matriarchal ideology). How do we respond to this? How is US "memory" of these events distinct from the presentation Allende gives? What's the difference between history (as the "what" that happened") and fiction (as poetic telling of what might happen)?

Allende Introduction

Class Meetings April 4-8

Mon - Discuss framing of Prologue (as descent into Hell and introduction to the trope of "invisibility"); setting up a bildungsroman (narrative of the life, a coming to painful consciousness); relation of narrator to intertexts from Dante, Sermons, to Satchmo; N's positioning of us as readers. Armstrong Activity

Weds - Ideology, and the Violent emergence of Subjectivity in the Early Chapters of the Invisible Man. 
Following the prologue, the initial chapters of Ellison's Invisible Man take up the narrator's youth and growth, unfolding a process whereby the "self" comes to be aware of its nature as a subject. We will look at some of the scenarios and encounters that display to readers and the narrator how others see him, revealing the "subject position" to which he is called. At the same time, we will try to be aware of the way in which the narrator's own ideology shapes what he sees and cannot see (and how this is sometimes different from our own).   See discussion points: Class Activity English 121.

Fri -  Essay assignment review. Further discussion of chapters 1 & 2 from Wednesday. 
Chs. 4-6: The Narrator's "subject position":

• contempt for ordinary black folks (99), the figures of "masks" (Bledsoe's duplicity or double-consciousness, 102/106, 111);

• Homer A. Barbee's sermon, power as it effects the N., its irony (116-32); orality and hearing "Swing Low" within the "New World Sympony"

• Bledsoe's incredulity: "You're black and living in the South--did you forget how to lie?" (139);

• the shackle and reader's evaluation of Bledsoe (141,149); 

• journey motif: Ch. 6 ending with another paradoxical "send-off".

Take Home Essay 2 - Due Friday 4/15 In Class

Class Meetings April 11-15

Mon - Departures, arrivals, descents, and transformations: consider how the narrator negotiates his identity as he begins the trip to Harlem, deals with the subway or P Wheatstraw or Mr. Emerson. What do we/does he learn about relationships and difference? about whiteness and blackness? about solidarity? In what respects do the final events of C13 resolve IM's crisis? How can we characterize the change that has taken place?

Weds- Discuss group relations, affinity and difference, and the narrator's position. Consider in relation to Toolbox C10 (Differences).  How does the narrator begin to redefine himself (or get repositioned) in relation to his African "brothers" and those of the "brotherhood?"  Do we see a changed idea towards difference and subjectivity?   Activity

Fri -  Ellison dramatizes the IM's quandry about identity as he accepts "a new name," to be baptized in to the  brotherhood (309); the drama of this is only enhanced by our knowing displaced he has already been (in fleeing home, school, the paint factory).  It may seem that, by joining, he is giving up his "individualism" (291, 293). How ought the narrator to react when:

• he's asked to sing a spiritual (314),

• he's asked to set aside race and redefine himself as a "brother,"

• he succeeds in his second speech and imagines "the possibility of being more than a member of a race" C16 (355)

• Ras accuses him of being a traitor C17 (371-6)

• Westrum urges hiding the link of chain, so as not to "dramatize our differences" C18 (392)

• he learns that the Brotherhood's discipline forces some to shake his hand, suppressing their racist inclinations (393-4)

• an unnamed woman praises the "tom toms beating" in his voice, while expressing her liberation by seducing him C 19(413)

Are the questions and issues of identity, group membership, ethnic ties, etc. still current? How would this novel need to be rewritten if it were set in 2004?

Note revised reading schedule below. Students may write a blog on Achebe's Things Fall Apart for extra credit. Students have asked about the number of required CPB and Blog entries. Bearing in mind that quality of effort and reflection is key, I imagine the most thorough students currently would have about 18 CPBs and 8 Blog entries. (The rule in the syllabus is one CPB per night's literary reading; one Blog per major author. )

Class Meetings April 18-22

Mon - Concluding discussion of Invisible Man.  Review of blogs; discussion of N's disillusionment, identifications with Clifton and Rhinehart, the promises of the epilogue.  Difference and the novel's close: individualism?

Weds - Discussion of Difference and poetry.

Fri -  Review of Subjectivity, Ideology, Reader, Authorship in relation to a poem.

Revised Reading Schedule

Week 12
M: Apr. 4-  Invisible Man, Ellison Pro, Ch1,2: In the beginning…
W: Apr. 6 - Chs. 3-6: Deep south lessons
F: Apr.  8  Chs. 7-10: Born again, to Harlem;
TBx10: Differences

Week 13
M: Apr. 11 - Chs. 11-13: Accident and transformation – called by the yam
W: Apr. 13 - Chs. 14-20: Rising in the Brotherhood
F: Apr. 15  - Cont. through Ch. 20
Take-home Essay 2 Due

Week 14
M: Apr. 18 - Chs. 21-22: Falling with the Brotherhood
(Tues. 7pm,  last Uncommon Words)
W: Apr. 20 -  And thus....  Chs. 23-24 
F: Apr. 22 Poetry and concept review (preparing for final / essay)
Blogs and Commonplace books due in class

Courses | Sherwood |IUP English | IUP
Last Updated: 09 December, 2008