What a semester!!!

Hello Everybody! Thank you all for working so hard and giving your best effort this semester. I hope Ben and I have inspired you to be better writers finding excitement in the act of putting one's thoughts out in the world. It has been a really good semester, we have seen you improving every week. Thank you all!

Claudia

Baby?

Well, since you asked ... here he is! Little Caleb (full name: Caleb William Darling Lempert) was born Monday (yesterday) morning at 10:47 am. He and Mom are in good shape, although it's 2 am right now and I'm rapidly learning to type with one hand. Here are a few pictures of the little dude from a few hours after he was born. Mostly he just looks pretty spastic(!).

Thank you all for the fun semester ... have a great holiday and please keep in touch!

Baby

Where's the picture of the baby?

Afterthoughts

Thanks for a great class. My writing really did improve a lot.

Where we turn in our paper

Okay I know it's Friday, by 3pm to a mailbox. What was the number though, 7---? And is it in Dwinelle? Thanks.

Paper

So when we turn in the paper, are we also turning in the peer edit sheets and putting it all in a folder like last time, or is it just turning in the paper this time? I know Ben said we don't need to turn in all of our essays, but do we need to turn in the other stuff? I hope this question wasn't already answered :/

Thanks guys.

-Gina

Final essay

I was working on my essay and I looking at a quote in The Lover: "Their disgrace is a matter of course. Both are doomed to discredit because of the kind of body they have, caressed by lovers, kissed by their lips, consigned to the infamy of a pleasure unto death, as they both call it, unto the mysterious death of lovers without love. That's what it's all about: this hankering for death (Duras 90)." I know that this has something to do with the fact that death is associated with detachment and separation. However, I am having trouble analyzing this quote any further. Could anyone help me understand this quote? Thanks.

Essay peer edit

A certain person in my peer review group said he would email his essay to us. I have not received the essay. Please send it again to jeffreyjoh AT berkeley, or you can also bring it over to me in Foothill.

Thanks,
Jeff Joh

A Note on Plagiarism

Dear all,

My department has asked me, given that it's the end of the semester and final papers are coming near, to send out a general announcement about plagiarism. I spoke briefly about this at the beginning of the semester, but to reiterate: plagiarism is generally prohibited in Berkeley classes and in this one is grounds for failure. For our purposes, plagiarism consists of the unattributed use of another author's work, or the presentation of another author's work as one's own. A good rule of thumb is that if you think it might be plagiarism, it probably is. Thus all of the following count as plagiarism:

1. Directly quoting another person's actual words, whether oral or written, without citation (quotation marks and indication of source text).

2. Using another person's ideas, opinions, or theories, without citation (indication of source text).

3. Paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written, without citation.

If you are wondering if your paper, or parts of your paper, may be plagiarized, there are services available, such as EssayRater, that one can use to assess the occurrence of plagiarism in one's paper. Plagiarism.org is a good site for learning more about what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Please keep all of this in mind as you work on your final papers. If you have any questions, feel free to check out one of the above sites or to e-mail me.

Best,

Ben

Blow-up Music

I'm wondering if anyone has found any significance in the music of Blow-up, I can't seem to connect it together.

Propeller scene in Blow-up

So, I re-watched Blow-Up yesterday (which by the way, I thought was not so interesting when I saw it the first time, but a FASCINATING movie when I watched slowly, carefully, and wow everything kinda makes sense now!) and why did the photographer buy the propeller? It appears completely useless.
In fact, why does he like buying stuff so much, like why did he want to buy that painting from Bill? And why does he want to buy that antique shop? Is it just to show that he's rich, or is there some other meaning behind that?

Jeff Joh

Citing A Room of One's Own?

What's the convention for citing quotes from the Virginia Woolf piece? There are no page numbers given, so do we just give chapter number or do we give page number based on the pdf' file's pages? Another question: There were a lot of typos in the pdf file, should we maintain the typos while quoting (using the sic marker and what not) or can we go ahead and correct obvious mistakes in the quote?

Thanks
Tom

Final Paper!

Hi Ben,
I wasn't sure if you said we had to use The Lover in our final paper or not?

Writing Analytically 7.2

From Katherine Su:

Writing Analytically, 7.2
1. Pros : The transition into the thesis statement is good, summing up the
two arguments being made in. Uses the word “despite” and “while” to set up
a typically good thesis structure. Presents the specific dilemma
accurately and concisely.

Cons: Makes no claim, nothing that needs to be further proved. Uses a lot
of nouns rather than verbs, no direction. Sums up the introductory
paragraph, doesn’t truly provide a compelling argument. It’s basically a
statement of fact. The first part of the sentence says “despite both
legitimate claims,…” however the second part is just reiterating the two
legitimate claims.

While both claims are legitimate, the issue of protecting the environment
will long outlive the problems of our current economy, but maintaining a
proper balance to both is key a successful future.

2. Pros: It makes a claim. Presents its argument clearly, introduces the
subject of the argument in the very beginning, uses “corporate view” to
try to seem like it is not a personal opinion.

Cons: It is, however, obviously a personal statement, based completely off
of the female stereotype in society. The beginning phrase is unnecessary
(“Regarding the….”), overall sentence is convoluted. “Losing the race”
isn’t quite the best phrase of choice.

As powerful firms promote people into top executive positions, gender
stereotypes are being used against women, claiming that a woman’s
compassion makes her less of a candidate.

Writing Analytically 7.2

1. This thesis makes no real claim about environmental or economic protection. It focuses on both as a whole, and just states that the issue “remains critical.” The thesis does not lead the paper in any particular direction, so nothing can really be resolved in writing the rest of the paper about why resolving the issue between environmental and economic protection is critical. The rest of the paragraph, however, sets up a definite contrast that can easily be debated.

Despite the concerns over preventing global warming, industries must expand to stimulate the American economy.

2. This thesis seems to have personal conviction in the claim. The claim puts women behind men in a corporate “race,” and assumes that executive positions require a lack of compassion. The thesis has a point, but is weakened in its wordiness and weak verbs. To "keep up" with competition is vague, and does not make a specific claim. Overall, the thesis seems more like an attack on women than an analysis.

Women are less likely to gain executive positions, because corporations believe that women are too compassionate to uphold the corporations' interests.

Writing Analytically, 7.2

1.
Strengths:
- anticipates objections by stating both sides and claims that they are both “legitimate”
- good sentence structure: starts out with “despite” and follows argument with “while”
- is relatively specific and avoids weak verbs

Weaknesses:
- somewhat wrong use of “despite”
- lacks drive: the use of “critical” remains ambiguous
- so what if it is “critical”?

Thesis rewrite:

Although protecting the environment and securing our country’s economic position are both legitimate claims, we need to intertwine both objectives because forsaking one for the other will result in useless efforts.

2.
Strengths:
- sets up argument well with points that readers will expect to find out about later

Weaknesses:
- awkward flow (especially the first sentence)
- wordy, non-specific words

Thesis rewrite:

Because most corporations consider women to be too compassionate to keep up with the competition within a firm, women are less likely to hold executive positions.

The Lover/Essay Question

Hey... So I am flipping through the Lover, and I recently noticed something that I hadn't seen previously:
p91
"It was as night ended that he killed himself, in the main square, glittering with light."

I seem to be missing something... who is dying here?

Please any help would be awesome!

-Zach

Writing Analytically 7.2

Question 1
1. The thesis states the obvious and has no compelling argument
2. "Critical" is too braod of a term
3. The thesis statement does not predicate
Although there exists these two established claims, the challenge of protecting the environment while simultaneously satisfying the economy remains the ultimate objective.

