Reading & Assignments for 9/29 – 10/6

Here’s the schedule for next week:

Monday, 9/29: Essay # 1 peer reviews DUE – Peer Review Workshop (bring comments for colleague’s drafts to class for peer review workshop) / Finish reading Things Fall Apart.

Wednesday, 10/1: Read Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (first third of book) – come in with at least one passage that you would like to discuss further in class (that you were particularly drawn to)

Friday, 10/3: Read The Shawl (second third)

Your FINAL PAPER will be due on Monday, October 6th. Please turn in your peer reviews, the draft on which I provided feedback, along with your final paper. Also, read the rest of The Shawl and be prepared to discuss in class.

Fall for the Book, Essay Draft, & Upcoming Assignments

For Friday, you should be up to Chapter 5 in Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. I’m pushing the due date back to Wednesday, September 24th. Please bring in enough copies of your essay draft to give your peer reviewers, as well as me.

By Wednesday, you should also have read up to Chapter 10 in Things Fall Apart and be prepared to discuss the book in class. There is no blog response due next week, but I do expect you to be prepared for class discussion of the book.

EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY:

For those who go to any of the Fall for the Book festival events next week and write a thoughtful response to the reading or event (here on blog), I’ll give extra credit to you (equal to one blog response). Most notably, the next author we are reading, Chinua Achebe, will be honored on Monday, September 22nd between 10-11 a.m. at the Johnson Center Cinema; he will also be reading from his book, Things Fall Apart, which we are currently reading on Monday, September 22nd at 7:30 p.m. The details of this reading/event are below:

Mon, Sep 22, 7:30pm – 9:00pm

Concert Hall, Center for the Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA (map)

DescriptionNigerian novelist, poet and critic Chinua Achebe accepts the 2008 Mason Award, celebrating an author whose body of work has made extraordinary contributions to bringing literature to a wide reading public. The author also reads from Things Fall Apart, the most widely read and perhaps most profoundly influential African novel, on the 50th anniversary of its publication. Sponsored by Mason’s Office of University Life.

For week of Sept 15-19th

This week, there’s no blog response, but here’s the reading schedule (below). Also note, on Wednesday, Sept 17th, we’ll be meeting at Fenwick Library (outside).

For Monday, Sept 15th: please finish reading the poems from Friday & be sure to respond to the blog response (below) by Monday morning at 7:30 a.m.

For Wednesday, Sept 17th: meet us at Fenwick Library! (do NOT go to classroom first)

For Friday, Sept 19th: Read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (Chapts 1-5)

Response Assignment # 3

Essay # 1 assignment details can be found here (or click on link at top of blog). Please email me with questions. Also — see reading/response assignment for this week below.

For Wednesday, please read:

• Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market” (come prepared to discuss in class)
• Judith Cofer – “Beans: An Apologia For Not Loving To Cook” (handout) & “The Story of My Body” (emailed to you)

For Friday, please read:

• Mora, Pat. “Legal Alien” & “La Migra”
• Morales, Aurora Levins. “Child of the Americas” (emailed to you)

For this blog response, please discuss the ways in which Cofer, Mora, and Morales explore the relationships between ethnicity and the body within their writing. This is a free-writing exercise, so there are no particular questions to respond to, but be sure to take note of any similarities and/or differences, whether in theme, context, or style. Compare and contrast these pieces of work (and be sure to touch upon at least two of the four pieces) while writing your response.

Response Assignment #2

Hi folks – by next Monday, September 8th, you should have finished reading Beloved. In preparation for your first essay assignment, rather than answer any questions I might have (for this week’s blog), I’d like for you to each come up with at least three really good questions of your own. If it helps, imagine yourself as the teacher posing thoughtful blog questions for your students, questions that you believe would generate much discussion. Thus, setting up the question and/or asking it in two or more parts would potentially be useful, as in the following example from last week’s blog assignment, in which I asked the following:

Many have suggested that Beloved focuses most strongly on themes of memory and history; find a passage or two that exemplifies the ways in which these memories and/or history are embodied. In other words, how do memories and/or histories surface, not just through thought, but on or through the body itself? How does the body become a sort of script or narrative that carries with it (and becomes the storyteller of) certain memories or histories?

Asking questions is often harder than answering them, but is also the best way to lead you into the essay writing process. Be sure to ask thought-provoking, intelligent, and interesting questions, as one of them could become the basis for your first essay (you would then conduct research and close-reading of the text in an effort to answer one of those questions).