Week of 1/16

Weds

HW/Prep: Check and activate/reset email, network, and webct.

Fri 

HW/Prep: Print and read "Varieties of Texts" and "Why Theory"
(* this is the introduction to the book Theory Toolbox but you can read this first assignment through the web reserve)

Next Week: We'll visit the computer lab during class Monday; Do Check your username and passwords.  The first weekly blog will be due by class-time next friday. We'll be moving from introductory reading into our first major literary reading, Lorca's play "Blood Wedding." This is already available for you to print from the web reserve. I'll ask Groups A and I to be ready to act as "Panels" on friday. More on what this means next week; for now, members of those groups might get a head start on the reading and do some web-browsing about Lorca and the play.

 

 

 

 

Week of 1/23

Mon

HW - Be prepared to discuss the Varieties of Texts. Read through the second act of Blood Wedding, which we'll begin discussing on Friday.

Weds

HW - Finish Act II of Blood Wedding.

Fri

HW - Finish reading the play and post to the blog for monday. Groups A and I will be the first panels; for Monday panels should read carefully, do some extra web-browsing about Lorca and the play, and use your group blog to gather your thoughts.

Finish discussion of Act I and begin II with the participation of Panels A and I

 

 

 

 

Week of 1/30

Mon

HW - Read Ch. 2, "Author/Authority" Theory Toolbox

Weds

  1. Discuss: Author/Authority as critical terms, their history, and they way we use them in responding to literature.
  2. Discuss: (Key themes, characters, events, and language through Act II)

HW: Marginal notation (on Post-its) especially for ACT III.

Fri

HW: Choose a passage of dialogue from one character in the play that suggests something about a character's sense of choice, will, fate, or desire. Who is in control? Who is responsible? Does one act out one's own plans? Blog the "quoted passage," your response to the questions above, and then conclude by considering whether Saura's film respects or challenges Lorca's authority on this.

 

 

 

Week of 2/5

Mon

HW: Read Marguerite de Navarre (pp. 3-12).  Think about the form: short tales bound by an over-arching frame tale. While there's a single named author, think about how each tale is assigned to a different teller; and how the "moral" of the story is discussed by characters at the conclusion of each.

Weds

Sherwood on pain-killer today. No class meeting.

Visit WebCT before midnight Thursday to take a quiz on Navarre.   (Problems?: Your WebCT ID should be four letters; the password can be reset at the library help desk. )

Panels B, J prepare for Friday. (Wikipeida: Heptameron by Marguerite of Navarre; UVA Library Exhibit

Fri

HW: Read the two translations of Red Riding Hood and Flora Steele's "Tiger, Jackal, and Brahman" from Punjab tales; compare with others you might know in terms of language, theme, and the explicit moral.

Groups C and K should do some context reading: in the mid 1800s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published German versions of Red Riding Hood, which are generally the source of children's picture books.

 

 

 

 

Week of 2/13

This week we'll look at a few traditional tales, examples of writing that has often been considered non-literary. (Punjab tales, Red Riding Hood, and Uncle Remus pp. 12-18)  We'll consider how ideas about authors, audience, tellers and readers influence what we make of them.  Do we suffer from a lack of "authority" when reading a text without a traditional author? Does it make a difference whether an author is lost (i.e. anonymous) or never a single person to begin with? What purposes and themes can we infer from such tales? What should we make of that fact that many familiar stories exist in dramatically different versions? Should we consider tellers' revisions and later versions as corrupt?  

Mon

HW: Read the two tales from Uncle Remus. Groups D and L - prepare to help establish the context for Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus (when he wrote/collected them), the idea of the trickster, and the issues of dialect speech.

Weds

HW: Read Theory Toolbox Ch 3 "Reading" & take WEBCT QUIZ (between Weds. 8pm and Fri-10am)

Fri

HW:

  1. Post a thoughtful (200 word) blog entry on fairy and folk tales. Discuss the issues of most interest to you.  Or use the toolbox chapter concept (concept=reading as a production of meaning within contexts) to speculate on how you might read such tales to your grandchildren, say in the year 2036.
  2. Begin reading Don Quixote (through chapter 3, pp. 19-33) paying special attention to ideas about the trustworthiness of authors and the "dangerous" influence of books.

 

GROUPS E and L  - you'll be up as panelists on Wednesday of next week.  The Wikipedia article isn't a bad place to start background reading.

