–Office Hours: I will be holding my regular office hours on Monday. Please feel free to stop by if there is anything you’d like to discuss. You can sign up HERE to make an appointment or just drop in!
–Borowski, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” :
- Please take a look at the Borowski group’s presentation. In the comments section on their post, either share something you learned about the subject, make a comment, or ask a question.
- I have recorded some thoughts about the context and content of Borowski’s short story. You can find the recording HERE using the Passcode: D^%zWNp3. In a comment on this post, please share one thing that you took away from my remarks.
- In a separate post, I have shared some questions about “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” Please post your responses by Tuesday, May 11th. Feel free to draw on information or ideas from the presentation or my video in formulating your responses.
–Salih, “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” : We will be discussing this story on Wednesday, May 12th in class. Please be sure to have read the story before our Zoom call! In a separate post, please respond to the following question: What do you think Tayeb Salih’s story is ultimately saying about the relationship between tradition and modernity? Please use concrete details from the text to illustrate your response and share your thoughts on the blog by Sunday, May 16th.
–Final Essays : By now, I should have heard from you about the question you are exploring in your final essay. If I haven’t yet heard from you, you should be reaching out to me immediately. If I asked you to revise or clarify your question, don’t forget to get back to me. If I gave you the “green light,” you should be moving forward with the essay – first, by going back through both texts to collect the “textual evidence” you will be using in the body of your essay and then by creating some kind of outline or plan for your essay. Only when those two steps have been completed should you begin writing your first draft. I am happy to look at your work at any step along the way, so feel free to reach out to me with outlines, partial drafts, completed drafts, etc…. You can do this via email or during office hours.
–Kafka Presentation: I invite you to take a look at the video shared by the Kafka group this week. Using their sources as a jumping off point, you may want to look at some of the ways that Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” has been interpreted by filmmakers, stage actors, and visual artists.
–May 17th – Last Day of Classes: On May 17th, we will be holding our final Zoom class. Even though it is a Monday, plan on being there to discuss our final text, ask questions about your essays and final exam, and say our goodbyes.
In the presentation, I learn how Nazi murder people how many people got killed by Nazi, and how Nazi is being terrible to people. 6 million people got killed by Nazi.
One thing that stuck with me from the recording was the whole situation during the trial and the question of who’s going to take the responsibility for all the deaths and murder that happened during the holocaust. In a sense, it was true that some of the army were following the orders and many believed that it was the honorable thing to do for their country at the time while they were committing massive genocide.
One thing that I learned is the holocaust was a horrible time period for the people in Germany and it was ruled by Adolf Hitler. He had put people in concentration camps and not give them the proper care. People in concentration camps were treated horribly and had less chances of surviving due to lack of eating and care. People in concentration camps also die by putting them in gas chambers by being told they were going in to take a shower.
Simran, I was asking you to comment on my video about Borowski, not to share your general knowledge about the Holocaust. The concentration camps were constructed for the purpose of killing the Jews of Europe. Over six million Jews were murdered in the camps.
One thing that left an impact on me was when you mentioned that writers were starting this idea of writing based on hard events and it sort of felt like speaking of the unspeakable. This paradox had an impact on me because writing based on an event that had such an effect on humanity must be very hard and also the fact of reviving and leaving a piece of writing in history can also bring flashbacks to the audience of such times.
Yes, your comments also remind me of the conversation we had about slave narratives. One could make similar observations about the difficulties enslaved people had writing about their experiences.