Claudia Rankine poem

One way to think of this poem is as a response to Brown-Garner situation, just like she got the same assignment as you and here it is.

http://vimeo.com/103780954

Final Essay Assignment

Final Class Essay:

1) What Can You Learn from Fup? This is your essay topic, at least 5 pages due Friday 19th midnite.

Big Questions and Topics: Personal journey, Obsessions, Vengeance (Dog & fences), Why fences (so nobody will fall in lakes, keep things out from harming him, work off his pain), why is he obsessed with fences, immortality, spirituality, death, Johnny Sevenmoons as pig (Lockjaw), Whiskey makes for immortality (Ol' Deathwhipser)  

Or Alternative to Fup paper or extra credit paper, at least 5 pages typed.

TOPIC: Give meaning to Michael Brown and Eric Garner's lives and deaths--your meaning, a meaning that will cause truth and raise consciousness and provide some reference for us beyond the media noise?  Think of Rankine's poem as a way of responding to this question, those beautiful young men shopping. Not what you think about it, but what meaning you want to give to it.   Due on the 19th! 


Final Exam Wednesday December 17th 10am - 12pm in the same room.  We will have a study session Wednesday December 10th during class.

Link to Empathic Civilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

Link to Dyson interview (Dyson starts 29:00 minutes into video): http://publish.dvlabs.com/democracynow/ipod/dn2014-1201.mp4

Empathic Civilisation Essay

Here are the links to the RSA video and the full speech by Rifkin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-7BjeHepbA&spfreload=10

Submit on Monday two documents, bring as hard copy to class: 1) Write in phrases, questions, bullets everything you don't know about related to the talk and 2) you have to write your version of his thesis and a detailed sketch/phrase outline of his argument

Godot Essay Questions

Waiting for Godot

Essay Questions

Heltzel/deWit

draft due on Monday Nov 3

Final draft due Sunday Nov 9 2:45am (send to both of us)

6-8 pages 1”margins, proper citations

Eric: ewheltzel@gmail.com
Tom: humbug64@gmail.com

1. Hone in on three fundamental questions, write them at the top of the essay and stir them together into some super crazy mind boggling question. Then write an essay on it.
2. Write a paper of questions, that you weave in and out of the text from the play, any moment in the play and in any order. The only criteria is that your questions feel like some sort of quest to the reader. You question and weave text and question and weave and question. Create something out of questions, something we can save and use when we are trying to live. Go ahead and format this in some way that works for your purposeful purposelessness.
3. What does it mean to be waiting?  How would this play be different if Godot showed up at the end? OR How would this play be different if any of the characters were removed?  If Lucky wasn't in the play or Pozzo?  If it was just Estragon?
4. Choose two or three themes from our list, explore and analyze the development of those themes throughout the play?  What is Beckett saying about a certain theme in the context of the play?  You can approach this prompt in a number of ways.  You can analyze the relationship between characters like we have done in class.  You can explore the various objects in the play and their uses.  Or you can interpret the significance of the setting.  How you approach this up to you.  The possibilities are limitless!
5. Choose up to three scenes and analyze how they relate to one another.  How do they show a character's development?  How does it show a theme's ark?
6. Interpret Lucky's speech.  What do you think he is saying?  Who is he talking to / at?  What role does Lucky play in the play?  Why is Lucky in the play?  Why is his name Lucky?
7. Create your own topic!  Explore an idea that you are interested in. Write your topic at the top of your essay. 
   
   
   8. Bring something that WORKS the play into a froth, into a gift, into a curse, into a love poem, into a conversation with your Godot.
   
   
   9. Write this with someone else in the class, as your own Didi-Gogo dialogue, your own Pozzo-Lucky banter; your own duo-soliloquy, and submit it.

Homework 10/27

Before Wednesday, choose one scene from the play, any scene that speaks to you -- that you find interesting, confusing, challenging -- write at least 15 questions that your scene raises.  Try to relate your questions to the themes listed below.      

The struggle; Isolation; Adulthood; Self-interest; Meaning / knowing; Suffering; Patience; Oppression; Backstabbing; Deceiving; Confusion; Uncertainty; Nature of men; Friendship / companionship; Poverty; Mental hardship; Redemption / salvation; Language and how it's used / hope birth and death

You do not need to respond to the questions listed below.  You can, however, use them as a guide to help shape your own questions.

Questions:

·         Why is Lucky’s speech in Act I and not in Act II? What comes before and after it?

·         Why do we not see Lucky’s dance?

·         Why is Lucky dumb in Act II and why does he need a hat to think?

·         Why is Pozzo blind in Act II?

·         Why does he need Lucky, why is he a slave master?

·         Why does Godot never show up?

·         Why is the boy a boy and not a girl? And why is the boy the only character without a name?

·         Why does Estragon always forget?

·         Why don’t Vladimir and Estragon choose not to kill themselves at the end of the play?

·         Why don’t Didi and Gogo separate?

·         Why is it Didi that always says, “We are waiting for Godot”? And why does Didi say it the one time he does?

Questions about Godot

1.            What is your character like?  What is he not like?

2.            Identify the objects your character interacts with?

3.            Describe HOW your character interacts with the other characters.  Use specific examples!!!

4.            How does your character change?  How does your character behave in act 1?  How does      your character behave in act 2?

5.            How does your character make sense of his world?  What does he think?  How does he think?

First Homework on Beckett Waiting for Godot, do over weekend

Questions for you to respond to on your blog by Sunday night by 2am, I will check your blogs to see if you responded

1) Write 10 or so sentences putting Godot in the context of the "Power of 10" video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0


2) What do  you think of Pozzo and Lucky? Why are they in the play? Choose some moments when you write about them.

3) How is Didi different than Gogo?

4) What are these two talking about, for what, for why?

5) How is your life like Didi and Gogo's?

6) If this play is not about God, claim 3 other things, ideas that the play is actually about? Point to parts of the play to support your claim.

7) Is this play cynical? What makes us insecure? How much do people act out of their insecurity? What's the flip side of insecurity?