Towards Day 12: Selection!

I. coursekeeping
verifying that you know how to post in the course forum??
before you for leave for break:
make sure that you have 6 postings (1/week)

also, post in the course forum a mid-semester evaluation:
WHAT'S WORKING? WHAT NEEDS WORKING ON?

II. visualizing our (inner and outer) worlds:
mkarol on proper and remembered time
kgould on map of online communities

III. let's get on w/ the process of deciding how to organize our syllaship: finding a form/organizing logic/rationale for study, w/ illustrative texts

acknowledge danger of raised/disappointed expectations

from a visit this morning by Emily Artz French:
"Ideas" exist in a vast, immensely intertwined network;
individuals can aggregate and organize them in a new ways: "the way I 'evolve' the idea is just as valuable as if I had the original idea myself." Art is the continuous effort to expose the infinite number of perspectives in this world: an Evolutionary process of Compassion and Understanding.

Chris Ware, "Fiction Versus Nonfiction": The falseness of fiction fosters an environment for certain truths to flourish while non-fiction kills them...sort of like the difference between acting and impersonation, or drawing and illustration

Your on-going thinking (not yet converging!):

smacholdt: What is reality? as an organizing theme

maht91: cf'ing whole texts, in a variety of genres/media, sequentially, asking "what elements in the text give us insights into reality and truth"

ckosarek: I'm accepting the fact that reality is subjective and that it can't be defined - do we really need another six weeks of that?

we have yet to explore the ''ethnographic'' version of reality.

jaranda:  interested in reading about the ethnographic version of reality, already covered spatial reality,
include topics like science and religion, look at different mediums,

Owl: if we go w/ what's popular, the texts don't connect w/ one another

Aya: movement w/in groups not connected enough

in the spirit of non-fiction to try and crack down on some examples of our ideas

not Frey, but other texts where the form, construction and content of nonfiction is at once factual and fictional, artistic--realist?

theme of reality/identity, including text of reference materials

FatCatRex: agreed (dictionaries, incl. Samuel Johnson)

worry about committing to a syllabus that may be difficult to adhere to

strong need to explore other forms/mediums themed
around the construction/questioning of reality

kgould: agreed, plus a little bit of genre theory that speaks to fiction/non-fiction dichotomies

veritatemdilexi: heavy comparative reading load (9/11 vs. Path to Paradise, etc.) to find our own connections

EVD: agreed, but reading selectively?

SandraG: overwhelming, and too selective

rachelr: I also am very adamant about reading whole books.
Themes can be a really good unifier, but also  potentially restricting....need to decide if we want a more diverse, all over the place syllabus or a unified one.

Get again into (new, larger?) groups to complete the syllabus; choose the texts you want to read/view, then figure out/articulate the logic of your selection....
 

FALL BREAK: Oct. 12 & 14

T, Oct. 19:

Th, Oct. 21:

T, Oct. 26:

Th, Oct. 28 (I'll be out of town for a conference...
how to manage this??)

By 5 p.m. on Fri, Oct. 29: 4-pp. paper due on-line 

T, Nov. 9:

Th, Nov. 11:

T, Nov. 16:

Th, Nov. 18:

T, Nov. 23:

THANKSGIVING BREAK: Nov. 25

T, Nov. 30:

Th, Dec. 2:

By 5 p.m. on Fri, Dec. 3: 4-pp. paper due on-line

T, Dec. 7:

Th, Dec. 9: Final Performances

By 12:30 p.m. on Fri, Dec. 17: Final Paper and portfolio

do you want to get the books yourselves,
or shall I order multiple copies of each??

a possible syllabus

10/19 War of the Worlds (radio show: sound recording in Canaday; critical edition; complete script)

10/21 F for Fake (Canaday)

10/26-28 The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (McCabe, Swat)

PAPER DUE

11/9-11 Anet Berko, Path to Paradise (196pp--HC, checked out)

11/16-18 Coles, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Life (240 pp--Using the "documentary study or psychiatric anthropology" approach, Coles presents conversations with college, law, and medical school students that focus on the moral impact of their reading; all 3 libraries) OR
Dictionaries????

11/23, 11/30 2 concluding chapters from William James' Varieties of Religious Experience; cf. w/
Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (480pp--Collier and HScience; also available selectively on Google Books; alternative to God is Not Great and Spook; on how to distinguish real science from cheap imitation

PAPER DUE

12/2, 12/7
Didion, Year Magical Thinking (227pp--all 3 libraries and online inebrary)  or
Jamaica Kincaid, Autobiography of my Mother (240 pp-all 3 libraries)

12/9 PERFORMANCES