Course Updates

Thursday, May 28th: Please bring a 2+ page draft of your essay for an in-class workshop. Also, please read Act I of Glengarry, Glen Ross.

Tuesday, June 2nd: In-class video of Glengarry, Glen Ross. Please finish the play.

Thursday, June 4th: Final Essay is due by 12NOON--in my office, Voorhies 320.
You may slide it under the door or from 11am-noon a colleague will be in the office so you can place it directly on my desk.

Wednesday, June 10th: Final Exam in Olson 117 (our usual room). Bring your reflection paper and be prepared to present.

May 19th Meeting Schedule

Tuesday, May 19th
Picnic Tables at the MU, facing the Quad, near the flagpole
Bring your Abstract and your ideas/questions about the essay so we can brainstorm and get you moving on the project.

8-8.15: Larry
8.15-8.30 Vince
8.30-8.45 Anais
8.45-9 Jhoana, Alvin
9-9.15 Aram
9.15-9.30 Alesia, Natalie
9.30-9.45 Emily C., Paige
9.45-10 Smita, Jen
10-10.15 Maggie, Cassie
10.15-10.30 Amelia, Jason Y
10.30-10.45 Jason S, Nghia
10.45-11 Lucas, Terrence, Emily W

Neuromancer Film Update and Reading Ideas

Yesterday there was a Twitter-based report that Liv Tyler is in talks to star in the film version of Neuromancer, though some remain skeptical whether the film will actually happen. Do you think she would make a good Molly? If not, who might you cast in that role? And, by the way, the rumors have it that Hayden Christensen is cast to play Case: thoughts?

And as you're reading and preparing for tomorrow's class, you might consider how this last section of the book talks about humans as statistical profiles (211), family dramas/constructions (220), love (232), the relationships between real and virtual living (249), change (251), and of course the very end of the novel.

I have John Murdoch IN MIND

For those of you who attended the Dark City screening, here are a few questions to keep in mind. You have already received your credit, so you don't need to write/post on these. I just thought I'd offer you a few points to consider.

What significances are there to giving the aliens the name "Strangers?"

Does the film suggest that the soul is what makes us human? In what ways does the film define (or not) the soul?

If the Strangers can tune--manipulate physical reality by will alone--why do they have a factory to produce the letters, photos, etc. that they use in their experiments?

Wikipedia.org---Daniel Schreber

What ideas does the movie suggest relating to individuality and being part of a society?

Today in Computer History

Since we're working on a novel about computers, "being human," and Artificial Intelligences, it seems appropriate to recognize that on this day, May 11, in 1997, the chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, defeated world chess champion, Gary Kasparov.

You can view part of Deep Blue at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Noodling Blade Runner

For those of you who attended the optional screening of Blade Runner, I thought I'd post a few questions for you to noodle over.

Also, if you're interested, the film was an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and this novel is being turned into a comic book series starting in June.

What religious/spiritual symbols or gestures did you notice in the movie? Do they form any coherent interpretive pattern for you?

Why does Roy quote a William Blake poem when he enters Chu's eye-lab?

Speaking of eyes, what do you make of all the eye imagery and references throughout the film? Whose eye did we see in that opening sequence with all the building lights and flames reflected in it? How might your answer to that question shape your interpretation of the film? "If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes." "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."

What does the movie tell us about what it means to "be human?"

Why do they use the terms slave/slavery in the film?

What does the film have to say about our capacity, or lack of it, to love others?

What do you make of the East Asian-style L.A. of 2019?

How does Deckard's status as human or replicant shape your take on the narrative?

The Real Threat to Edward and the Rest of the Cullens, or is it??

When Literature and Sciences Meet:

A couple of academics wrote a paper attempting to prove using statistics and physics that vampires cannot exist. Follow this LINK.

However, Dino Sejdinovic, a mathematician, has written an article that offers a different mathematical model to dismantle the other argument. Sorry, no online link to the article in the 2008 issue of Math Horizons.