Question 2
1. There is a lot of weak verb use
2. There are a lot of generalizations such as "race"
3. The verbs are not strong enough to support the nouns and make for a strong statement
The corporate stereotype, in which women are viewed as too sensitive and compassionate to succeed in a competitive firm, hinders the number of women promoted into executive positions.

Virginia Woolf

Hey all,

For those of you who haven't printed out the Woolf essay yet, I put all 6 chapters together into one PDF. Here 'tis:

http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/42454/A%20room%20of%20one%27s%20own%2C%20by%20Virginia%20Woolf.pdf

It may seem a bit long, but it's pretty straightforward, and a moderately quick (and fun!) read.

Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy.

-Ben

PIZZA! :)

Hey everyone,

Please bring $2 tomorrow for pizza! I'm thinking of getting 2 or 3 "Godzilla" size pizzas from Blondie's. Comment if you have other suggestions or any preferences for toppings :)

~Radhika

Sunday Screening

Just to remind everyone, the screening this Sunday is at 6:30 pm in 209 Dwinelle. The film's about 2 hours long, so we should be out of there by 9 at the latest.

Oh, and a few of you came up to me after class and said that you were going home before then and couldn't make it. If you could, please e-mail me before then so I don't mark you absent.

Thanks - see everyone then.
-Ben

“Blow-Up” Homework Assignment

Reality vs. Imagination

Examples:

“It’s going to be difficult because nobody really knows… if I am I or what actually occurred or what I’m seeing…or if, simply, I’m telling a truth which is only my truth and then is the truth only for my stomach, for this impulse to go running out and to finish up in some manner with this, whatever it is” (paragraph 4).
The narrator speaks about the confusion between the true reality and his own creation, in which he deems as true. These two different worlds are merged together. A photograph offers evidence on what really happened, while literature is a piece that he can create and change. In this case the literature happens to be the actual passage. He collects his observations into the passage and ends with a photo, but as he stares at the photo, his mind trails off to possible alternatives to what he had actually observed. With more literature/imagination, the photo changed in his mind to a way to output his self-created scenarios.

“Michel is guilty of making literature, of indulging in fabricated unrealities. Nothing pleases him more than to imagine exceptions to the rule” (paragraph 16).
- Literature is connoted as only fiction in this case. The narrator writes these fictions, which goes against the “rule,” which means the true reality.

“…and the first day he spent some time looking at it and remembering, that gloomy operation of comparing memory with a reality that is lost, a frozen memory, like any photo, where nothing is missing, not even, and especially, nothingness, the real fixer of the scene” (paragraph 20).
- “Memory” refers to his imagination while “reality that is lost” is what really happened, but because of his fabrications, he has turned to believe in them as true. It has turned into a photo, which is supposedly a depiction of the actual event.

Thesis:
The separation between reality and imagination is distorted, leaving the narrator remnants of the truth and his self-created memories, in which he combines together to form his own perverse reality.

Linda Pham

Blow Up assignment

Contrast: Photos vs. Writings

Examples of contrast:

A)
“like and photo, where nothing is missing” (126).
“guilty of making literature, of indulging in fabricated unrealities” (124).
The contrast made here is that photographs are all seeing, they cannot be fabricated, whereas writing can be created from nothing.

B)
When describing taking the photo the narrator states, “I was satisfied with myself” (127).
“I was unable to find a way to say in food French what Jose’ Norberto Allenda was saying in very good Spanish” (127). When one is attempting to accomplish a task, such as translating a piece of literature, it is frustrating when the task is failed. This is contradictory to his satisfaction from taking the photo.

C)
The narrator realizes that photos are very easy to understand and lack confusion, stating, “we look at a photo from the front, the eyes reproduce exactly what position and the vision of the lens” (126.)
The narrator speaks of a man with a paper that he has been pretending to read. He describes the man as having “the grimace that twisted his mouth askew, it covered his face with wrinkles” (125). The man was confronted with reading a paper and although he was not actually reading it, he is described as a wrinkled. Wrinkles can often be formed by confusion, thus the mere presence of writing is symbolized by the confusion on the man’s face.



Thesis:
Photography and writing are both forms of art, but the symbolism and understanding of each can contrast one another.

Blow-Up

Contrast: The Camera/Photo versus The Eye/Vision

Three Examples:

“As for the boy I remember the image before his actual body (that will clear itself up later), while now I am sure that I remember the woman’s body much better than the image.” (119) PHOTO IMAGE VERSUS MEMORY

“…sure that I would finally catch the revealing expression, one that would sum it all up, life that is rhythmed by movement but which a stiff image destroys…” (123) PHOTO IMAGE VERSUS RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT OF LIFE

“My strength had been a photograph, that, there, where they were taking their revenge on me, demonstrating clearly what was going to happen. The photo had been taken, the time had run out, gone; we were so far from one another, the abusive act had certainly already taken place, the tears already shed, and the rest conjecture and sorrow. All at once the order was inverted, they were alive, moving, they were deciding and had decided, they were going to their future; and I on this side, prisoner of another time, in a room on the fifth floor, to not know who they were, that woman, that man, and that boy, to be only the lends of my camera, something fixed, rigid, incapable of intervention.” (130) STIFF PHOTO IMAGE BECOMING THE RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT OF LIFE AND THE RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT OF LIFE BECOMING THE STIFF PHOTO IMAGE

Thesis: Although a photo seems to be similar to the act of seeing something in real life (a person, a situation, etc.), the two mechanisms in fact hold somewhat opposing principles, one principle being a stiff, unchanging moment in time, and the other being a rhythmic, moving act of life.

blow up assignment

1. Contrast of actual events vs. what Michel thinks

2. a) "All this was so clear, ten feet away-and we were alone against the parapet at the tip of the island" (119).
"...unless he...would rouse himself to put his arm around her waist and to kiss her. Any of this could have happened, though it did not, and perversely Michel waited..." (122).
The contrast here is that Michel creates this fake situation when in fact the boy and the woman are just ten feet in front of him doing nothing of what he is talking about.

b) "I imagined the possible endings...I saw their arrival at the house...Closing my eyes, if I did in fact close my eyes, I set the scene: the teasing kisses" (123).
Again, the same quotation from 119 can be applied because the couple is still on the island, they have not left, Michel just imagines that they do so.

c) "Every few minutes, for example when I was unable to find the way to say in good French what Jose Norberto Allende was saying in very good Spanish, I raised my eyes and looked at the photo" (127).
"I had just translated...when I saw the woman's hand beginning to stir slowly, finger by finger" (128).
The contrast here is that Michel is translating a Spanish text into French and when he takes a break, he imagines the woman and her situation back on the island.

3. Through the character of Michel in Julio Cortazar's "Blow-Up", the separation of reality and imagination is blurred.

"Blow-Up" Assignment

1. There is a contrast in perspective. The author switches between first, second, and third person points of view.

2. Three examples of how this contrast is set up:

a. “It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing. If one might say: I will see the moon rose, or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes, and especially: you the blond woman was the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces. What the hell (Cortazar 114).”

b. “Oh, doctor, every time I take a breath . . . Always tell it, always get rid of that tickle in the stomach that bothers you. And now that we’re finally going to tell it, let’s put things a little bit in order, we’d be walking down the staircase in this house as far as Sunday, November 7, just a month back. One goes down five floors and stands then in the Sunday in the sun one would not have suspected of Paris in November, with a large appetite to walk around, to see things, to take photos (because we were photographers, I’m a photographer) (Cortazar 116).”

c. “Out of breath, I stood in front of them; no need to step closer, the game was played out. Of the woman you could see just maybe a shoulder and a bit of the hair, brutally cut off by the frame of the picture; but the man was directly center, his mouth half open, you could see a shaking black tongue, and he lifted his hands slowly, bringing them into the foreground, an instant still in perfect focus, and then all of him a lump that blotted out the island, the tree, and I shut my eyes, I didn’t want to see any more, and I covered my face and broke into tears like an idiot (Cortazar 131).”

