American Literature Homepage

Paper Topic Paper #2

2007-05-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

Paper #2 is a comparison paper. In this paper you should compare at least 2 stories/books from the past year, answering the question, "What stories/characters are most relevant to our particular point in American history?" Nearly all of the stories that we have looked at could be categorized as Romantic or Realist, so please include one or both of these terms in your paper. Also, please do not simply take a broad-brush, binary—this story is good, that story is bad—approach to this assignment. A much more interesting approach would be comparing two stories that you actually like (explaining the merits of each) and then explaining why one approach is more relevant to today.

Word Count: 1200-1500 words
Due Date: May 22, 2007

This years readings (by memory):

The Crucible
Selections from Walden
Emerson's Essays
Huck Finn
"The White Heron"
"A Death in the Desert"
selections from The Land of Little Rain
Frost's poems
The Great Gatsby
"A Clean Well-Lighted Place"
"Blood-Burning Moon"
Their Eyes were Watching God
"The Death of Justina"
"The Swimmer"
"Are these Actual Miles?"
The Dharma Bums
"Seeing"
selections from The House on Mango Street

Interview Advice

2007-05-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

Set up and demeanor

• Have your questions written prior to the interview.
• If you are doing an email interview, don't just send your list of questions to the interviewee. Instead, send a few questions at a time.
• Do not conduct an interview without taking notes, tape recording it, or having an email record of it.
• If you do not understand something, ask for an explanation.
• Try to remain neutral in your demeanor--your body language, tone, and/or the way you phrase and ask questions.
• Avoid loaded questions, or if you need to ask controversial questions, ask them at the end of the interview.
• Do not get drawn into an argument.

Advice on Questions

• Start the interview with a "How" question.
• No yes/no questions.
• Don't ask questions, you already know the answer to.
• If the interviewee reveals something about themselves, ask them to discuss it further.
• Keep the discussion focused on alternative living.
• Make sure you ask the interviewee if the alternative path or practice they have chosen brings meaning to their lives in some way.

CCC Presentations

2007-04-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Contemporary Countercultural Presentations are a four part project. The whole project consists the following parts:

1) A Factual Paper. This is a 500-800 word report about your topic. This paper does not have to contain any opinions, but is simply a write up introducing your topic and highlighting the research that you have done on it.

2) An Interview. This will be a 10+ question interview with someone committed in some way to your topic. For example, if you are doing meditation, then you will want to interview a committed meditator. If you are doing a report on Food Not Bombs, you will want to interview someone who is involved in this organization. These interviews can be conducted in person or over email/phone. The school does have a voice recorder that will help you record phone conversations, however, if you want to use this machine, you will need to set up a time to use it in advance of the due date.

3) An Analytical Paper. This is a 500-800 word analytical paper on your research topic. This paper should have a thesis and contain quotes and examples to back up your points as in other analytical papers. This is a short paper, so be specific with what you want to say. Also, do not simply say that something is good or bad. You need to have real analysis going on in your paper. When grading it, I will mostly be interested in how much thought you have put into your paper and the level of insight into your topic that you have aquired.

4) A Presentation. The presentation is the culminating project. Each student will be responsible for presenting to the class an 8-10 minute presentation on exam day. This is where you get to present to the class both information on your topic as well as your analysis. Since this will be your 4th presentation of the year, I am looking for you all to step it up and make your presentations both engaging and informative. I will also be looking for you to answer a core question within your presentation, and not to simply construct your presentation around a series of unrelated facts.

Key Questions: Throughout the whole project there are a few important key questions that are important to answer: 1) Is my topic actually part of the counterculture? In other words, is this activity or group of people actually doing anything that resists on some level the mainstream, corporate-dominated consumer culture? 2) Is this an answer? In other words, does this topic—meditation, art, alternative lifeways, hiking the Appalachian Trail, etc.—actually provide people with a sense of fulfilment that the mainstream, consumer lifestyle is lacking?

Kerouac's Technique

2007-04-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

Links to:

1. Essentials of Spontaneous Prose
2. Belief and Technique for Modern Prose

Counter Culture Presentations ideas

2007-04-06T20:40:00.001-07:00

Train Hoppers
organic farmers
Food-Not-Bombs activists
Anarchists
Earth First! activists
Amish people
Apalachian Trail Hikers
AMC hut caretakers
Long term world travelers
Reality tour leaders (global exchange)
Burning Man
hard core libertarians
anyone who has a serious meditation or yoga practice
serious musicians
writers / poets
artists
Critical Mass riders
pirate radio operators/radio stations
rainbow hippies
evangelical church goers
primitive skills practioners
anyone who is seriously committed to a religious practice
guerilla artists
WTO protestors
anyone who has taken a vow of poverty
ecological designers
tree sitters
culture jammers (like the Yes Men)
Ad Busters
vegans
Animal liberation activists
Anyone committed to living carbon neutral
Conservative counterculture campus groups
eco-terrorists
"buy local" campaign organizers
community activists
a back to the land person (drop out)
permaculturalists