Neuromancer Blog Writing for May 7th

Before you read, or re-read, the section of Neuromancer for Thursday, please choose one of the suggested angles for interpreting the novel from the final essay prompt. You may also choose your own angle if you prefer some other way of getting into the text. Keep this angle in mind as you read and find 10-15 textual moments that seem to relate to it.

In your blog entry, please note the page number, quote a little bit to identify the passage, and write a short note about what the passage suggests and/or why it caught your attention. Do this for each of the 10-15 passages.

One of the main purposes of this assignment is to jump-start your thinking about the final essay.

Blog Writing: Neuromancer, due May 5th

As I said, this novel can be disorienting at times and especially at first. One way to work on getting oriented is to pay special attention to the ways in which it describes its setting(s). The opening sentence, for instance, offers a memorable and sophisticated way of "placing" the novel.

For this assignment, please choose 2 or 3 passages that describe/establish setting. Write a 250-350 word discussion of how these passages affect you. Do you see multiple meanings in certain passages? Are there especially confusing passages? Are there any patterns to the setting descriptions? How does the novel blend description with philosophical ideas and/or questions? These are just a few ways you might get into the assignment.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Here is the film version in 3 10-minute installments. Feel free to comment if you are interested in the similarities/differences between the short story in print and the cinematic adaptation.

Blog Writing for Tuesday, April 28th

In addition to reading the Faulkner short story and his Nobel Prize banquet speech (both links are posted in the Reading Links), before class on Tuesday, please revise and conclude the 2-poems paper you have already posted on your blog. You should revise what you've got and conclude the paper so it is a complete short essay (approximately 4 pages).

Introduction Samples

A Key Line:

The first time the imagery of fire appears in Felicia Hemans’s poem, “Casabianca,” it is a figure of illumination: “The flame that lit the battle’s wreck / shone round him o’er the dead” (3-4). Not only does this fire literally make the scene of the boy, the ship, and the battle scenario visible, but it also illuminates the poem itself from within. In other words, the poem suggests within its own text one way of reading and interpreting it. This essay traces the ever-present yet subtly shifting image of fire in “Casabianca” as a means of constructing a compelling interpretation of the poem. The hypothesis is that following the flame will reveal Hemans’s text to be a symbolic critique of war.


An Outside Image:

There’s a moving scene in the recent blockbuster film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean, in which a young boy demonstrates amazing courage in the face of death when all the adults around him are acting like cowards. What is striking about this image is not that it is something new, but, rather, that it is so familiar because it can be found in many texts, especially about boys and the sea. From Peter Pan to the children in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island to so many children’s movies today, there are numerous accounts of young boys demonstrating courage in juxtaposition with cowardly adults. But if this is just a simple image of a child’s surprising courage, it seems unlikely that the image would be so long-lasting. There must be something more complex to this, and this essay explores these complexities.

In case you crave more squirrel...

2-Poem Writing: Due April 20th

For Tuesday, please write a 500-600 word draft in which you take 2 poems that fit into a thematic category (gender, class, race, environment, religion/spirituality, etc) and put them into conversation with each other. Try for a tentative thesis in your introduction paragraph(s) and some paragraphs of analysis of evidence. I'd suggest leaving the conclusion till later.

Post the writing on your blog before class meets that day. And keep a hard copy because I'll be asking you to revise and extend this writing.

Poetry and Pop Culture: Kumar's Math Poem

“The Square Root of 3” by Kumar Patel

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
A three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath a vicious square root sign,
wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic
I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality
When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
And love for me has been renewed.

Blog Assignment Due April 16

This is a 2-part assignment.

Part 1: Write a 250-350 word position on how the use of a well-known popular culture figure shapes the poem "The Other Universe of Bruce Wayne." How does it impact your reception of the poem? Does it make the poem seem more or less literary? Does it engage you in different ways from poems without such familiar points of entry? Try to tie your ideas to evidence in the text as best as you can.

Part 2: Time for some creativity, and in the process engaging with the form of the villanelle. It's good practice to write one to see what goes into the making of a strict form poem. So, select a popular culture fictional character and write a villanelle. Please post a pic or two with it as well. Maybe a romantic villanelle from Brian to Lois or Millhouse to Lisa...