3. By changing the perspective between first, second, and third person in “Blow-Up,” Cortazar aims to capture many different viewpoints of the story in order to explain it in a more meaningful and comprehensive manner, much like a series of photographs evokes a more complete understanding of an experience through multiple angles.

Blow-Up

Ok, I couldn't find another good version on-line, so I did a quick scan. Not the best copy in the world, but not much worse than your typical reader. And at least we'll all be using the same pagination. Here it is:

Blow-Up

Enjoy!

This Tuesday

Hey everyone,

So although the discussion on Thursday was really good, I'm still feeling like we could use a little more time to finish up with "The Lover." And looking at the syllabus, there's also some "Writing Analytically" (pg. 120-136) scheduled for Tuesday. I'm still hoping that there'll be a little bit of time to start with the Cortazar story ("Blow-Up"), but given the way things usually go in class, I'm a little doubtful. So why doesn't everybody review "The Lover" and "Writing Analytically," and do a quick read of the Cortazar story, just to get a sense of what happens in it. As I said, it's not a very long story, but it is a little enigmatic. We can also talk a bit in class about how we want to arrange the next few weeks.

Also, I just took a look at the link I posted for the Cortazar story, and it's a little weird, with different sized typefaces and the like (which are not part of the story! Apologies to those of you who may have taken a look and started to construct paper topics around the relationship of font-size to plot). So I'll try to find a better on-line source, or if I have to do a quick scan that you can download. Stay posted.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend.

-Ben

7.1 and 7.4

Thomas Magrino

7.1
6. The insured must provide the insurer with evidence of costs when expenses are above $250.
7. Federal spending must be reduced in order to reduce the federal deficit.
8. Continue medication until symptoms of nausea and dizziness have disappeared for 6 hours.
9. People should be told the reasons for being rejected from a chance to participate in a cost-sharing educational program.
10. Until the total mass of the universe is calculated, there will always be debate about whether the universe is open or closed.
11. As long as taxpayers pay their taxes, the government can pay off its debts.
12. The only alternative fuel sources in this country are tar sand, oil shale, and coal.
13. The Catholics and Protestants will remain separate until they agree on the issue of the authority of papal supremacy.
7.4
1. There may always be TV programming to appeal to the public’s most prurient interests.
2. Plea bargaining needs a new approach because the current approach allows hardened criminals back onto the street and encourages a lack of respect for the judicial system.
3. There is one principle regarding the protection of wilderness from exploitation.
4. It is unlikely that there is any undiscovered species of terrestrial-type snakes.
5. The educational system has become one of the more important sources of transmission of social values.

Homework: 7.1 and 7.4

7.1

6. The Insured must provide the Insurer with evidence of costs if expenses exceed $250.
7. The federal deficit can be reduced only if spending is reduced.
8. Continue medication unless there are no symptoms of dizziness or nausea in six hours.
9. People who are not accepted into the cost-sharing educational program should be given an explanation.
10. The dispute of an open or closed universe can be resolved only if the total mass of the universe is computed.
11. Government will be able to pay its debts unless there is a widespread refusal to pay taxes.
12. To become energy independent, the country must develop tar sand, oil shale, and coal.
13. Catholics and Protestants cannot reconcile unless they reach a resolution on papal supremacy.

7.4

1. There are always some TV programs that appeal to our lowest interests.
2. The standard approach to plea bargaining needs to be dispensed because it allows criminals to avoid just punishment and encourages lack of respect for the judicial system.
3. The basic principle one must follow in regard to preservation is to not open unspoiled areas to commercial exploitation.
4. We assume that there are no snakes in unmapped areas of the world that are larger than those we know of.
5. The educational system may exceed the family as a source of transmitting social values.

Style 7.1 & 7.4

7.1:

6. The Insured should provide the Insurer with receipts, checks, or other evidence of costs if the expenses exceed $250.

7. Federal deficit reductions are possible if federal spending reductions are introduced.

8. Take medication until symptoms of dizziness and nausea are not present for six hours.

9. Those who cannot participate in cost-sharing educational programs should know why they are denied access.

10. The argument on whether the universe is open or closed will likely remain unresolved unless we can compute the total mass of the universe.

11. If taxpayers refuse to pay taxes, the government will have difficulty paying its debt.

12. If we wish to be energy independent, the only option we have is eventual development of tar sand, oil shale, and coal as sources of fuel.

13. Catholicism and Protestantism will reconcile when they reach an agreement about the authority of the Pope.

7.4:

1. On the other hand, some programming will appeal to our most prurient interests.

2. The approach to plea bargaining needs to be changed for two reasons: it encourages a lack of respect for the judicial system and it often leaves criminals unpunished.

3. There is one principle in deciding how to preserve the wilderness from exploitation.

4. There are probably no bigger terrestrial-type snakes in the world than the ones we already know.

5. Education's influence on social values exceeds the family's influence.

Style 7.1 & 7.4 Homework

Exercise 7.1
6. The Insured must provide the Insurer with evidence of costs, except when expenses are under $250.
7. Reductions in federal spending must be introduced for there to be a reduction in the size of the federal deficit.
8. Continue medication unless symptoms of dizziness and nausea are not present for six hours.
9. An agency may reject a person from a cost-sharing educational program only if the agency provides a full hearing into why it rejected him.
10. There is disagreement on an open or closed universe which can only be resolved by a computation of the total mass of the universe.
11. If we pay our taxes, the government can pay its debts.
12. If we wish to be energy independent, we must develop alternative fuel sources.
13. Catholics and Protestants will only reconcile when they agree on the Pope’s authority.

Exercise 7.4
1. On the other hand, some TV programming will always appeal to our most prurient interests.
2. The approach to plea bargaining needs to change for two reasons. First it allows criminals to avoid punishment, and second, it encourages a growing lack of respect for the judicial system.
3. One principle governs how to preserve the wilderness from exploitation.
4. It is my belief there are no terrestrial-type snakes—larger than those known—in unmapped areas of the world.
5. Schools transmit more social values than families.

"The Lover"

"The Lover" seems very interesting so far. On page 30, Duras writes, "She died between Do and him she called her child..." Here is it interesting to note that this paragraph is in the middle of the page and there is a big space between this paragraph and the paragraphs above and below it. It represents the fact that the mother died in between Do and her child.

The Lover

Hi, does anyone have suggestions on how to keep track of what's going on in the story? The book kind of reminds me of Catch-22 where the events are scrambled and retold many times. Anyways, I like the story so far it's just hard to remember what has happened and what hasn't. Thanks to anyone who is able to help.

yea.. def can't find any of the william pope L videos which is really unfortunate because I really wanted to write about that.

Using Washington's Atlanta Address in Prompt One

Hey, I'm using prompt one for my paper because it took me too long to find those Pope L. videos unfortunately. Anyways, my paper is progressing nicely but I need to highlight the basic ideas of Black culture for Washington and was hoping I could use the "fingers on a hand quote" in my paper.

William Pope L.

has anyone been able to find those videos using that Miro thing?

How to scan poetry

Hey everybody,

For those of you interested in (or confused by) the way rhythm and meter work in poetry, here's a decent little guide written by Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner (and current Berkeley professor!). For those of you who aren't, feel free to ignore this post.

How to scan poetry

Enjoy!