Dharma Bums - Character Key

2007-04-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Real Names -- Characters in Book

Neil Cassady -- Cody Pomeray
Allen Ginsberg -- Alvah Goldbrook
Natalie Jackson -- Rosie Buchanan
Jack Kerouac -- Ray Smith
Caroline Kerouac -- Nin
Philip Lamantia -- Francis DaPavia
Michael McClure -- Ike O'Shay
Locke McCorkle -- Sean Monahan
John Montgomery -- Henry Morley
Peter Orlovsky -- George
Will Peterson -- Rol Sturleson
Kenneth Rexroth -- Rheinhold Cacoethes
Gary Snyder -- Japhy Ryder
Philip Whalen -- Warren Coughlin

Source: Empty Mirror Books

Contemporary Counter Cultural Presentations

2007-04-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

While brainstorming ways to solve inherent emptiness of suburbanization and corporatization of our contemporary culture, we came up with the following list of alternatives to the dominant paradigm:

• Getting involved in actual communities.
• Buying local (farmers market, support small stores, second hand stores).
• Dropping out like Thoreau.
• Living toward your dreams / staying focused on personal happiness… hold on to creativity.
• Getting responsibilities met, but keep identity alive.
• Developing creativity with activities such as arts, music, writing, photography, etc.
• Working for political change.
• Embracing spirituality through organized religion or through contemplative practices such as yoga and meditation.
• Embracing the natural world.
• Using travel as a way of learning about alternative lifeways.
• Doing serious theraputic work that helps you identify and face critical and deep seated issues.

For your contemporary countercultural presentations, I would like you to identify an individual or group of individuals who are currently implementing one of these strategies, research their activities and philosphy.

Extra Credit Reading Response

2007-04-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Reading the current issue of Orion Magazine tonight, I came across the following quote by the writer Curtis White. It struck me as amazingly relevant to our current discussion. If you would like to receive up to ten extra credit points, you may respond to the following quote on your blog. In your response, you should agree or disagree with the author, present your reasons why you think he concludes the piece the way he does, and point toward some solutions to the problem if you see any problem. If you do not see any problem, you will need to forcefully argue why you think he is wrong in his assumptions. Here's the quote:

"Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs. We are willingly part of a world designed for the convenience of what Shakespeare called “the visible God”: money. When I say we have jobs, I mean that we find in them our home, our sense of being grounded in the world, grounded in a vast social and economic order. It is a spectacularly complex, even breathtaking, order, and it has two enormous and related problems. First, it seems to be largely responsible for the destruction of the natural world. Second, it has the strong tendency to reduce the human beings inhabiting it to two functions, working and consuming. It tends to hollow us out. It creates a hole in our sense of ourselves and of this country, and it leaves us with few alternatives but to try to fill that hole with money and the things money buys. We are not free to dismiss money because we fear that we’d disappear, we’d be nothing at all without it. Money is, in the words of Buddhist writer David Loy, “the flight from emptiness that makes life empty.”

Needless to say, many people with environmental sympathies will easily agree with what I’ve just said and imagine that in fact they do what they can to resist work and consumption, to resist the world as arranged for the convenience of money. But here again I suspect we are kidding ourselves. Rather than taking the risk of challenging the roles money and work play in all of our lives by actually taking the responsibility for reordering our lives, the most prominent strategy of environmentalists seems to be to “give back” to nature through the bequests, the annuities, the Working Assets credit cards and long distance telephone schemes, and the socially responsible mutual funds advertised in Sierra and proliferating across the environmental movement. Such giving may make us feel better, but it will never be enough. Face it, we all have a bit of the robber baron turned philanthropist in us. We’re willing to be generous in order to “save the world” but not before we’ve insured our own survival in the reigning system. It’s not even clear that this philanthropy is a pure expression of generosity since the bequest and annuity programs are carefully measured to provide attractive tax benefits and appealing rates of return.

Even when we are trying to aid the environment, we are not willing as individuals to leave the system that we know in our heart of hearts is the cause of our problems. We are even further from knowing how to take the collective risk of leaving this system entirely and ordering our societies differently. We are not ready. Not yet, at least. "

Quote to Remember

2007-04-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

When thinking about our discussion about Goth kids in class today, I thought about this little snippet of homespun wisdom: "Beware of any enterprises that require a new set of clothes" — Thoreau.