William Blake Archive Online

Here's the Link.

The Em-Dash-- Blog Assignment Due April 9th

In this writing, please formulate a 250-350 word interpretation of the Emily Dickinson poem "I dwell in possibility" that we are reading for class.

Specifically, this interpretation should be grounded in the poem's use of the dash. There are a lot of dashes in the poem: are they separating things? are they connecting things? can they do both simultaneously? Once you take stock of the various dashes and what they seem to be doing, try to discover a pattern or theme connecting at least several of them as a way of formulating your interpretation of the poem as a whole.

Lastly, try to stick within the poem--the text as evidence--as much as possible. Rather than talk about Dickinson's biographical details, talk about the text.

Assignment: Poetic Imagery: Due April 7th

There are 3 parts to this writing/blog assignment. 300-400 words. You need to have it posted before we meet for class on Tuesday.

1. This part can be relatively brief. Take note of the various images in one of the poems assigned for class: Frost's "Design", Hemans's "Casabianca", or Rich's "Diving into the Wreck". Are some images more prominent and/or dominant than others? Are some images subtle? Do some images recur within the poem--and if so do they change or stay the same?

2. This second part should comprise the bulk of your entry: 2 or more substantial paragraphs. Take something you noticed from your image notes in part 1 and use it to formulate an interpretation of the poem. For this assignment, less is more, so try to focus on just one image that recurs, for example, or a very small group of images that relate to each other. As an illustration, if I had assigned this for last class, you could have written about the 3 different images in the separate quatrains of Shakespeare's sonnet, discussing the compression of scale and the varieties of lightness/darkness, cyclical/terminal nature, etc.

3. Post 1-3 pictures with your writing. Be creative and have fun with this. Also, it's good practice to include links to the websites where you found them or to give yourself credit if they are your pics.

Notes on "First Fight. Then Fiddle."

As we ran out of time for a sustained discussion of Brooks's poem, here are a few thoughts for you to consider. Feel free to leave a comment on this entry if you've got thoughts you'd like to share, but you are not required to.


A bit of context: the poem was published in 1949 and Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer prize.

Some questions:
The poem opens by calling the musical instrument a "fiddle," which matches the title, but in the last line calls it a "violin." What might this indicate? What has changed from the start to the end of the poem?

Where is the volta? If this diverges from the conventional location of an Italian sonnet volta, why did she do so? Try to get specific on what effects this has on the argument or theme of the poem.

The title states that fighting must precede music/beauty, but does the form of the poem follow this? Is the initial "Octet" about violence and the "Sestet" about music? Is this fight then fiddle formula present within any specific lines--in other words, are there any lines that start with violence and finish with music? Are there lines that invert the order? What do all these variations within the poem tell you in relationship to the very clear title?

A Decade in The Matrix

On March 31st, 1999, The Matrix was first projected upon the big screen. I will be drawing on The Matrix occasionally to illustrate points in class, so if you haven't yet seen it, feel free to justify a screening this week: you can call it "Homework." This is NOT required--merely suggested.

Reading Links for April 2

William Shakespeare's "That time of year thou mayst in me behold"
http://www.bartleby.com/70/50073.html



William Wordsworth's "Nuns Fret Not"
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww309.html



Gwendolyn Brooks's "First Fight, Then Fiddle"

First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string
With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note
With hurting love; the music that they wrote
Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing
Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing
For the dear instrument to bear. Devote
The bow to silk and honey. Be remote
A while from malice and from murdering.
But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate
In front of you and harmony behind.
Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.
Win war. Rise bloddy, maybe not too late
For having first to civilize a space
Wherein to play your violin with grace.

Welcome to Lit-Blogging

Again, welcome to the course and to lit-blogging. If you encounter challenges while getting started, please email me or bring your questions to class so we can all get our blogs up and active.

Due this Thursday, April 2nd:

*Start your blog at blogger.com--give it any title you like: it need not necessarily have reference to literature.
*Do your first post--write 250-350 words on why you gave your blog that title and what it means to you.
*Email me your blog url--the web address, not the title.
*Read the poems and take note of at least one interesting thing about each.