Black Dada Nihilismus

Does anyone know what "Dada Nihilismus" is/means? Also was anyone able to find out what some of the references/definitions were including but not limited to Mondrian, Trillby, patrice, mantan, bronze buckaroos, tom russ, and l'overture? The poem has a lot of references that appear random but I am hoping that finding out what these are will help me discover some kind of connection among them :]

Amiri Baraka poems

Hey all,

In case any of you were interested, here are the two recordings of Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) reading the two poems we're looking at, both with free jazz accompaniment.

Black Art

Black Dada Nihilismus

Enjoy!

Videos Black Factory

Hello Everybody!
I cannot post the videos directly to the blog. But that does not mean that you cannot watch them.

Please click on the link below. There you will find a set of instructions to download a FREE video sharing program. Once downloaded, subscribe to the channel of the company that made William Pope.L's videos. Everything is FREE and EASY.
Here is the link,

http://www.roundpointmovies.org/roundpointmovies/mvanondtv.html

Hey everyone... so I'm maybe planning on going to see the movie "The Secret Life of Bees" tonight (has anyone read the book?!) after 7p.m. and wanted to invite anyone who's interested to join me. I figured the situations in this movie are similar with those we've been studying in class so therefore by letting everyone know I could create an opportunity for anyone more interested in those subjects to go to something fun outside of class. Plus it's a really great story with a good message. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Just fwy actors include Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah,  Alicia Keys, and Jennifer Hudson (from american idol). Let me know! 

6505040700

-Cyrena

this tuesday

is there any pre-reading we need to do about William Pope L. for Tuesday?

Mid-semester feedback

Hey all,

I'm really interested in getting mid-semester feedback from all of you on the class as it's been going so far. Feedback is always helpful, and there are often issues that one doesn't know about until one reads the end-of-semester feedback forms, by which time it's too late.

Anyway, I've been trying to figure our a way for you all to submit feedback anonymously, so I set up a (very) short feedback form online. It doesn't need your name, and won't record your IP address.

I've also been trying to come up with some sort of incentive for you to fill it out, so how about this: if 2/3 of the class (which is approximately 22 of you) fills out this survey in the next week, everyone in the class will get one "lateness" day scratched from the attendance sheet. And if you haven't been late yet, you'll get one "late day" in the bank that you can use later.

Click Here to take survey

Thanks everyone!

Paper Topics, paper #2

As promised, here are the prompts for the second essay. The essay should be 5-6 pages long (minimum 5, maximum 6), standard formatting.

Paper Topics:

In our three-week investigation of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, we’ve noticed a number of important themes and strategies that operate either throughout or at different moments in the text. A list of them would probably include the following:

- the notion of “double consciousness,” both on the level of philosophical or psychological description and as a mode of textual performance (as in the epigraphs before each chapter, or the story of the two Johns, e.g.)
- the idea of and problem with the color line
- the invocation of “Africa” as an important yet inaccessible past
- the role of music in the text, “music” as both figure and as textual fragment
- Du Bois’ criticisms of Booker T. Washington
- the figure of the “Black Belt” as sacred or ancestral ground; relation between North and South
- the history of emancipation as a new version of slavery
- the relationship between history and culture; different forms of cultural transmission
- the relation between personal story and historical or sociological analysis
- the employment of a certain textual “silence”; the invocation of an experience for which language may be inadequate
- Souls as a whole conceived as a sort of textual journey
- the importance of the Sorrow Songs for all of the above

With these as your starting point, write a 5-6 page paper using one of the following prompts. Your paper should include a clear, strong thesis and should aim to develop an idea that moves past mere explication and into textual analysis:

1) Take a smaller part of Souls, hopefully but not necessarily one that we didn’t cover thoroughly in class, and perform a close reading of it with the aim of demonstrating how the piece you’ve chosen works to assist, complicate, deepen, modify or otherwise work with what you take to be one of the important goals or strategies of the book as a whole. Feel free to interpret “smaller part” as you like – you can look at a particular chapter or set of chapters, a particular paragraph or passage, one of the Sorrow Songs that head each of book’s chapters (this option may involve a little bit of research, especially if you choose to write about the song’s unpresented lyrics), one of the musical/poetic pairings at the beginning of each chapter, one of the stories Du Bois tells, one of the characters about whom he writes, or any other detail you deem significant. The choice is up to you. Whatever you choose, your goal should be to show both how the detail you’ve selected works as a piece of the larger text and why it matters to the book. What does your analysis of this “smaller part” show us about the book that may not be apparent on the surface? Feel free to use (or not!) any of the themes listed above as starting points.

2) Take either William Pope L.’s piece “The Black Factory” or any one or two of the poems from our second set of poetry and read it through, with, in light of, against or otherwise paired with Du Bois’ book. As with the last paper, you don’t want to provide a mere compare-and-contrast, but want to use the pairing to reveal something interesting and important about both of the works in question. Does the work you’re analyzing take Du Bois’ work a step further? Demonstrate a problem with Du Bois’ premises (or vice versa)? Recontextualize Souls for a more modern audience? Bring Souls into dialogue with a different aesthetic mode? Again, feel free to use any of the above themes as points of focus.

Poems for Thursday

Here's the packet of poems for this Thursday (remember, this week we're switching up the syllabus a bit, so Claudia's day on William Pope L. will be on Tuesday, and we'll be reading poems on Thursday):

Poems, second set

Enjoy!

Late Excusal For Thursday (I Hope)

Okay, sorry for how late this is but I finally got the strength to get out of bed today.

I woke up Thursday around 9 so I could workout as usual and I felt like a truck hit me or something. It hurt to even think about moving that day and for much of the next until yesterday I got hauled to the doctor's. It appears I'm just handling a case of the flu really poorly. I'm feeling better and I'll make class on Tuesday. I just hope that this is a satisfactory reason for my absence (I know on a very important day that I really didn't want to miss).

I hope that at the very least an extra copy of a worksheet or whatever I might have missed on Thursday could be brought Tuesday to help me catch up. Thank you for understanding.

Of Spirituals

Obviously, the spirituals in Du Bois's book are fairly important, so I'd like to share some information that I learned in MUSIC 26AC (I think there are a couple more of you guys in the class too, so add/correct this as you wish).

Old African American religious music (spirituals) usually consisted of ring shouts, foot-stomping, clapping, drumming, etc. These kinds of expression have a fair amount of connections with the true African way of dancing and singing. However, these were thought to be profane among the white Christians, so Thomas White, the white Fisk University treasurer created the arranged spirituals sang by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which we heard in class today. The arranged spirituals transferred the African American spirituals onto the concert stage to appeal to white audiences (which is kind of interesting when reading Du Bois) and this made the spirituals more reserved to a degree - excessive physical expressions and emotional outbursts ceased and singing became definite and refined. Basically, what we heard in class today is like a "westernization" of old spirituals, and they differ quite a lot from what the rural folks actually sang. Nevertheless, they remain a huge part of African American culture largely due to its popularity among all audiences.

How to write a [good] Thesis?

Hi Ben,
I asked you at Office hours on Thursday about constructing a well working thesis. Could you please go over your thoughts again via blogspot?

Exercise 5.2

1. Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continuously covered with ice or scorched by heat. Plants grow most richly in fertilized plains and river valleys, but they also grow at the snow’s edge in the high mountains, in the cracks of busy sidewalks, and on seemingly barren cliffs. Densely vegetated areas include the ocean and its edges and around lakes and swamps. Vegetation covered the earth before humans existed and will continue to exist long after humans disappear.

2. Animals do not have the power to create a new message based on new experiences. Their genetic code limits the number and kind of messages they can communicate. For example, bees can only communicate about distance, direction, source, and richness of pollen. A species of animal delivers a limited repertoire of messages in the same way, generation after generation.

