Blood and Soap

FINAL PAPER

2006-04-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

DESCRIPTION: Having examined works that attempt to confront violence in American history and violence in the American psyche, what are some of the continuing legacies of this violence into the present day? As contemporary readers and citizens who inherent these violent legacies, what are some of the critical questions and concerns regarding violence and the American psyche that we must attempt to confront and form responses to?

The final essay requires you to respond to some of the vexing questions related to violence—in all its various forms—that have been raised by each of the authors that we have read this semester. By treating some aspect of an entire work, or comparing some aspect of several works, you will address what you consider to be an important and specific problem or issue relating to violence and the American psyche. The problem or issue you choose to address will remain up to you and will be generated from your own interpretation of the literary work(s).

Although the following is by no means an exhaustive list, you might consider some of these general topics as you begin formulating and focusing your paper around a central problem or issue:

Impact of institutional forms of religion on traditional cultural values and beliefs
Effects of poverty and poor living conditions
Role of story telling
Conflict between oral tradition and writing
Literary treatment of history
The nature of mob violence
Representations of outcasts and outsider figures
Concepts of law and justice
Westward expansion and the frontier
Sources and results of communal violence
Importance of place
Memory and amnesia
Literary representations of violence
Masculinity and violence

Finally, as you begin: Think of a question that demands a response in and for our contemporary world, even if, or because, it interrogates the past. Think of a question that seeks a better understanding of the sources and causes of violence, and hence, one that moves us toward the possibility of healing the wounds inflected by violence and redressing some of the principles that violence violates.

A NOTE ON THE DEADLINES: A paper proposal will be due in section this Wednesday, April 5. Your proposal should be at least one paragraph long, contain an important question or concern that will guide your inquiry, identify the main texts (including passages, scenes, characters, etc.) that your paper will investigate, and offer a tentative description of how you plan on approaching your selected topic. I want to stress here that I am not looking for an argument or thesis at this stage, but rather, I want to see you articulate a problem or question generated from our readings and how you begin formulating ways of addressing that problem in and through the texts you aim to interpret.

After submitting your paper proposal to me, the first draft of your paper will be due in section the following week on Wednesday, April 12. The first draft should be a complete and careful draft. The more polished this version, the more you will benefit from peer review. Please bring 2 copies of your first draft to exchange with your colleagues.

As for peer review, please note that I am changing the time frame of the process for the final paper. Instead of reading and evaluating the papers in class as we did for your first paper, we will exchange papers on Wednesday, April 12 and hold our peer review workshop during our next section meeting on Friday, April 14. This means that you are responsible for reading and providing comments before we meet in discussion on Friday. This change should give you more time to provide thoughtful reflection and comments and hopefully facilitate the revision process for the final version of your paper.

The final version of your paper then is due in section on Friday, April 21. When you hand in your final paper, you must also submit at least one copy of your first draft with comments from one of your peer reviewers and submit all of your peer review forms.

FORMATTING: Your essay must be typed, double-spaced, left-justified with 1 inch margin, and in Times New Roman 12 pt. Include your name, course and section number, my name, and the date in the upper left hand corner.

Your paper must contain a title that includes the name of the author(s) and/or title(s) of the work(s) treated in your paper as well a suggestion of the main concerns and themes taken up by your paper. In short, the title should give your reader a hint of the kind of content they will find in your paper.

Section 339: Midterm Review Exercise

2006-02-22T17:08:00.000-08:00

Respond to this post if you're in 339!

Section 340: Midterm Review Exercise

2006-02-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

Respond to this post if you're in 340!

MIDTERM REVIEW

2006-02-22T16:29:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in class today, everyone will be responsible for selecting what they interpret as an important passage from one of the assigned readings through Feb 28 and then writing a response to that passage in the form of an answer for the midterm exam. Please follow the directions below as you write your mock midterm exam answer. The directions are from the Guidelines for the Midterm Examination that Professor Keller sent out earlier this week. As you will see after reading the guidelines, the current writing assignment incorporates Part I (Identification of passages) and Part II (Brief explication of selected passages) of the exam. Lastly, because I would like you to collectively construct a useful study tool, you may not choose and post on a passage if someone else in your section has already chosen and written on it.

