Blogging

As a student in this class, you will be responsible for blogging weekly on this site and responding to AT LEAST two other students' posts. Posts will be due each Friday on the blog.

In short:

How To Blog

Simply click on the "comment" prompt at the bottom of my weekly post, and then respond to other students' comments in the same manner.

If you wish to create your own post, on the left side of the screen, there is a column that shows your user name.

Click on: Create Content

Click on: Story

Choose "Input format" as Full HTML. Create "Title" and "Body." By default, your story will post to the front page of our class blog. You may manipulate the other options as you see fit (i.e. uploading files through "file attachments" and inserting pictures into your writing field using the tinyMCE toolbar).

Blogging Assignment Week 2 - due Friday January 19 by 5PM

This week's blogging assignment will be composed of two parts.

1.) We have only looked at Greek myth in our readings. Visit this site, which is composed of various African myths. Read three of the translated myths. How do they compare with the Greek myths? What is different in the narrative structure of the African myths as opposed to the Greek myths?

2.) Choose a work/text/film featuring a "hero" outside of our class readings/viewings and apply Campbell's Hero qualifications to it. Does Campbell's criteria hold true throughout the work you've chosen? Why or why not?

Separation or Departure

1.      The Call to Adventure (signs of the vocation of the hero)

2.      Refusal of the Call (the folly of the flight from the god)

3.      Supernatural Aid (the unsuspected assistance that comes to one who has undertaken his proper adventure)

4.      The Crossing of the First Threshold

5.      The Belly of the Whale (the passage into the realm of night)

 

The Trials and Victories of Initiation

1.      The Road of Trials (the dangerous aspect of the gods)

2.      The Meeting with the Goddess (the bliss of infancy regained)

3.      Woman as the Temptress (the realization and agony of Oedipus)

4.      Atonement with the Father

5.      Apotheosis

6.      The Ultimate Boon

Return

1.      Refusal of the Return (the world denied)

2.      The Magic Flight (the escape of Prometheus)

3.      Rescue from Without

4.      The Crossing of the Return Threshold (the return to the world of common day)

5.      Master of the Two Worlds

6.      Freedom to Live (the nature and function of the ultimate boon)

Blogging Assignment Week 4 - due Friday Jan. 2nd by 5:00PM

The theme of revenge is a constant motif throughout the Odyssey. Ancient Greece had no such policing or federal protection as we have today. Such episodes of revenge as enacted in the text would today be considered vigilante. Do you agree/disagree with the methods of taking one's "own revenge" in the text versus placing the matters in the hands of a collective justice? Give an example of one such vigilante act that has occurred recently and whether or not you agree with it in terms of our reading. Would Odysseus's style of revenge work better today? Why or why not? Be sure to back up your argument with evidence.

Blogging Assignment Week Pre-Break, due Friday March 9 by 5PM

Today, we shared an interesting discussion over themes of racism that are apparent in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Regardless of the time it was written, racism was evident and a basis used to control a specific group of people. Using Achebe's essay (READ IT THIS TIME), state whether or not you agree with Achebe's main points and whether you believe Conrad's text is indeed racist. Be sure to back up your argument using quotes from both texts. And be sure to respond to two other students' comments to receive full credit.

Blogging Week 6 - due Friday Feb. 16 by 5PM

 

Me, after flying for fourteen hours this weekend just to keep my airfaire below $300. Create your own visual rhetoric by clicking on the image above and following the instructions, focusing on how you feel at this point in the semester; accompany your image with a small paragraph explaining your design.

***UPDATE: How to upload images:

1. Create your character
2. Do a screenshot of your character (click on ctrl and "prtsc" [print screen])
3. Open Photoshop/MS Paint/MS photoeditor or some other artistic function and open a new file. Click "ctrl-V" to paste your webshot inside
4. Shrink down the image of the fullscreen to only include your picture
5. Save as .jpg file
6. Open the comment or blog entry on the blog and upload your image like last time.

Or you can just follow the same instructions from our last post image blog :)

Extra Credit Film Analysis: Pan's Labyrinth - Due Monday Feb. 19 by 5:00PM

Tonight, we watched the film Pan's Labyrinth (while stuffing our faces). In order to earn extra credit points for the assignment, you need to answer the following questions: 

--What was your personal reaction to the film?

--How are women portrayed in this film? List the primary female characters and describe how they functioned in the film.

--Describe Ofelia's "heroic journey." Where does she succeed? Where does she err? Why is she trying to do? What is her function in the narrative? What is her "road of trials?" Is Ofelia "becoming a woman" or something else? What symbols are present in the "three tasks?"

--What is symbolic about the "captain's" watch? List two other symbols in the film and their functions.

--How does the theme of "obeying" work through the film with each of the characters?

--Where is trauma (emotional and physical) present in the film? How does it work in the narrative?

--What other works appeared to have influenced this film? Give examples.

--Who is the faun?

Blogging Assignment Week 3 - due Friday January 26th by 5PM

For this week's blogging assignment, I want you to venture online and find the visual representation of the Odyssey that most attracts your attention. Don't focus on our site! Do your own searching/scanning. Post the image to your blog post by:

  1. Create Content
  2. Blog Entry or Story
  3. Input Format - choose Full HTML
  4. File Attachment (NOT Attach Images) - save file onto your desktop and browse for file. Click attach.
  5. Copy and Paste URL into the little tree in a box symbol on your tool bar

After you have attached your image, write a paragraph stating why the image was provoking and how it relates to the text. Focus on specific details in the painting (even landscape) or sculpture or other representation and try to get inside of the artist's head. Why did the artist choose to paint as she/he did? Why did the artist choose specific images to insert into the painting? Etc.

Odysseus and the Kyklopes

Blogging Assignment Week 1 - due Friday January 12th by 5PM

For this week's blogging assignment (and all others), you should respond to the questions below as well as respond to two students's posts using the comment function.

Considering the fairy tales and short stories we are reading for Thursday's class, you should write on the following questions:

  • How do the fairy tales by Grimm and Andersen compare with the works by Oates, Jewett, and Carter? Are they different narratives or are they the same? Why?
  • Choose one of the stories and briefly discuss how the narrative is structured--where do we see examples of the hermeneutic code? the proairetic code?
  • How do these earlier readings of fairy tales compare with later interpretations (Disney, etc.)? Why have events and endings been altered in contemporary readings?