 

 

 

 

Week of 2/20

Mon:

Paul Gustave Doré - Quixote Illustrations

Discuss: Don Quixote (through chapter 3, pp. 19-33) paying special attention to ideas about the trustworthiness of authors and the "dangerous" influence of books.

  1. How does the preface shape our expectations, as readers, as we learn about the author's "worries" over what it lacks, or how it differs from other books?
  2. How does the first chapter describe Quixote's transformation, and what do we make of a purportedly true book about a figure who loses his wits, first believing and then enacting what he has read?
  3. Does DQ's ritual renaming of things strike you as having any kind of sense to it?
  4. How do we respond to the complexity of Quixote's ability to transform the common into the noble while refusing to "cheat" with respect to becoming a knight, etc.

 

GROUPS E and L  - you'll be up as panelists on Wednesday of next week.  The Wikipedia article isn't a bad place to start background reading.

HW: read chapters IV (4) and VI (6), pp. 34-42.

Weds

Discuss Quixote, beginning with chapter III(3), then IV and VI.

HW: read chapters 9, 18, 22, & 52 (pp. 47-69) for Monday.

Fri

Meeting: Class will not meet in LEO 219 today. As a substitute meeting, we will attend the OffPage performance of Charles Bernstein Tuesday, April 11, 8pm. [Students with a documented class or work conflict may request an alternate assignment]

E-assignment:  please logon to your blog, and respond to the following question about Don Quixote:

How do you respond to the noble-ambition/foolishness of Quixote's actions? Do you feel compelled to sympathy or disdain? Compare your response to that of a character (in one of the two final chapters). Does that character mirror your own or not? If not, speculate on how the context within which your reading it (US, 2005, required course reading) might explain the difference. If yes, how is it possible given the different contexts?

Preparation for next week:

All Students - This will be your last blog entry in the first half of the semester; as per the syllabus, I will ask you to submit a portfolio (NEXT FRIDAY) containing paper copies of your blog entries to date.  You should copy and paste entries into a word file, one to a page, and attach a coverpage with your name, course section, and date. As I look at individual entries in the context of the portfolio, I'll be looking for wholistic evidence that you have read carefully and thoughtfully, and tried to reflect insights gained from class lectures and discussion.

Groups F, M, & N - Prepare to serve as panels Monday.

 

 

 

Week of 2/27

All Students - Portfolio (DUE FRIDAY) containing paper copies of your blog entries to date.  You should copy and paste entries into a word file, one to a page, and attach a coverpage with your name, course section, and date. As I look at individual entries in the context of the portfolio, I'll be looking for wholistic evidence that you have read carefully and thoughtfully, and tried to reflect insights gained from class lectures and discussion.

E-assignment (due monday):  please logon to your blog, and respond to the following question about Don Quixote:

How do you respond to the noble-ambition/foolishness of Quixote's actions? Do you feel compelled to sympathy or disdain? Compare your response to that of a character (in one of the two final chapters). Does that character mirror your own or not? If not, speculate on how the context within which your reading it (US, 2005, required course reading) might explain the difference. If yes, how is it possible given the different contexts?

Mon: Groups F, M, & N

  1. Discuss student blog perspectives (see above) on the nobilty/foolishness of Quixote's ideals, actions, & reception.
  2. Consider characteristic moments (such as: drubbing at hands of muleteer p. 37/Ch 3; battle with the windmills pp. 42-43/Ch 8); and the conflict with the Biscayan and its resolution, pp. 44-49, Chs. 8,9.)
  3. What judgments are expected of readers? What is the status of books? (in light of the literary judgments of the curate and barber (pp. 38-46) and the reliance on Cide Hamete Benengeli's manuscript (pp. 48-49)).

Weds

Concluding discussion of Don Quixote

  1. Students' post-it observations on the final chapter
  2. Mythic fiction

    Myths, National heroes, Archetypal characters?

    The author or teller imagines an adventure and characters into being, but audiences and readers confer upon them longevity and fame. In history, we recognize the mythic status of figures like Washington, who become literary as their characters grow to suit mythic ideas about the Nation. Even fictive characters and archetypes (the wolf, the prince) take on the force of seeming truth. The novel Don Quixote allows a fictive character to pursue recognition and glory which, at the end of the first book, are achieved for Quixote himself and for his companions as marked by the closing sonnets. This is quite different from 21st century fame, yet the narrative and structure are repeated today in popular culture, through the continuing interest in this Quixote figure. What does he represent for the modern imagination? Why does he still sally forth after 400 years?
     