1) Identify the full publishing name of the author and the title of the work in which the passage appears. Spell and punctuate correctly.

2) Write a sentence or two describing the context of the passage in the work by identifying: the speaker(s) or the characters(s) involved; where in the plot the passage appears or its place in/relation to the work's structure; and what precisely is happening. Describing context might involve noting other cultural contexts or historical events to which the work responds.

3) Write two or three sentences explaining the significance of the passage and how that significance is demonstrated in the specific details of the passage--such as its specific language or imagery, its tone, its uses of repetition, figurative language, allusion, etc.

If the passage you select is poetry, modify these directions as appropriate to the passage. If it doesn't involve character or plot, then in a) identify a major theme of the passage, and in b) explain the poems development of that theme by analyzing the details of the text (such as imagery, the figurative language, the connotations of specific words, the uses of rhyme, repetition, allusion, etc.).

Note: Do not post on your blog. I will set up two separate spaces on this blog for each discussion section to compile their answers.

VIOLENT PERSPECTIVES, PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE

2006-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

With our readings and discussions in mind, I would like you to take some time to view the historical photographs and postcards of lynching collected at Without Sanctuary. In the narrative that accompanies the movie shown on the website, the collector James Allen says,

Studying these photos has engendered in me a caution of whites, of the majority, of the young, of religion, of the accepted. Perhaps a certain circumspection concerning these things was already in me, but surely not as actively as after the first sight of a brittle postcard of Leo Frank dead in an oak tree. It wasn't the corpse that bewildered me as much as the canine-thin faces of the pack, lingering in the woods, circling after the kill.

For your first blog assignment, reflect and write on your experience as viewers of the photographs and postcards of lynching and compare this to your experience as readers of literary texts that represent similar acts of unspeakable violence. How does viewing a postcard of a lynching differ from reading a literary text that represents lynching? What can a novel or a poem tell us about violence and the American pysche that a picture postcard cannot? And vice versa? What does it mean for us in the 21st century to view/read about acts of violence from the past?

In your discussion, refer to at least one of the photographs/postcards collected in Without Sanctuary and at least one of the literary texts we have discussed so far this semester. Please post your 250 word responses (roughly two complete paragraphs) on your weblog by 10 p.m. this Tuesday, February 21. Finally, echoing Allen, you must begin your response with "Studying these photos [or one of the course novels or poems] has engendered in me..."

WELCOME

2006-02-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

to our course weblog! Starting this week, I invite you to create and maintain your own blog by regularly posting your writing online. I believe that blogging for English 169 will enrich our class discussions on violence and the American psyche as well as help strengthen your skills of writing, argumentation, and literary analysis.

Here are some reasons why I think blogging will be a useful learning tool for our class:

Posting online helps you hone your voice for a public: no matter what discipline or profession you plan on pursuing, your main audience will most likely include your peers and colleagues.
In writing publicly you’ll have conversations with your classmates and thus be able to practice argumentation on a responsive audience.
Indeed, the quickest way to become a smarter person is to observe your colleagues’ thinking processes and take mental notes about your own.

And here are some guidelines to keep in mind as you blog:

Grading standards don’t change just because you’re online: I expect every blog entry to contain an argument and supporting evidence.
Always Cite your sources, whether they be articles you are reading or classmates with whom you are conversing.
Think about your audience. Although you’re writing for me and your fellow classmates, do keep in mind that a larger public can also read your blog.
DUE DATES for your original entries, unless otherwise specified, will be each Tuesday by 8 p.m. and responses to a classmate's blog entry will be due each Thursday by 8 p.m.

I greatly look forward to continuing our classroom conversations online and extending our blog discussions into the classroom.

2006-02-16T19:45:00.000-08:00