3. According to Jones’ 1985 paper, language skills are very important to children’s problem-solving skills. Improvements in language skills resulted in an improvement in nonverbal problem solving. This occurs probably because language habits acquired earlier are used to articulate problems and to activate knowledge that has previously been learned through language. Therefore, problem solving in general can be enhanced by practicing formulating nonlinguistic problems verbally.

Dr. Jonhson

Hey does anyone know who the "Dr. Johnson" referred to on page 77 is?

Style: Exercise 5.3 (page 87)

Style: Exercise 5.3 (page 87)
1. Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continuously covered with ice or utterly scorched by continual heat. Plants grow not only in rich plains and river valleys, but also at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. Dense vegetation grows in the ocean and its edges, as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants exist in the cracks of busy city sidewalks, as well as in seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation covered the earth before humans existed, and they will continue to be there long after the evolutionary history swallows us up.
2. Animals naturally lack in power to create and communicate a new message to fit a new experience. Their genetic code limits the number and kind of messages that they can communicate. For examples, bees can only communicate information about distance, direction, source, and richness of pollen in flowers. As a part of their characteristics, animals of same species keep delivering a limited repertoire of message in the same way, generation after generation.
3. In his paper on children’s thinking, Jones (1985) stressed the importance of language skills in their problem-solving ability. He reported that the children with improved language skills showed enhanced capability in solving the nonverbal problems. According to him, they performed better when solving the problems because they used the language habits they already acquired in order to articulate the problem and to activate the knowledge they learned through language. Therefore, we will be able to explore the way to enhance problem solving in general by systematically putting the nonlinguistic problems in verbal form.

Exercise 5.2, Style Practice

1. Vegetation is found all around the world, save for places of extreme temperature. Plants thrive in richly fertilized plains and river valleys as well as on the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. Dense vegetation exists in the ocean and its edges as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants are present in the cracks of busy city sidewalks as well as what seem to be barren cliffs. Vegetation covered the earth before humans ever existed and will continue to do so long after our existence has come to pass.
2. Animals don’t have the power to create and communicated new messages fit to new experiences naturally. Their genetic code limits the number and kind of messages they have the ability to pass on. Bees, for example, can only communicate distance, direction, source and richness of pollen in flowers. Animals of the same species characteristically have a limited cache of messages that can’t be sent that span over generations.
3. Language skills were stressed by Jones (1985) in his paper on children’s thinking as very important in children’s problem-solving abilities. Language skill improvement reportedly causes improvement in nonverbal problem solving. Language habits that were previously acquired used along with the activation of knowledge previously learned through language are thought to be the cause of better performance. Therefore, the verbal formulation of nonlinguistic problems prior to attempts at their solution, when systematically practiced, might be an avenue for exploration in the enhancement of problem solving in general.

Writing Analytically: Exercise 5.2

1. Vegetables cover the earth, except for areas covered by ice or scorched by heat. Plants grow the most richly in fertilized plains, river valleys, and on the edges of snowy mountains. Dense vegetation populates the ocean and its edges, as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants grow in the cracks of city sidewalks and on seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation will still continue to inhabit the earth long after humans have been swallowed up by evolutionary history.
2. Animals do not naturally have the power to create and communicate a new message to fit a new experience. The number and kind of messages that they can communicate are limited by their genetic code. For example, bees can only communicate information regarding the distance, direction, source, and richness of pollen in flowers. In all significant respects, only animals of the same species can deliver a selection of messages in the same way.
3. In his paper on children’s thinking, Jones (1985) stressed how important language skills are in the ability of children to solve problems. He reported that when children improve their language skills, they can also improve on solving nonverbal problems. Jones thought children performed better when they use previously acquired language habits to articulate and activate knowledge previously learned though language. He, therefore, concludes that if children practiced to formulate words, they can learn to solve problems better.

Style, Exericise 5.2

1. Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continuously covered with ice or utterly scorched by continual heat. Plants grow mostly on richly fertilized plains and river valleys but also at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. Dense vegetation grows in the ocean and around its edges as well as around lakes and swamps. Plants grow in the cracks of busy city sidewalks and in seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation covered the earth before humans existed and will stay long after we have been swallowed up by evolutionary history.

2. Animals in their natural state cannot create and communicate new messages to fit a new experience. Their genetic code limits the number and kind of messages that they can communicate. For example, bees can only communicate information about distance, direction source, and richness of pollen in flowers. Animals are characterized as the same species when messages have a limited repertoire and are delivered in the same way for every generation.

3. In his paper on children’s thinking, Jones (1985) stressed the importance of language skills in children’s problem-solving ability. He reported that when children improved their language skills, they also improved on their ability to solve nonverbal problems. Jones believed that they performed better because they used previously acquired language habits to articulate problems and activated knowledge learned through language. Therefore we could explore if children could solve problems better if they practiced how to formulate them.

Exercise 5.2

1. Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continually covered with ice or utterly scorched by continual heat. Plants grow most richly in fertilized plains and river valleys, but also at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. Vegetation is also dense in the ocean and it's edges, as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants can be found in the cracks of busy city sidewalks as well as in seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation covered the earth before humans existed and it will continue to cover the earth long after evolutionary history swallows us up.

2. Animals in their natural states can not create and communicate a new message to fit into a new experience. The genetic codes of animals limit the ways they can communicate. Bees for example can only communicate information about distance, direction, source, and richness of flowers. Animals of the same species must communicate with a limited repertoire of messages delivered in the same way for generation after generation in all significant respects.

3. Language skills are important to children's problem-solving skills, as stressed by Jones(1985) in his paper on children's thinking. Reports show that when language skills improve, nonverbal problem solving improves. Previously acquired language habits used for problem articulation and activation of knowledge may cause better performance. Using language skills to approach a nonlinguistic problem before solving the problem may be a way to enhance problem solving in general.

Booker T.

Hey all,

If possible, can you try to bring the Booker T. Washington to class tomorrow? There are a few more things in it that I'd like us to review. Good times, good times.

Best,
Ben

Atlanta Exposition

Hey Ben, should we print out Booker T's Atlanta Address? Is it going to be one of those readings that we will cover extensively?

Exercise on Binaries

What is the "Exercise on Binaries" that we have to do by tomorrow?

This seems kind of late to ask, I thought that it would be in the chapter of writing analytically, which I just got my copy today, but I can't tell.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

question about quotes and idioms

hey ben quick question when were using quotes from stevens and freud, do we need to reference lines and page numbers? and also if were using idioms in our essays, just quotation marks? i didn't want the chance for it to be misinterpreted as coming from freud or stevens. I'm using the idiom "removing of a veil" so should i keep it in quotation marks or notate it in a different way

What's with turbans?

So, this happens to be my first main post to the blog, and I had a question that I hope others can help me with that relates to my paper.

I happen to be doing a close reading of Wallace Stevens's poem "The Plain Sense of Things" and I can't come up with any reason why Stevens would choose to use the word turban in the line "No turban walks across the lessened floors," in the second stanza, last line. I was talking it over with some friends and none of us could come up with a reason for that "strange" word choice there. It appears to be a specific choice the author made and there should be a reason for that decision (I mean the guy was from CT USA in the early 20th century, how often could he have thought of turbans at random?).

Any ideas?

Tom Magrino

Some thoughts on the papers

Hey everybody,

A few things came up in office hours today that I'd like to clear up. So...