  3. Respond to Radio Open Source Clips - Quixote at 400

HW: Read Paredes, ch. 1. (NOTE: These readings are contained within the book With His Pistol In His Hand not the xerox packet).

Fri:

Introduction to With His Pistol in His Hand / The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.

  1. Collect Blogs
  2. What makes the "cultural space" and time from which the corrido comes distinctive? Discuss this background
  3. Introduction to the corrido, and to the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez -

Smithsonian- CorridosSinFronteras (note - requires Explorer, Flash, and pop-up protection disabled; it will not work with Firefox).

Learn / What is a Corrido, Corridos and Today's Music, Voice of the People

HW: Read Paredes, Chs. 2 and 4 for Monday. Groups G and O - Explore the Smithsonian Exhibit over the weekend, so you can take the panelists' chair next class.

 

 

 

Week of 3/5

Mon: Groups G and O

Paredes tells us that a performance of the song would often be followed by a version of the legendary story. The singing becomes an occasion for remembering and for reinforcing ideas and values.

  1. Discuss what The Legend (ch. 2) reveals about cultural values and conflicts; how is the story of Gregorio Cortez used in its telling (by the teller and its implied audience)? Are the moments where the story seems to be embellished or shaped to a specific purpose (that has little to do with actual events or a credible report)?
  2. See Greenblatt's definition of Culture.  Freewrite (5 minutes) on one of the six cultural questions. Discuss.

HW: Read Ch 5 (pp.143-150);  Ch.6 Variants. 

Weds.

Contemporary Recordings - Film "With His Pistol In His Hand"

  1. Finish discussion of cultural questions.
  2. What accounts for the varied descriptions of GC? (111)  How does Román acquire his characterization? (116)?  What is Paredes' conclusion about the relation of the historical man and the border hero? (124-5)
  3. VARIANTS- Discuss contrasts and significance of the collected variants. What is the lowest common denominator? What do alterations suggest about the values of singers or audiences? the uses of a song?
  4. How does the abbreviated form of song variants work in relation to the legend?  

HW: Read selections from Ch 7 Study (pp. 175-187, 216-219, 227-240).
Post to blog, using cultural questions of praise/blame as a starting point.

Friday - Conclude Gregorio Cortez:

  1. Discuss omissions: place names (omitted or changed)
    scene setting (omitted)
    narration of encounter, omitted
    event sequence

    Key passages: defiant statement ("I am Gregorio Cortez")
    contrast of courage and fear, the driven man and mercenary
    group affiliation (Mexicans / Americanos, Rinches)
     
  2. How does the film participate in the "retelling" and versioning of which we have been talking? Does the exploration of multiple perspectives allow it not to "take sides"? With respect to the cultural issues (of values, freedom/constraint, social structures), does the film aspire to a "literal" representation or does it revise the story to make it useful for the 1980s?

 

HW: Read Toolbox Ch.6 for Monday after break. (If you haven't already, please also post to blog, using cultural questions of praise/blame as a starting point.)

Week of 3/19

Mon:

  1. Overview of Toolbox  -- "culture" as a tool box term: popular, "high," multi- and the social web (of texts, beliefs, practices, rituals, myths, images, and group identifications) that comprise subjectivity.
  2. In-class Writing and Discussion of Ch.5 / Culture Working Questions
  3. HW: Post a self-evaluation based on the Rubric for Blog Portfolio.
    Read for Wednesday

 

 

 

 

Weds:  (*skipping Matthew Arnold)

  1. Review "Cultural norms [establish the terms] by which something becomes meaningful" (56), and so "are just as necessary as they are inherently exclusionary." (57) Culture texts including even football cheers can be seen as teaching/reinforcing. Education has traditionally favored certain "timeless" values (see Hart, pp. 66-67). 
  2. Discuss "high culture" in relation to Marvell: "To His Coy Mistress" (corrected)
    1. Listen to this poem and imagine it as an Arnoldian exhibit in the case of Mandatory Civilizing Education v. the Raw Student.
    2.  How does Marvell's poem "elevate" the proposition, making seduction into a discussion that reinforces (or draws upon) specific cultural values? What are some of the ideas implicitly held in common by at least the speaker and mistress? (Stanzas A, B, C)
    3. What would this poem look like translated into a modern genre (rock, blues, or rap lyrics)? (class composition)
  3. Browning: "My Last Duchess" (c): read as a companion piece, how does Browning's poem touch on similar ideas about gender roles and unions, power, and propriety?

