Class Report, 9/6

Notes for this class period are available: Notes from September 6, A Small Place

Opening

Today's class started with a viewing of the Gregory Brother's Youtube video.

 

What does 9/11 have to do with the Republican National Convention, Auto-Tune the News #5 (above), dialog from the final fight scene in Batman (1989), the Monroe Doctrine, World Wars, Cold Wars, oil, Judaism, the Battle of Rephidim? Exceptionalism.

Because of time constraints, the second half of the instructor's presentation was set aside for the time being.

Business

We discussed the new course tool to help groups organize their responsibilities, the Group Responsibilities spreadsheet, visible as a link in the right-hand column under Class Administration. Groups are encouraged to have only one or two people work on presentations for a given day. Groups are also encouraged to plan out who will be doing what over the next weeks and months so individuals can plan accordingly when arranging their schedules.

Student-Led Time

The discussion leader, Audra, introduced the various groups and their research presentations, which have been posted to the course blog under:

• A Small Place: 'tourist' and 'library'
• A Small Place: Second person address
• Richard Rorty

A number of questions were raised regarding the text's themes and how the author intended to impact that audience. The instructor presented his own ideas and some scholarly articles that he thought helped to clarify these points.

Groups

Audra invited everyone to turn to group discussions where it was decided that, for the next class meeting the following groups would respond to the following prompts:

Thesis - Prompt 2
Details - Prompt 3
Analaysis - Prompt 1

All prompts are available for viewing under the posting Research Prompts for September 6.

Conclusion

The class ended with Steve's brief excerpt from A Small Place.

Reflections

Overall, I was really happy about how the day's class played out. I really think as we get accustomed to the routine together, this format will be really productive and low stress. I am looking forward to what we can pull from Bleak House next week. It is much longer text; and, focusing much more on narrative and characters, it develops rhetorical strategies much less. It will be interesting to see how much we can dig into this text for an understanding of how literature creates a space to imagine the suffering of others. I am also looking forward to reading what everyone has to say in the examination that will be administered next week.