February 6 Response paper, “What is a Great Work?”
February 13 Respond to selection of Diderot, Discourse on Method (Norton) and the idea of Cogito Ergo Sum.
February 20 Cinematic Expectations: Watching clips on the blog of Frankenstein’s birth in different films. Comment collaboratively using VOCAT to annotate the differences between Shelley’s text and the film adaptations. (P)
February 27 Frankenstein and Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” (Norton). In a response essay argue whether the creature is more like Blake’s Lamb or Tyger.
March 6 Using as many of the poems by Emily Dickinson collected in the Norton as you need, compose a new poem of 10 lines by combining whole lines from Dickinson. Write a brief (100 words) statement on the process and how you altered Dickinson’s meanings. (P)
March 13 Respond to Freud’s “The Creative Writer and Daydreaming” (blog) and the connection between fantasy and literature.
March 20 Paper due
March 27 After reading a selection from Woolf’s A Sketch of the Past (on blog), map out the hidden patterns of connection that construct personal, thematic, and stylistic relations that structure the text. Your map may be realized as an essay, a drawing, or other media. (P)
April 2 Visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for free with your CUNY ID and analyze any work of art made between 1900 and 1940 that is currently on view using the idea of simultaneity or any aspect of Modernism.
April 17 Comment ton James Baldwin videos (on blog) using VOCAT, discussing an aspect of institutionalized racism that you recognize in today’s society, through a specific event, movement, idea, or figure. (P)
April 24 Annotation Assignment, Faulkner’, “Barn Burning” (P)
May 1 Watch a reading of M. NourbeSe Philip reading her poem “Discourse on the Logic of language” (blog) and respond using VOCAT. (P)
May 8 Read selection from Rubin, “The Traffic in Women” and respond.
May 22 Final Project Due