HW: Read for Friday: Blues Lyrics (c) and *James Weldon Johnson, Introduction and poems (Pages 86-94, 102-106; we're omitting some of the other included poems for now)

Groups H & P: Panel - Post to Blog (before class meets):
 

 

 

 

Friday:

Discuss "popular culture" and cultural identification in the blues and poems such as Johnson's "The Creation" or McKay's "If we Must Die".

  1. What makes the blues recognizable even from the lyrics? (subject, theme, form)  Sherwood Post
  2. Listening: what kinds of cultural identifications are implied? (to whom do they speak? do they invite kinds of sympathy, participation, shared experience?)
  3. See panel blogs
  4. How do Johnson's concerns about African American music and writing relate to competing ideas about culture?  High art v. low art; or the everyday map of a cultural group?

 

Continued to Monday? : In terms of form, subject, and language -- what decisions do the Johnson and McKay poems imply with respect to "elevated" culture?
 

HW:  Read or reread Johnson (introduction and poems) and McKay (also in the Negro Anthology section of the packet)

Post to blog on culture and poems: How useful is the vocabulary of culture for comparing canonic poems like Marvell and Arnold with blues lyrics or modern poems? Do they illustrate distinctions between "high" and "popular" or low culture? What do Johnson's changing decisions about language and form suggest about his attitude toward cultural questions?

Week of 3/27

 

Mon:

Review Panel Blogs - Groups H & P
 

Discuss "popular culture" and cultural identification  poems such as Johnson's "The Creation" or McKay's "If we Must Die".

How do Johnson's concerns about African American music and writing relate to competing ideas about culture?  High art v. low art; or the everyday map of a cultural group? In terms of form, subject, and language -- what decisions do the Johnson and McKay poems imply with respect to "elevated" culture?

HW:
Read Toolbox "Subjectivity" (pp. 35-48)
BLOG - Response (200 words) to one of the working questions on page 42 or 43-44) (*all Students except panel groups.)
Groups I/A: Prepare to share your posts on Q#2, p. 44 and explain how the term "subject" is illustrated by the adbusters spoof on page 44.

Weds:

  1. Panels introduce subjectivity by sharing posts and explaining Adbusters.  (I  / A)
  2. Discussion of toolbox concept by looking at the three discussion questions.
  3. Review some key passages
  4. "There's a Beauty in the Sound," Charles Bernstein

HW: Read Gliman's " Yellow Wallpaper" pp. 122-35 (xerox)
Groups: J/B Post blog in advance of Friday's class; be prepared to share your post. (See below)


 

Friday:

Discussion of "Yellow Wallpaper"

  1. Panel introduction on subjectivity of the main character (J, B)
  2. Group - ex: Chart key "codes" on a given page of the story
    1. How does a given code thread through the whole story? What are some of the dominant patterns?
    2. What does the story suggest about one (or more) of the multiple facets of the main characters subject position? Can we follow a single code through the whole text; what does it suggest about the ways in which the character is enabled and confined? (e.g. What does the text suggest about what it means to be a patient, what are the expectations?)

HW:  (No additional blog for today's panelists)
Blog for Monday: Subjectivity and Gilman. In this story, the narrator's breakdown seems linked with her social role . Reflect upon one of the many issues (gender, motherhood, wifely obedience, medicine, women and writing) it raises in terms of subjectivity. 

* Next week: Monday we'll conclude our discussion of Gilman. Then we'll move to a discussion of poetry and subjectivity -- beginning with Whitman (you can get a head start) and then diverting our attention to Charles Bernstein (special handout) who will be visiting campus April 11th). Groups K and C, I'll have a Whitman/Weds. "panel" assignment for you next class

 



 


Tuesday, Apr. 11 – 8pm
(Class visit, 11:30am - Leo 219)

Week of 4/3

Mon:

Groups: chart key "codes" on a given page of the story and discuss
  1. How does a given code thread through the whole story? What are some of the dominant patterns?
  2. What does the story suggest about one (or more) of the multiple facets of the main characters subject position? Can we follow a single code through the whole text; what does it suggest about the ways in which the character is enabled and confined? (e.g. What does the text suggest about what it means to be a patient, what are the expectations?)