1) A number of you were worried that if you decided to write on one of the poems, you might "get it wrong," since your interpretation or reading of the poem wouldn't be the same one Claudia or I might come up with. As far as we're concerned, there is no right or wrong way to read a poem (or the Nietzsche or Freud, for that matter). Lots of people have come up with different interpretations of everything we've read in class up to this point, some of which are quite different from the ones we've been laying out. You are more than welcome, if not outright encouraged, to do some digging and figure out what you think any of the poems or essays mean. Be creative. Be bold. Be original. We don't care if your readings accord with ours - in fact, we'd be thrilled to learn something new.

What you do want to do, however, is be smart. And that means you need to back up your reading with evidence from the poems. That is to say, a less convincing reading isn't necessarily one that disagrees with either of our interpretations (even the ones we've been working through in class), but one that isn't supported by the poems themselves. There are no right or wrong answers here, but there are more or less convincing readings - your job is not get things "right" but to be persuasive. By all means disagree with me (or Claudia!), but make sure that when you do you support your argument with actual evidence.

2) If you're going to choose option #3, you should feel free to use almost any of the poems we've given out. I say "almost" because I've decided to not let people write about Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Despite all I said above about there being no right or wrong readings, to my mind the quite common interpretation of the poem - that the poem celebrates choosing the less conventional option - is absolutely incorrect. By which I mean that it's not supported at all by the poem itself (for what it's worth, Frost himself called that poem "a wolf in sheep's clothing"). Since we didn't discuss that poem in class, I'd be very worried that this common interpretation would be the one you worked with. Which would be a problem. So choose any poem (how about "The Innocence"?) but that one.

Good luck!

WRITING ANALYTICALLY Exercise 2.4. shazzam!

1a) Fewer Americans walk through neighborhoods.

1b) Perhaps more American homeowners just don't want people walking in front of their property.

1c) Form over function: sidewalks don't enhance curb appeal.

2a) Families value togetherness.

2b) House designers cater to this trend by incorporaing kitchens, living rooms, and family rooms into blueprints.

2c) Family members want to spend time not only with each other but also with guests. Living rooms by front doors provide an ideal space for entertaining.

3a) When it comes to coexistence, privacy begets harmony.

3b) Robert Frost valued privacy.

3c) The frustration that the ladies of Room 205 experience when I barge in unannounced is reflected in Frost’s remark.

4a) An anatomical reason explains why men have trouble expressing their feelings: compared to women, men have fewer connections between the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions and the part that is responsible for communication.

4b) Women can verbalize emotions and reasoning more readily than men can.

4c) If this trait is based on gender, and, if gender has a genetic basis, then this trait must also have a genetic basis.

5a) More and more American courts are applying the lens used to evaluate crimes committed by mature adults to crimes committed by maturing juveniles.

5b) A young defendant’s age and inexperience cannot preclude her conviction.

5c) More adults serve sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles because, supposedly, the actions of juveniles are directly comparable to the actions of adults.

6a) Most juveniles have underdeveloped capacities for judgment and impulse control.

6b) American courts should consider this limitation when resolving the fate of a juvenile defendant.

6c) It may also be implied that, once a person’s frontal cortex is fully developed, that person is responsible for all her actions.

7a) Women tend to make their commands appear less aggressive by voicing commands as they voice questions.

7b) Younger men have begun to speak like women, and the line that distinguishes stereotypically male and female traits has been blurred.

7c) As these younger men age, the demographic of men who exhibit this stereotypically female tendency will extend to older men.

8a) It’s easy for shoppers to lose track of time.

8b) Store managers want customers to ignore time, shop for longer periods, and make more unplanned purchases.

8c) Since stores rarely have clocks, employees must use other timepieces—watches and cell phones, for instance—to keep track of time.

<3

-- ok, it's not letting me copy-and-paste so now I have to re-type all of mine in this blog! ah

1) Disappearing could mean that having sidewalks is valuable. It could also mean something that is uncontrollably being lost. Slipping away. Implies that only the developer has the decisions to make the sidewalks. Are the mass majority of people therefore losing the ability to make this kind of decision? Is the ability to having a walking space being taken away? Also implies more cars will be on the roads, less people walking, less people exercising, which could lead to obesity. Could also lead to more gas spending. (Would the government want to do this on purpose?). Also more car driving and less sidewalk walking is less interaction with people, which means we won't get to know as many people, less contact with people, which could lead to depression.

2) If kitchen is not separated from the rest of house could imply that food needs to be closer to other living habitations. Could contribute to Americans watching TV more and more and want to be able to eat and watch TV at same time. If watching more TV, taking away from family time and if spend less family quality time, the family support system will not be very strong and could lead to children being less efficient in growing up because of lack of support and family community. Also if closer to other rooms, that means a person doesn't have to walk that far to food which means two things: there not walking as much to get to the food and they made be eating more food because it is more readily available. This can also lead to obesity!

3) Could imply you have a responsible, good-minded neighbor if they take the initiative to put up a good fence or take care of their fence. You would also be suggesting that the way a person handles their things represents who they are as a person. Could also suggest that a good fence means that it is one that keeps neighbors out of your space, meaning that "good neighbors" are ones who don't bother you. Therefore the fence would act as a barrier....not sure where else to go with  this

4) First thing I want to say is how does this person know this? If it's scientific information, than it implies that females are more able to express their emotions than males. And if true, males have and excuse to be disabled of expressing their emotions. If men have an excuse for this, then maybe they won't even try to talk out their emotions and if men do that, women will go crazy!

5) Could be saying that culture is getting more violent and therefore younger people have the ability and capability to commit "adult" crimes. Could also be suggesting that TV culture is affecting reality. A lot of teens watch TV now a days and there's a lot of violence on TV. TV could be affecting how we act in society (this is actually proven!) Also could be saying courts want to convict people of more crimes. Are they suggesting that children can commit adult crimes when their brain isn't even fully developed?

6)Haha what I just said! Can someone really be tried of a crime when they don't have a brain of an adult yet? If more kids are getting convicted, then more kids are in jail. Jail becomes more of a reality for a kid. Kids will experience the unpleasantness of jail that could affect them for the rest of their lives. This could make them even more violent than before. They will not get taught proper coping skills and will not be properly enforced in jail while their brain is still developing. Therefore what ever they get taught in jail could permanently affect them for the rest of their lives.

7)Giving a question sound to a statement implies the person isn't really confident in the statement they're saying. Implies lack of trust to whomever the person is directing statement to. Also statement the statement said if said by a women sound a lot like a mom talking to her child. So if men are saying more statements like that, then maybe they're are beginning to stay at home more often now than constantly having to work all the time and therefore participatin more in the family which will build stronger families which will make people happier! maybe more dads are becoming stay-at-home dads (yayee!)

8)Shopping malls and grocery stores don't want you to leave! They want you to stay longer so you will buy more things, if you buy more things, you're not only reinforcing the store but also buying things that you possibly don't need that you could be spending on things you really do need or if you have extra money you could give it to someone who really is in need! Though having no clocks in stores could have a backfiring affect in the sense if people get too tired and dehydrated while shopping because they lose track of time they could not want to go to stores anymore because of this occurance. 

Exercise 2.4

I forgot to post my answers on the blog-- hope this isn't too late.