1950s Presentation Schedule

2007-04-03T08:14:00.001-07:00

E Block

Thursday, April 5
1. Kelly
2. Alice
3. Crystal

Friday, April 6
1. Jezy/Frances
2. Emily
3. Nick/Paul

Monday, April 9
1. Dave/Louis

1950s Presentations

2007-03-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Working individually or in pairs students are responsible for an 8 minute presentation on the following topics.

Due Date: April 5th and 6th.

List of Topics:

Music: Jazz in the 1950s
Music: Birth of Rock and Roll

Art: Abstract Expressionism
Art: Minimalism

Film: Film in the 1950s

Literature/poetry: Beat Writers
Literature/poetry: New York School Writers

Activism: Early Civil Rights Movement
Activism: 2nd Red Scare
Activism: Women's issues in the 1950s

Architecture: Architecture in the 1950s
Architecture: Growth of suburban culture

Fashion: Fashion in the 1950s

Technology: Home Improvements in the 1950s
Technology: Car Culture in the 1950s

Government in the 1950s: The Interstate Highway System
Government in the 1950s: The McCarthy Hearings
Government in the 1950s: Role in South/Central America

Corporations: Rise of corporate influence in the 1950s
Corporations: Industrialization of agriculture
Corporations: Birth of chain stores / fast food

Guiding question:

Each topic should seek to answer a guiding question. A guiding question is a core question that you, as a researcher, keep coming back to during your research. Many of these guiding questions seek to answer paradoxical or ironic observations. For example: "How did materially wealthy suburban America—which on the outside appears so clean and happy—become so commonly associated with feelings of emptiness and depression?" Guiding questions may also help put your topic into broader context of the time period. For example: "What was the Interstate Highway system's affect on sense of place and community in the 1950s?" To be clear: each presentation should seek to answer a specific guiding question. If you are having difficulty coming up with a guiding question, please see me at extra help.

Spring Writing Assignments

2007-03-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

This term you are responsible for writing two 1,200-1,500 word papers and two 500-800 word papers as well as conducting a 10 question interview. You will have one long paper and one short paper due during each of the term's units. The short papers and the interview are connected to your contemporary counter culture presentation (CCC) which you will be working on all term.

Long Papers:
Paper #1: Literary analysis paper written on Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.
Paper #2: 1950s and 2000s comparison paper.

Short Papers:
CCC Factual Paper: This is a factual paper written up describing the background research that you have done on your CCC topic.
CCC Analytical Paper: This is an analytical paper written up describing your thoughts (what you have learned, your take, etc.) about your CCC topic near the end of the term.

Interview:
As part of your CCC project, you are responsible for conducting and transcribing a ten question interview with a person actively involved with your CCC topic. The interview-ee may not be a current Proctor staff, faculty, or student.

Quotation Responses (Explained)

2007-03-25T20:44:00.001-07:00

The Assignment:

Each night that you are assigned reading, you are also responsible to complete a quotation response assignment. Please pick out two important quotations from the reading and respond to each quotation in three to five sentences. Post these responses in separate blog entries. Please give the book/story and the page numbers from the reading at the beginning of each response. Come to class prepared to explain why you picked the quote that you did, what the quote means, and what the quote tells you about the story/book. I will grade your quotation responses on a √+, √, √- scale. I will let you know if I feel like you are slacking on these assignments, but otherwise, I will not normally comment on individual quote responses.

Quotation Response Example:

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Page 166.

1) “Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir my daughter he hath wedded I will die and leave him all life living all is death.”

Capulet is talking about death metaphorically as a person. He is saying that Death has hurt Juliet—that it has taken her maidenhood away—and that death is really his son in-law instead of Paris. Now that death has taken his daughter away, Capulet questions what he has to live for. Juliet was his last living child and now Capulet has no heirs, except for death itself.

Course Info & Expectations

2007-03-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

Tom's Extra Help:
Mondays – 6:30-7:30 pm (American Literature Room)
Thursdays – 8:00-10:00 pm (Gannett House)

Expectations:
1) All homework is due on the following days.
2) Please post blog entries or email me your homework before class.
3) Papers handed in (in person and electronically) after class begins will automatically loose five points from the final draft grade.
4) Papers handed in after the due date will loose 10 points from the final draft grade.

**PLEASE NOTE: It is not my responsibility to remind you to hand in your homework. Nor is it my responsibility to remind you of missing work. Any work over one week late may receive a zero grade at my discretion.

Class Info

2007-03-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

• Tom's Homepage

• Current Syllabus