ENG251culture

April 5th: revision of prospectus due

April 17th: “rough” draft of “final” paper due

April 24th: revision of essay #1 (video/song/album/movie) due

The Second Annual English Department Symposium

Thursday, March 29, 2007
Standish Rooms 3 & 4

9:25-10:15
Tempests: Shakespeare and Césaire Performance and Commentary
10:15-11:05
Life after Saint Rose and the English Major
11:15-12:05
Writing Fiction Class Readings
12:05-12:55
Senior Seminar Panel: Shakespeare Now and Then
1:05-2:20
Faculty Reading: Dan Nester, Kate Laity, Barbara Ungar, Hollis Seamon, Doug Butler
Lunch served.
2:40-3:20
Playwriting Sketches and Monologues
3:20-4:10
Student Reading
Transcendentalism: Heirs and Precursors Presentation
4:15-5:05
Much Needed Break!
5:05-5:55
Graduate Student/Faculty Reading
6:00-7:30
Reception in Saint Joseph Hall
7:30–
Frequency North: Patricia Smith
Saint Joseph Hall

Attend any of these events/sessions and blog about them for extra credit. Remember include lots of details, as well as your thoughts.

Here is one discussion starter for Tuesday. There will be a second article, which I will post as soon as I receive it.

due: posted to your group wikispace by 3/20 at noon–this is a collaboratively written text

3 – 5 (750 – 1250 words) pages in length (not including bibliography)

Your prospectus should be a foward-looking, foward-thinking piece that begins to formulate your thinking on your topic but also shows what you already know about it.

Introduction: Overview of your topic; what you already know about it; any hypotheses you have about it; potential arguments you want to make about your topic.

Description:  Your plan-of-action.  You have already been given the framework or method of cultural analysis with/in which you’ll be working–that is the circuit of culture, as laid out in your Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the SONY Walkman book: representation, regulation, identity, production, and consumption. In this section you should begin to formulate your thinking about your topic in terms of each of these five cultural processes. How is your object represented? What social identities get associated with it? How does your object get produced? In what ways does it get consumed? How does its distribution and use get regulated?

Your research plan: What do you still need to know or find out about your topic? What are your plans for attaining this information? What kind of resources will you be using?

Include a bibliography that includes the sources you plan to use for this project.

For other information on writing a prospectus check out this and/or this.

Click here to read Shannon M’s discussion starter article.

Read this for Thursday (3/1).

Here is a link to Aliya’s article for class tomorrow.

And, she would like you to check out this video as well.

due: 3/1
3-5 pages

For this essay you should choose a film (any film), a song, a music video, or a musician/group for analysis.

In the packet I gave to you in class is a sample essay that analyzes a film, please use this as a guideline/model.

Ultimately, for any essay you choose, you need to have a central argument–a claim that you are making, otherwise known as a thesis statement. Think about the moves you’ve seen other writers making. David Leonard focuses on what is absent, incidental, or left out, yet central and vitally important. Tara Needham also comments on absence or what is obscured in her reading of Starbucks. Use the guidelines from class about creating an argument essay (and we’ll talk more about this on Thursday in class).

On Tuesday, 2/27 bring to class with you either a twenty-minute focused freewrite on your chosen topic or a page (or so) of your essay (make sure it a portion that contains your central argument).

Maria’s “discussion starter” reading.

Please read this for Thursday’s class.

Also, the essay on Grand Theft Auto is outside my office door, so don’t forget to pick it up.