Exercise 2.4

1. New housing development don’t see sidewalks as a priority.
Sidewalks are no longer seen as a necessity.
Sidewalks may now be considered obsolete: people may start driving more and walking less.
2.Because of an increase in their design, living rooms and family rooms seem to be popular among home buyers.
Families may prefer eating together in the family room, which is closer to the kitchen, than the living room, which is closer to the front door.
Guests may use the living room because it is close to the front door.
3. People relish the privacy of their homes.
Robert Frost valued fences highly, perhaps for its ability to prevent intrusion.
Robert Frost had fences.
4.Females are better fit to express emotions verbally than men are.
When talking, females tend to connect emotions to words more so than men do.
Men may be less inclined to emote in a conversation.
5. Minors may be committing crimes severe enough to warrant adult sentences.
The American judicial system may be flawed on the account that minors, who are by definition, not adults, are increasingly tried and convicted as adults.
The magnitude of the crime takes precedence over age.
6. Minors should not be sentenced as adults because until the age of twenty-one, the part of the brain which is responsible for judgement and impulse control is not yet fully developed.
The American judicial system may be flawed on the account that minors, who have brains which are physically more prone to committing crime than adult’s brains, are increasingly tried and convicted as adults.
There is also another flaw in the fact that those who are 18 and 19 years of age are also considered adults.
7. Many women may not identify well with authoritative positions.
The similarity in speech may indicate a newfound familiarity among men and women.
Men under the age of 30 may be in environments where declarative statements and command forms are not prevalent.
8. Shopping malls and grocery stores don’t feel the need to tell their customers the time while they shop.
Shopping malls and grocery stores want to keep their customers occupied with shopping; knowing the time may threaten or shorten that.
Shopping malls and grocery stores want your money and are greedy.

-Bryan h

PDF Writing Analytically

Here you will find a link to a pdf file of some pages of writing analytically. See you tomorrow. Claudia

A copy of the hw assignment, scanned.

Apparently some people don't have the fourth edition so I thought I would scan it.

Implications HW

Charles

Inferring Implications from Observations
1.
Some parts of the American way as we know it is slipping away.
New housing developments are more concerned about their profit margin than their customers.
Sidewalks were once integral to the ideal American residential landscape.

2.
The average family or home buyer values having some sort of central or at least attached, kitchen.
A living room is more for display and entertaining guests, while a family room, with its more intimate size, is for the permanent residents.
The family room might be where the family gathers after a meal.

3.
Very few, if any, people like intruders, even perhaps acquaintances on their private property.
Part of being a good neighbor may include minding your own business.
Robert Frost despised his neighbors, maybe they were loud at night, or maybe they had kids who ran in his backyard.

4.
The female brain is better able to connect emotions and spatial reasoning into words.
The male brain is inferior because most people would like to be able to improve communicating emotions and reasoning verbally.
Women are better in cognitive faculties than men.

5.
The American court system is flawed because people who aren’t adults are being tried as adults.
Teenagers who commit crimes cannot be held in the same moral obligation as adults.
Either crime is on the rise or more juveniles are committing crimes so heinous that it would cause a judge to believe the defendant must be seen as adult, for the good of the people.

6.
Juveniles should not be tried as adults because biologically, their brains are not developed, especially in the area of judgment making and controlling impulses.
If anything, the current trend for lowering the age for which a teenager can be considered an adult, should be reversed because the human brain is not fully developed even at the age of 18.
An undeveloped segment of the brain means that it does not function, and people who hit their temples really hard might not be rational or have restraint.

7.
Women may have a tendency to confused other people because what appears at first to be a seemingly innocuous question is actually a command.
Men under 30 are mimicking a speech pattern usually found in women, or younger men talk like women.
We must diagnose a solution to an old linguistic tendency that until recently, was not a problem.

8.
Shopping malls and grocery stores want to take your money, so they don’t remind you how long you’ve spent inside.
Shopping malls and grocery stores are owned and managed by the same type of greedy people.
Strategic managers are able to reduce costs, boost sales, and increase the volume of consumers, all in one.

Please forgive any formatting errors. I do not seem to be able to get the numbering system to work. Does any one know how to fix that problem.

Ritwik

Exercise 2.4

1) There were different requirements from the township to the developers in the past. 
Sidewalks are a necessity and the loss of these sidewalks is deplorable.
Housing developers are unwilling to build sidewalks.

2) Family rooms require privacy and comfort as they are close to the kitchen but far from the door.
Living room is now used for entertaining guests.
Old house designs had every room fenced off.

3) Beings outside need to be kept off ones land and beings inside the fence should not get out.
Neighbors prefer to maintain a degree of separation between the two living areas.
Robert Frost supported the above viewpoints.

4) Female are more prone to using emotions when talking.
Males are prone to keeping emotion out of their conversation.
There are major differences in male and female behaviors.

5) Minors should not be convicted as adults for committing crimes.
Most countries other than America do not follow the same practices.
The age of 18 is an appropriate age for assuming responsibility for one.

6) People only become responsible at the age of 21.
People under 21, cannot be held completely responsible for their crimes.
The development of the frontal cortex brings about responsible behavior.

7) Young men are becoming less confident when giving orders.
Women use rising inflections because they wish to form the statement as a question and not an order.
Women have been less confident when giving orders for a long time.

8) Clocks are a necessity in grocery stores and shopping malls.
The lack of clocks in grocery stores and shopping malls is a common phenomenon all over the world.
The grocery stores and shopping malls do not follow a strict time schedule.

Poems for Thursday

Hey everybody,

Here are the poems for tomorrow (Thursday). I doubt we'll be able to get to all of them, or probably even most of them, by tomorrow, but I certainly encourage you to write papers about any that may happen to grab you.

poems

(link should cause you to download a word document)

Exercise 2.4 - the 8 Questions

Hey. These are the 8 questions from the exercise 2.4. I hope this helps!! =D

1. The sidewalk is disappearing as a feature of the American residential landscape. New housing developments have them only if a township requires them of the developer.

2. New house designs are tending increasingly toward open plans in which the kitchen is not separated from the rest of the house. New house designs continue to have a room called the living room, usually a space at the front of the house near the front door, but many (not all) also have a separate space called the family room, which is usually in some part of the house farther removed from the front door and closer to the kitchen.

3. “Good fences make good neighbors.” – Robert Frost

4. In the female brain, there are more connection between the right hemisphere (emotions, spatial reasoning) and the left hemisphere (verbal facility). In the male brain, these two hemispheres remain more separate.

5. An increasing number of juveniles – people under the age of eighteen – are being tried and convicted as adults, rather than as minors, in America, with the result that more minors are serving adult sentences for crimes they committed while still in their teens.

6. Neuroscientists tell us that the frontal cortex of the brain, the part that is responsible for judgment and especially for impulse control, is not fully developed in humans until roughly the age of twenty-one. What are the implications of this observation relative to observation 5?

7. Linguists have long commented on the tendency of women’s speech to use rising inflections at the end of statements as if the statements were questions. An actual command form – Be home by midnight! – thus becomes a question instead. What are we to make of the fact that in recent years younger men (under 30) have begun to end declarative statements and command forms with rising inflections?

8. Shopping malls and grocery stores rarely have clocks.

Have fun!!!

Sivapratha Nagappan C.

Can anyone please...

Type up the 8 questions that we need to get our 3 implications from? I don't have the 4th edition yet. Thanks a bunch.

-Alex Iwanicki

Dream impression

Hello,

I'm making my debut on this blog.

So I was reading back a bit, and Freud says on page 35 that every dream without exception goes back to an impression of the past few days, or probably within the last day. He says later in the paragraph, if a connection is found in the dream content with any impression of the previous day (Why did he say "if"? Didn't he just say that they all have to be?), that impression is so trivial, insignificant, and unmemorable.

Does this mean that every dream content is connected to an unimportant, recent impression?

Jeff Joh

Essay questions

Hey all,

As promised, here are the essay questions for the first essay, due next Tuesday, September 30. Choose one of them. The essays should be a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 5 pages long.

Good luck!

1. In his “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche famously announces truth to be “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.” As we have seen, with this move Nietzsche doesn’t so much dispense with the idea of truth as recontextualize it, giving “truth” not an absolute, timeless essence but instead linking it to power, language, history, figure and function. Freud too invokes the figural in his analysis of dreams and their relation to our inner-most selves, as for Freud the desires that most constitute us as individuals appear to us only in the guise of metaphorical, metonymical and intermediary dream content whose link to our desires is rarely if ever explicit.

