Those who completed their presentation last class need to complete the HW for 12.1 for today’s class. Please add it to the comment section, below
Please add your presentation to the Fictions of the Sixties page, above right.
Today’s lecture will cover your final ePortfolio assignment, due near the end of Finals.
We’re coming up on the end of freshman year, so it’s time you got your e-Portfolio in order: there’s a series of ePort assignments listed at right under “Homework.” Besides uploading samples of your work from this course to the Rhetoric 102 folder, you also need to create a special section titled, “Interdisciplinary Reflections.” The college is asking freshmen and sophomores to use this space to reflect on what they’ve learned at Boston University.
As an aid in thinking about your education, the college has created a rubric of seven essential skills. These are cross-disciplinary in nature, representing methods that are taught and employed in most if not all of your courses in college.
No HW today.
Those scheduled to do a presentation can wait to complete this HW until section 12.2.
Write one or two paragraphs offering close analysis of a particular scene from your book or movie. Don’t fuss to much with orienting us at the start; don’t give a summary of the story or anything like that. Open the first ¶ with “In one particularly _______ scene, ….,” characterizing the scene in a way that focuses attention on the issue or mood that you plan to discuss in your essay.
Your analysis should aim in the first ¶ to characterize the scene (the what), and then in the second ¶ to deepen our understanding of that mood or issue (the why or how).
Turn in this HW assignment using the Comment feature, below.
There will be no draft for this final essay, though you’re welcome to visit me during office hours to discuss your work.
Please add your presentation to the Fictions of the Sixties page, above right.
To be turned in via the comment section, below:
You can choose to run your “text in context” analysis in reverse, seeking to discover some key insight about the culture of the period through a close analysis of your central text. If this is what you propose to do, follow the instructions given above, but emphasize how your analysis of the central text functions to challenge or complicate prior scholarship on 1950s American culture and society.
I’m planning to demo a text-in-context presentation, as a sample of what I’m looking for in the upcoming set of in-class presentations.
Also to be covered: the end-of-semester ePortfolio assignment.
Re-read Louis Menand, “Cat People: What Dr. Seuss Really Taught Us,” with an eye to the way he structures the essay. Identify the 2 or 3 or 4 main sections of the essay and come to class with a brief outline summarizing what each section does. I’m particularly interested in how analysis of the main text motivates discussion of the historical context, as well as what leads him back to Dr. Seuss’s book.
I’ll be checking your summary outlines at the start of class as a HW assignment.
Using the skills you learned during the first half of the semester, find at least two scholarly accounts of your chosen slice of Cold War culture (two secondary sources) and several illustrative primary sources. To clarify: I’m not looking for secondary sources on your central text; I’m looking for sources that speak to the slice from history from the previous assignment that you’ve chosen to focus on.
For HW, write a brief factual summary of what you learned, listing the secondary and primary sources you found. Paste this into the Comment Section below, and attach one of your primary sources to the comment. Come to class ready to present what you’ve learned about the context and why you think it’s relevant or enlightening for your central text.
Note that in writing your essay you will need to ground historical claims by reference either to an authority (a secondary source) or evidence (primary source instances). So be thorough in digging up sources.
When working with a large text like a novel or a movie, it’s always a good idea to think carefully about which scenes are most important for defining the theme you’re interested in. The opening scene is often a good bet for focusing at least part of your analysis. Or, as in the present case, a later scene or chapter may jump up and down saying “Pay Attention!”
As an example, I’d like you to read Chapter Five of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a famous satirical novel first published in 1961.
Before reading, take a moment to write down expectations: what do you expect to find in a novel about the experience of American soldiers during World War II? Will it be funny? Somber? Heroic?
After reading, answer the following:
List two or three distinct aspects of the history or culture of Cold War America which your central text references. Check out the topics covered for Unit One: Second-Wave Feminism, Imagining Nuclear War, etc. But you may find you need to tweak an existing topic to better suit your central text—or you may need to invent a new one out of whole cloth: as for example someone writing on Shane might want to look into gun ownership and gun control.
For each topic or “slice” of history that you identify as potentially of interest, you should specify where and how your central text interacts with it: what page, what character(s), what attitude the novel/film expresses about that aspect of life in the 1960s. You should also specify how your slice might need to be tweaked to serve the needs of your central text, and if you’re inventing a new slice, give some thought to naming it, and to how you might go about researching it. (I will, as promised, help you get started.)
For the next assignment, you will narrow your choice to one particular slice of Cold War culture and research that topic.
Read Louis Menand, “Cat People: What Dr. Seuss Really Taught Us,” an essay published some years ago in The New Yorker. Mark passages where Menand grounds his analysis of Seuss in the historical context. What does Menand do to set this past era before his reader?
The late 50s and early 60s saw a revolution in the style of books produced for children, spearheaded by Theodor Geisel, a.k.a Dr. Seuss. While Seuss began publishing as early as 1937 And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street, many of his most characteristic publications date from the late 1950s and the founding of Beginner’s Books.
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