December 5, 2016 - 22:41
Welcome, all, into the next-to-final week of work.
I want to say how much I enjoyed the sense of our exhibit emerging in collaboration last Friday, and am looking forward to our final Friday session this week. Once you've worked through Carrie's suggestions, I'm glad to do one more editing of your wall text. So, please: after you've finalized these in Jody's class tomorrow, send me your texts for proofreading and editing.
I also want to remind you to post, tomorrow/this Tuesday by midnight, another update on your independent project, describing both what work you've done in the past week, and what your intentions are for the week upcoming. Ideally, I'd like to see an outline for the paper you plan to write. I know from our conferences that reading one another's postings is helping you develop your own ideas--and am also realizing that a number of you could really profit from meeting as a group to talk about your projects. I'm also available, of course, for additional meetings, either with individuals or small groups. For example, I thought that
* HannahC, Olivia and Swati might also have a good conversation, since you are each developing projects that will juxtapose reading a text and yourselves (Liv's studying her experiences of double consciousness in the classroom; Hannah's querying Asian-American experience in the classroom and The Book of Salt; Swati's examining queer disaporic subjects, in The Book of Salt and elsewhere);
* likewise Alliyah, Kamara and Nyasa, who are each exploring personal dimensions of black womynhood (Alliyah is using photos, poetry and excerpts to create a photo journal; Nyasa is also gathering reading and videos to create a comeback posting for her personal blog; Kamara is creating her own blog postings and playlist in response to Americanah);
* another likely-to-be-helpful pairing is Sula (who is revisiting Dill's character) and Gabby (who has related interests in black trans masculinity);
* Abby and Franny might also be helpful to one another, since the revival of interest in the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston was largely due to the efforts of Alice Walker (Abby's reading Their Eyes are Watching God, while Franny's working through adaptations of The Color Purple); and
* Amaka is working up a presentation on Afro-Pessimism that you'll all be invited to—so stay tuned for that!
I'll be joining Jody's class on Thursday, to participate in that discussion and distribute evaluations.
Til then, always, and gladly,
A.