September 7, 2015 - 18:38
I. coursekeeping
verify conference schedule – resched letty
send papers to us on an e-mail, attached as word doc & with "Name2" as title; also post on-line, tagged as "web paper"--> not as attached docs, which aren't searchable;
--talk about writing these first papers: technically, emotionally, intellectually?
II. for today, we asked you to read Mary Louise Pratt's 1991 essay, Arts of the Contact Zone
we also asked you to view two videos:
Attenborough: the amazing lyrebird sings like a chainsaw!
Israeli attacks on Palestinean olive trees
partner up now: groups 1, 2, 3 "argument" for first video, groups 4, 5, 6 for the second one.
report back; compare reports, and then: agreement or an argument across these two?
III. what does all this have to do w/ what Pratt calls "arts of the contact zone"?
go around and read aloud the passages that had some "heat" or "energy" for you...
consider the range...how do these passages link? what is going on with the essay's shape and structure?
what is the contact zone, and what does she say constitutes the "art" of negotiating in such a space?
what did you write down as the argument was? how was it to read this, searching for the argument?
link up argument with some examples: how are they related?
this is about the complexities of speech communities
* in the classroom
* on a larger global scale
* and (per the videos!) across species!
IV. your postings....
V. (by 12:40): for Thursday, read two short stories about being in the contact zone,
both by famous feminist science fiction writers:
Ursula LeGuin's 1975 The Ones Who Walk Away from Ormelas& Octavia Butler's 2005 Bloodchild. —where's the heat? what's the argument? How fits/not with what you know from experience (or other texts)?
By 5 p.m. on Fri, your second 3-pp. essay is due. We would like you to go and
and analyze the encounter in the “contact zone” you described in your short posting on Monday,
in light of ONE of the three texts we are discussing this week. How does LeGuin's, Butler's OR
Pratt’s text alter your understanding of your own experience? OR: in what ways might your
experience expand or revise our understanding of one of these texts?