First, describe simply and in your own words what you take to be the thrust of Nietzsche’s argument. This description may (but need not necessarily) take the form of a close reading of a shorter passage in Nietzsche that encapsulates some of his more general ideas. Second, assess the degree to which you see Freud as fitting into, complicating or rejecting the Nietzschean paradigm you have identified. This assessment can proceed along any number of lines - might Freud find Nietzsche’s celebration of self-creation a bit naïve, as to Freud any conscious control we might wish to have over our own psychical constitution is illusory at best? Conversely, might Freud’s theory be relying on a scientificism that Nietzsche would find problematic? Nietzsche clearly identifies the process of metaphor-creation as one of forgetting; what role does memory play in Freud’s description of dream-work and what are its implications?

This paper should not be a simple compare and contrast, but should rather attempt to inaugurate a dialogue of sorts between the two thinkers. Your goal is to take one small line of comparison and work it through completely. Be sure to provide specific textual evidence to bolster your readings.


2. In “The Plain Sense of Things,” Wallace Stevens describes what seems to be the inability of human experience to escape from the imagining mind: “the absence of the imagination had,” he writes, “/ itself to be imagined.” The result is a world in which stable things take on new meanings and new descriptions: human artifacts remake natural landscapes, linguistic description shapes future experiences of physical objects, and poetic language can evoke realities forgotten by those living a type of death in life.

Using two or three of Stevens’ poems and either the Nietzsche or the Freud, investigate the way notions of time, change and transformation play out in Stevens’ poetics. What claims, explicitly or (perhaps more potently) implicitly, is Stevens making about the role time, change and transformation play in human linguistic description? How does he make those claims (i.e. do his poems merely describe the way of thinking you’re identifying, or do they actually perform it)? How do these ideas either square with or complicate those of either Freud or Nietzsche? Some suggestions (though you’re certainly welcome, even encouraged, to not use these and move in your own directions): If using Nietzsche, you might want to focus on the performative dimensions of Nietzsche’s text – the fable at the beginning, for example, or his use of metaphor vs. logic to make his argument. If using Freud, you might want to explore his explanation of the way solitary experiences work to seed an almost infinitely possible number of dreams. Either way, one recommendation (again, not required) would be to start with Stevens’ quote from “The Poems of our Climate” that “the imperfect is our paradise,” figuring out what you take that phrase to mean and going from there.


3. Perform a close reading of one of the poems we read for class (whether we discussed it in class or not) with an eye towards the way the poem complements, complicates, contradicts or can otherwise be read in conjunction with either the Nietzsche or the Freud. As a good close reading, your analysis of the poem should attend to one or more of the poem’s formal elements - syntax (word order), diction (choice of words), rhythm, meter, enjambment (line breaks), structure, punctuation, among others - and should show how the elements you’ve selected help us understand both what the poem is trying to say and how your reading links up with either the Nietzsche or the Freud.

Poems for Tuesday

Hey all,

Here's a link to a page with the poems (all by Wallace Stevens) that we'll be discussing next Tuesday (the 23rd). Print them out and mark them up! I should hopefully have the essay questions up here by the end of the weekend.

Stevens Poems

Have a good weekend!

Hitherto

Since Ben talked about looking up definitions to unfamiliar words, I thought I'd post the definition of "hitherto." It is an adverb that means "until this time" or "up to now."

Examples from Freud's On Dreams:

"...logical links which have hitherto held physical material together..." (p41)
"Hitherto philosophers have had no occasion to concern themselves..." (p62)
"...make a first approach to this hitherto unknown topic..." (p62)

See, Ben and Claudia? We do look up words! Haha
See you guys tomorrow!

On Dreams

So I haven't finished the reading that was assigned for Tuesday, but I'm a little confused on one sentence. "We may put it in this way: in the course of the dream work the psychical intensity passes over from the thoughts and ideas to which it properly belongs on to others which in out judgment have no claim to any such emphasis." page 34 at the top.

Freud goes on to say dream displacement is what causes us to not fully understand dreams. Seems to me like he is saying dream displacement is essentially the symbolism in dreams. Something like substituting what we see in a dream for a possibly hidden meaning?

I'm not sure if I'm totally right on this, and still not really sure exactly what he means by that sentence, but he goes on to say that it is what makes dreams hard to figure out, so it seems important.

-Kyle Meshna

Anyone want to make some money?

Hey everyone,

I was recently notified that the Disabled Students' Program is looking for someone to take notes in our class. Here's their official announcement:

"The Disabled Students' Program (DSP) is looking for a note-taker! If you take clear, well-organized notes, this is a good opportunity for you to assist a fellow student and receive pay. Please come to the Disabled Students' Program Office and fill out an application. We are located in 260 Cesar Chavez right beside The Golden Bear Cafe. The application is also available online at dsp.berkeley.edu on the 'Note Takers Needed This Semester' link. If you have any questions, please send an email to dspnotes@berkeley.edu."

Might be a nice way for someone to make some extra cash, since you'll presumably be taking notes anyway. If interested, contact them.

-Ben

Style 9th Edition - Exercise 3.6

Late night procrastinating. I hope Claudia and Ben are sleeping :)

1. Lincoln hoped to preserve the Union without war but when the South attacked Fort Sumter, war became inevitable.
2. The president’s aides attempted to immunize him from Congress’ subpoena.
3. Business executives predicted that the economy would quickly revive.
4. How you analyzed my report omits any data that supported how you criticized what I found.
5. The health care industry is unable to exert control on the costs, which could lead to the public deciding that Congress needs to act.
6. The pope appealed to the world’s rich nations for assistance to those facing the threat of starving in Africa.
7. Several candidates attempted to explain why voters participated more in this year’s elections.
8. The class agreed that the reading list was based on the assumption that there would be tests on only certain selections.
9. The business sector did not independently study the cause of the sudden increase in the trade surplus.
10. The fraternities recognized an understanding as to the need for controls over drinking on campus.
11. The CIA is uncertain whether the North Koreans intend to cease their missile testing.
12. The coaching staff is responsible for the team’s physical condition.
13. If the data contradicts, you are required to explain why.
14. While the Dean rejecting our proposal was disappointing, it was not surprising because it was expected that this had been decided.
15. They performed the play enthusiastically, but they did not stage it intelligently.

ALICE CHUNG

Exercise 3.6

Exercise 3.6

1. Lincoln hoped to preserve the Union without war, but after the South attacked Fort Sumter, war was inevitable.

2. The president’s aides attempted to assert that he was immune from Congress’s subpoena.

3. Business executives predicted that the economy would quickly revive.

4. You analyzed my report, but did not support the work you criticized with any data.

5. The public could decide that Congress needs to act because the health care industry is unable to control costs.

6. The pope appealed to the world’s rich nations to assist those facing Africa’s starvation threat.

7. Several candidates attempted to explain the increase in voters that participated in this year’s elections.

8. The class agreed on the reading list based on the assumption that there would be tests on only certain selections.

9. The business-sector did not independently study why the trade surplus suddenly increased.

10. Fraternities understood the need for controls over drinking on campus.

11. The CIA is uncertain if North Korea intends to cease missile testing.

12. The coaching staff is responsible for the team physically conditioning.

13. You must explain any data that contradicts itself.

14. When the Dean rejected our proposal we were disappointed, but not surprised because we expected what he decided.

15. They performed the play enthusiastically, but did not stage it intelligently.

Elizabeth Bojorquez