Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Jan. 11th, 2011 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bearshortyThis morning I went to campus to pick up the New Humanities book for my writing classes and then I spend pretty much all day working on the syllabus. I read three articles and skimmed some others, picked my sequences and wrote up a schedule and the class requirements and it just took me five hours to put everything together. I’m only teaching one article I assigned before, the rest will be new. I’m set for the writing class. I even got the tech guys to put it on the internet for me on the class site. (For some reason the website does not like my version of Word, I can put up anything on it but the syllabus.)
The way this writing class works is the students read six articles over the course of the semester and write a close reading assignment, five papers (5 pages each), and a midterm and a final exam. Most of the papers compare two articles (except the first one, that’s just one reading). And the articles have to link to each other in two sequences of three readings each to teach students how to develop arguments better by building on ideas. In the past, I did sequences on science and environment, on religion, on identity and self, on gender etc. This time my semester will be about culture, first about moments of cultural change and how they affect us and what prompts them and then about cultural constructions of identity, especially ethnic and religious identity. I have a few articles that really want to say that social context is everything.
Six reading assignments:
1. Henry Jenkins, “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars.” When I saw this article I knew I had to use it since it is about Harry Potter fanfiction. Well, not really. Fanfiction and online community participation and even Christian responses to Harry Potter form convergence culture and how new technology challenging traditional hierarchies. Jenkins wants to discover what this new forms of literacy mean and what new technology means. And it is about Harry Potter fanfiction! The students will be working with this article half semester. If I have to read a gazillion papers I want to read it about something that I’m interested in.
2. Susan Faludi, “The Naked Citadel.” A first female cadet is admitted into The Citadel and the chaos and responses that causes. And about gender performance at the school.
3. Malcolm Gladwell, “ The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime.” This was a chapter from his “Tipping Point” book and it is about how small change like eliminating graffiti and even arresting people for jumping the fare can transform the subway and how our environment really impacts even more than our upbringing and personality. Reading this article today made me think of the guy in Arizona since this article could say that what set him off was not his internal psychological issues but something in the environment – so he might agree that inflammatory rhetoric and perception of our government mattered more than the guy’s own mental state. This article serves as the cross between sequences so it needed to be more theoretical and Gladwell is good about having theories that are easier to understand.
4. Leila Ahmed, “On Becoming An Arab.” I taught a different article of her before but this one looks very interesting. She traces the rise of Arab identity in Egypt and her own growing identification as a Arab. She also connects it all to middle eastern politics in the twentieth century. She really shows how identity and how we perceive ourselves is really determined by our culture and cultural trends and politics. What happens to Egypt once it stops being a British colony is pretty interesting.
5. Jonathan Boyarin, “Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul” This is one article I teach every time I teach this class because it really shows how we build our religious/ethical identity, a sort of reinvention of his beliefs into a more Orthodox person.
6. Tanya M. Luhrmann, “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary US Christianity.” This will be the final exam reading. She looks how religious practices changed over the last 40 years and how there is a rise in a more personal God through trances and more intimate spiritual connections. She is a big believer that social context is everything.
I really liked Jon Stewart’s speech from Monday’s episode offering hope at this time.
This movie, called “Priest” looks like great horror cheese : A Warrior priest (Paul Bettany) fighting vampires in a dystopia world and his own order too. Yes that is the plot, it looks like cheesy fun. And in 3D! Hee. I will so rent this on DVD next year.
So I was watching Doctor Who again with cross stitching and as I was watching “Army of Ghosts” episode of end of Season 2 that takes place in Torchwood 1 I kept thinking how Ianto was there at the time which made me want to see “Torchwood.” So I put on ‘Children of Earth’ on Netflix Instant and I watched the first episode. It is even creepier than I remember. That was definitely their best season but it is really hard to watch. I'm looking forward to the new season this summer.
Exercise: 30 min walk
Cross-stitch: color of the day is tan for little bear’s head
The way this writing class works is the students read six articles over the course of the semester and write a close reading assignment, five papers (5 pages each), and a midterm and a final exam. Most of the papers compare two articles (except the first one, that’s just one reading). And the articles have to link to each other in two sequences of three readings each to teach students how to develop arguments better by building on ideas. In the past, I did sequences on science and environment, on religion, on identity and self, on gender etc. This time my semester will be about culture, first about moments of cultural change and how they affect us and what prompts them and then about cultural constructions of identity, especially ethnic and religious identity. I have a few articles that really want to say that social context is everything.
Six reading assignments:
1. Henry Jenkins, “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars.” When I saw this article I knew I had to use it since it is about Harry Potter fanfiction. Well, not really. Fanfiction and online community participation and even Christian responses to Harry Potter form convergence culture and how new technology challenging traditional hierarchies. Jenkins wants to discover what this new forms of literacy mean and what new technology means. And it is about Harry Potter fanfiction! The students will be working with this article half semester. If I have to read a gazillion papers I want to read it about something that I’m interested in.
2. Susan Faludi, “The Naked Citadel.” A first female cadet is admitted into The Citadel and the chaos and responses that causes. And about gender performance at the school.
3. Malcolm Gladwell, “ The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime.” This was a chapter from his “Tipping Point” book and it is about how small change like eliminating graffiti and even arresting people for jumping the fare can transform the subway and how our environment really impacts even more than our upbringing and personality. Reading this article today made me think of the guy in Arizona since this article could say that what set him off was not his internal psychological issues but something in the environment – so he might agree that inflammatory rhetoric and perception of our government mattered more than the guy’s own mental state. This article serves as the cross between sequences so it needed to be more theoretical and Gladwell is good about having theories that are easier to understand.
4. Leila Ahmed, “On Becoming An Arab.” I taught a different article of her before but this one looks very interesting. She traces the rise of Arab identity in Egypt and her own growing identification as a Arab. She also connects it all to middle eastern politics in the twentieth century. She really shows how identity and how we perceive ourselves is really determined by our culture and cultural trends and politics. What happens to Egypt once it stops being a British colony is pretty interesting.
5. Jonathan Boyarin, “Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul” This is one article I teach every time I teach this class because it really shows how we build our religious/ethical identity, a sort of reinvention of his beliefs into a more Orthodox person.
6. Tanya M. Luhrmann, “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary US Christianity.” This will be the final exam reading. She looks how religious practices changed over the last 40 years and how there is a rise in a more personal God through trances and more intimate spiritual connections. She is a big believer that social context is everything.
I really liked Jon Stewart’s speech from Monday’s episode offering hope at this time.
This movie, called “Priest” looks like great horror cheese : A Warrior priest (Paul Bettany) fighting vampires in a dystopia world and his own order too. Yes that is the plot, it looks like cheesy fun. And in 3D! Hee. I will so rent this on DVD next year.
So I was watching Doctor Who again with cross stitching and as I was watching “Army of Ghosts” episode of end of Season 2 that takes place in Torchwood 1 I kept thinking how Ianto was there at the time which made me want to see “Torchwood.” So I put on ‘Children of Earth’ on Netflix Instant and I watched the first episode. It is even creepier than I remember. That was definitely their best season but it is really hard to watch. I'm looking forward to the new season this summer.
Exercise: 30 min walk
Cross-stitch: color of the day is tan for little bear’s head
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-12 03:26 am (UTC)