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Hi Folks!
These worksheets, made by the Composition Committee, are a REALLY GOOD IDEA. I’m not collecting them as homework, but smart students will do them anyway — or at least open them up and think about them real hard 😉
These are a good way to organize your thinking about the important ideas in the readings. And to sneakily peer into the brains of the Comp Committee, which sounds creepy and gross AND is a good way to figure out what questions they are likely to ask.
Check Blackboard for a link to our theme grid.
TALKING POINTS
statue quo / norms
civil society
autonomy
reframing an experience
virtue
society / culture
freedom
joy
disobedience / resistance
The last big assignment before the final exam is designed to be practice for the exam. Pretty neat, huh? Here’s how it works:
Just as with the final exam, you will read and study two essays. To make our all our lives a little easier, we are using two essays you already know well: James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” and Gloria Anzaldua’s “How To Tame A Wild Tongue.”
Here are those links:
You read these. Again, yes. You TAKE NOTES. You MARK THE MOST IMPORTANT LINES.
On SUNDAY 11/28 at 12:01 am, the Unit 3 assignment will go live on Blackboard. It will be open until TUESDAY 11/30 at 11:59 pm.
During that time, you will go to Blackboard and open it. There will be three questions. You will choose ONE to answer in the form of an essay of approximately 500 words — think 5 paragraphs.
The thesis of your essay will be YOUR answer to the question, plus three facets you will explore further in order to make your point. Each of your three body paragraphs will explore one of those facets. And then you will have a conclusion that applies your ideas in a different way. Watch the video I’ll send later on this topic.
Here’s the thing: you HAVE TO QUOTE FROM BALDWIN AND ANZALDUA. Yes, AND. BOTH OF THEM. That’s a major requirement of the final exam and therefore of Unit 3. When you quote Anzaldua, you will use parenthetical citation to show the page number.
That’s the deal. I’ll grade it using the final exam rubric, so you get a sense of how that works.
THE END IS NEAR. The end of the *semester.* Don’t freak out.
That said, there’s some things we need to plow through. Here’s how we are going to make it work:
All deadlines listed are 11:59 pm
FRIDAY 11/26 — Unit 2 Draft submitted via Blackboard
SUNDAY 11/28 – TUESDAY 11/30 Unit 3 live on Blackboard
THURSDAY 12/2 — Unit 2 Final POSTED ON OPEN LAB
11/29 Class = Final prep,
12/6 Class = Final prep, Unit 2 celebration
12/11 – 12/13 FINAL EXAM LIVE on BLACKBOARD
Hi folks! Here is that list of ideas we brainstormed yesterday. If you weren’t in class, please add your ideas in the comments.
Afrofuturism
Black Lives Matter movement
Street Art
Street stickers
Murals
Textile Arts
https://rockymountainquilts.com/files/antiquequilt_congg3.php
Anti slavery sewing circles: Women decorated fabrics with abolitionist symbols to combat slavery https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/05/05/abolitionist-sewing-circles/
Music-
-Nat King Cole
-Sam Cooke
-Stevie wonder ( Happy Birthday to Ya is for Martin Luther King jr to make help make his birthday a national holiday)
– Aretha Franklin
https://teachrock.org/lesson/the-music-of-the-civil-rights-movement/
Sound Track for a Revolution- 2009 documentary
“Bill Guttentag’s documentary examines the importance of music during the U.S. civil rights movement that took place during the 1950s and ’60s. The various sit-ins and public demonstrations of the era incorporated protest songs, folk tunes and spirituals, music that was a crucial part of the movement…”
Riot Grrrl movement: A punk movement that encouraged women and girls alike to produce music to spread anti-racist and anti-sexist messages https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/03/arts/music/riot-grrrl-playlist.html
Other ideas
Propaganda billboards
Confederate Statues
Barbara Kruger
Tatiana Fazlalizadeh
Hugh masekela
Miriam Makeba
Act UP (die-ins, etc)
Art of the Black Power Movement – movement that believes in racial pride.
– Chilean Arpilleras
– Pollution “Standing Rock”
– Quilts spread awareness for change
This week, I’m asking you to look at three examples of textile arts used as tools for social change. I hope you get inspired! Just like last week, choose one to focus on and MAKE A POST of at least 3 paragraphs discussing an interesting idea related to that topic.
Please review these resources on the NAMES Project, better known as the AIDS quilt.
READ this website and WATCH the three videos on it. (Especially the first and second! I really like the second one.) https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt-history
READ Cleve Jones writing about the history of the quilt: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-one-mans-idea-for-the-aids-quilt-made-the-country-pay-attention/2016/10/07/15917576-899c-11e6-b24f-a7f89eb68887_story.html?tid=a_inl_manual
Spend at least 10 minutes exploring the quilt HERE: https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt
READ the “About” page of the Social Justice Sewing Academy and WATCH the video on that page.
READ the “Inspiration” page of this quilt block pattern, designed by SJSA members Sara Trail and Melinda Newton, and chosen as the National Quilt Museum’s “Block of the Month” for January 2020. LOOK at the pattern itself, on page 4. https://quiltmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/JAN-2020-BOTM-pattern2.pdf
READ this article on the controversy that resulted: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/now-even-quilters-are-angry-how-a-social-justice-design-started-a-feud/2020/01/20/0e9874be-3951-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html
WATCH this video on the arpilleras of the time of Pinochet’s regime in Chile (don’t worry — the video gives you some historical background)
READ this article on the contemporary use of embroidery as protest art in Chile today: https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-02-21/chile-women-use-traditional-embroidery-urge-political-change?fbclid=IwAR1TR31tjxATvtcUVc5noVgvHNDem0V_cp2WSPK3ClqCO2IfBTyqwn68CMk
EXPLORE this Instagram collection of those embroideries: https://www.instagram.com/bordasusojos/?utm_source=ig_embed
First, a Civil War explainer, if you never really studied this stuff or it’s been a minute:
Read and explore these resources on Confederate Monuments
Watch this video: https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/aug/22/battle-over-confederate-statues-united-states-video-explainer
Read this (note that it is from 2017): https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/8/18/16165160/confederate-monuments-history-charlottesville-white-supremacy
Read this article AND take time to explore the timeline included in its images:
Explore this photo project of plinths after statues have been removed: https://www.hectorrene.com/ozymandias
This summer, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, was finally allowed to remove the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson that became the flashpoint for the “Unite The Right” rally that brought Nazis to town. As it happened, the statues were taken down while I was on a train headed there to visit a friend. Here are two pictures I took of what was once known as Jackson Park, now known as Court Square Park. The first, taken in 2017, shows the statue shrouded. The second, taken this summer, shows its empty plinth.
“When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. I wrote myself in.”
— Octavia Butler
Boy, it’s hard to choose. But while it’s tempting to make you read everything Octavia Butler wrote, instead I will point you to two living writers.
N.K. Jemisin — like Natalie Diaz — is a winner of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant.” (The title of this post is hers, for a book of short stories.) She is best known for a sci-fi trilogy called the Broken Earth series. It’s good! But I won’t make you read it. Instead, please watch this video the MacArthur Foundation made about her and this video of a famous speech she made at an award ceremony (the Hugos) about representation:
If you are going to write your response this week on literature, please also read this New Yorker profile of Jemisin.
Another obvious heir to Octavia Butler is Nnedi Okorafor. You can read an excerpt from her (super amazing) Binti trilogy here:
Anguilla.
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