HW: Read Whitman, pp. 135-142; listen to 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 21, 24. RealAudio
Groups K & C: Please pre-blog: Consider "Song of Myself" as a performance of mythic subjectivity, i.e. as an expression of a democratic subject rather than of an arrogant individual. What limits and liberties are evident for this subject? How does the imagined "self" and its relations to others extend the idea of the democratic beyond politics?

Whitman Links: Maps Literary Criticism, Library of Congress, Wikipedia, Whitman's own voice 

Weds:

  1. Listen to Orson Welles' Whitman
  2. Discuss projection of an idealized, democratic self -- poetry as a form of myth-making.

HW: Read handout: "There's beauty," "Thank You," "Dear Mr. Fanelli," and "The Boy Soprano", pp.1, 4-6.

Fri:

  1. Discuss presentation of self in Bernstein's poems: the suspicion of readymade subject positions / vocabularies, and the uses of disruption (humor, irony, disjunction) to stimulate perceptions of the everyday.
  2. Poetry and the linguistic turn.  What if words come before ideas? Would they be used transparently, playfully, seriously, sacredly?
  3. Poetry and school. Does poetry as "high culture" get used to constrain? How do these poems engage applaud or heckle culture?

HW: Choose a remaining Bernstein poem and comment upon it for the blog.

 

Bernstein Media - See PennSound

Poems Here

Video Here:

Poetry Audio Here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week of 4/ 10

Mon: Poems Here | Poetry Audio: The Boy Soprano | Talk To Me (19:16) from "Impulsive Behavior" at the Whitney Museum, NY, April 8, 1999.

Review select student blogs; continue discussion of poems .... (Boy Soprano, August, Idiopathic Pathogenesis)

  1. Discuss presentation of self in Bernstein's poems: the suspicion of readymade subject positions / vocabularies, and the uses of disruption (humor, irony, disjunction) to stimulate perceptions of the everyday.
  2. Poetry and the linguistic turn.  What if words come before ideas? Would they be used transparently, playfully, seriously, sacredly?
  3. Poetry and school. Does poetry as "high culture" get used to constrain? How do these poems engage applaud or heckle culture?

HW: Choose a Bernstein poem you find interesting, blog a comment or question about it.

Wednesday:

  1. Offpage debriefing. What were your impressions of the reading? How does the experience of a live event differ from hearing digital audio in class? Were there surprises or puzzles?
  2. Further discussion of Whitman (beginning of 24, 52; omissions) culture/subjectivity.

Friday:

  1. Reading day - no class meeting. 

For monday, please read the Swift's Gullivers Travels / Houynhms section 4 (163-206) A WebCT quiz will be posted this weekend and should be completed by midnight monday.

 

 

 

 

Week of April 17

Monday

I now venture to send them into the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of politics and party.

  1. Travel narratives - Discussion of the encounters in chapters 1 and 2, between Gulliver and the occupants of Houyhnhnmland.  What does the process of reorientation, the sequence of mistaken inferences and revelations allow the text to suggest? What questions does it provoke? What difference would it make if this were a post-Darwin text, or perhaps even a bestseller published last year?

HW: Complete WebCT quiz by midnight. Groups K & C, please do some background browsing on Swift's historical context (enlightenment), Gulliver's Travels, or other notable works (such as A Modest Proposal).

Wednesday

  1. Panels K & C. Social and historical context of the novel.
  2. Discussion: Chapters3-7 - How does G's time with the Houyhnhnm's effect his own view of himself and his home civilization. Swift's commentary on "culture" and the subject -- with its allegorical slipperiness and irony--can render puzzlingly different images for readers in terms of: reason, human nature, perfectibility, the individual/social relations.
  3. Or: groups choose a term above and identify a corresponding novel passage. Then freewrite.

HW: Read Ideology (pp. 83-91).

BLOG (250-350 words) discussing your understanding of ideology as a concept, then apply this understanding to some aspect of Swift's novel. Perhaps you see him revealing the ideologies of England and Europe, or his own, or that of the Houyhnhnms, or our own as readers? Try to show how thinking with this concept might effect one's interpretation of the whole text; refer to a specific example/examples in the novel.

Friday

  1. Discussion: Introduction and conclusion.
  2. Consider especially the introduction and final chapters to book four. How does the novel invite us to depart from the narrator's own conclusions?
  3. How do we see ideology at work? Ideology critique? Do we exchange one view for another? Are all views put into question? 

HW: Read Woolf's "A Society"  (pp. 154-163).  Take WebCT quiz before Monday 10am.