Guidelines for Class Wed. March 14

Hi everyone,

First of all, it will be great if everyone can bring a laptop and some earphones!  If you don't have a laptop to bring, it is completely ok to look on with someone else in your Discussion Group and post your comments from their log-on page.

For tomorrow's discussion, members of each Group should reread and be prepared to discuss the following specific chapters from the 1972 selection of Yamashita's novel:

Group AA ~ Literature:  Chap. 6: "A Romance for Humanity"
Group BB ~ Music:  Chap. 1: "The Art of War"
Group CC ~ Comedy: Chap. 5: "On Colonialism"
Group DD ~ Drama: Chap. 2: "Malcolm X at Bandung"
Group EE ~ Dance: Chap. 4: "In Practice"

During our joint class meeting, you will have a separate Chat Room just for your Discussion Group where you can hold a conversation about your assigned chapter with all the students in your group -- both at SFSU and at UNE.   

Here are the Analysis Tasks that all Groups should complete as part of your discussion; you will report back about what you discussed to both classes in a brief presentation:

1. explain the basic plot content of the chapter (in 1–2 sentences)
2. analyze how that chapter demonstrates how "the personal is political" -- or perhaps how they conflict with one another
3. in what ways do Olivia and Ben differ in their viewpoints in this chapter?
4. add further interpretive comments and observations about what happens in this chapter 
5. choose one passage from your chapter that is especially relevant to your interpretations to read aloud to both classes
6. if you have time: explain a couple points about the historical content in the chapter; you can quickly research these on the web, or use your own knowledge of historical events

When you sign in to the Elluminate site tomorrow, check back on this page for additional guidelines and instructions about how to "find" the Chat Room set up for your Discussion Group.  In fact, you may decide to sign in earlier in the day to see if the site has already been set up.

Suggestions about in-class interactions?

One of our primary goals for next week is to enhance the interactions among students within each of the 5 Discussion Groups.  For the moment, we are planning to group those in each group in a separate "chat" room on the same platform we used last week, which would allow you to have a conversation just with other members of your own Discussion Group.  It's not quite clear whether we can also add audio and video component.

However, it would obviously be great if members of the other class could have some audio and video interaction with all of you at the beginning of our joint class meeting.  Some students in the other class suggested ooVoo or tinychat -- these are interactive platforms I don't know much about, but it's entirely possible that the rest of you do!

After that introductory exchange, the structure for the bulk of our joint class time is to ask each Discussion Group to focus on an assigned chapter from the "1972" selection from Yamashita, have a brief group discussion during the beginning of class (about 15 min), compose a PowerPoint slide or two that summarizes your main interpretive responses, and then present for both classes (I will set up the PowerPoint slides in advance for each group).

If you could reply here with your ideas about other ways for you all to interact with your Group Discussion members in the SF group at the beginning of our class meeting, that would be great.  You may post other questions here, too. 

Thanks! 


AA: Literature Presentation Page
BB: Music Presentation Page
CC: Comedy Presentation Page
DD: Drama Presentation Page
EE: Dance Presentation Page 

Regular webpage back up!

The tech problem with the server has been fixed (very nice IT guy tackled the problem on his weekend), so we're back in business with our regular Announcements page located at this link.

One other note: you will notice above that there is a link to a new page called "Danticat."  If you click on that link you will find a sample of some of the best blogpostings from last week.  I was very happy that it was so difficult to choose!  I can see also that lots of you are already coming up with some wonderfully interesting reflections on Naomi Nye -- keep it coming!

Guidelines for creating your Discussion Blog

Everyone will belong to a group of (3–4) students.  Throughout the semester you will create a simple blog for posting reflections twice a week about the course readings.  Here's how we will set these up:

• one person will volunteer in each group to be the Administrator and to set up the Discussion Blog
• the Admin will add the other two students and me to the blog as Contributors
• each student will contribute (2) new "interpretive posts" every week
• each student will also comment (2x) times to interpretive posts from other students every week
• postings go up on Mondays and Weds. by 2 pm (your group may want to post earlier)

How to create an "interpretive post":

• in the "title" box, indicate the "title of work: interpretive topic" (e.g. "Dessa Rose:  changing point of view")
• compose 1–2 paragraphs of interpretive comments about that topic (see sample entry below)
• focus on a specific chapter or page, and try to include one very brief quotation (only a sentence or two), indicate the page #
• each entry should be about the length of the sample entry below on Dessa Rose (a bit shorter or longer is ok)
• offer a combination of analysis on your topic, and questions for other readers, perhaps things that you found confusing
• try to make a direct connection to another work we have studied, or one of the recent essay readings
• compose in complete sentences as you would for a formal paper, and proofread your response for proper spelling and grammar.
• if you go back to edit your original post, add date at the end of the paragraph ("updated:  Sun. Jan. 22")

Dessa Rose: changing points of view

At first the constantly shifting points of view (pov) are a bit confusing.  At one moment we are in Dessa's mind (which is in italics), then the point of view shifts to someone being quoted (this also turns out to be Dessa) who speaks in an older, regional dialect.  This is followed by what looks like "normal" narrative text, written in the third person, but clearly written from Adam Nehemiah's point of view as he writes down his observations about Dessa.  This is an unconventional and rather confusing way to begin the novel, and also gives us a very fragmented sense of who Dessa is as a person.  The opening segment in italics turns out to be her dream or memory, so we start the story in her head.  This creates a very startling contrast to the quoted passages in dialect, as well as Nehemiah's observations about her, which depict her as some kind of object: part animal, part human.

I find it interesting how Williams combines changing pov with flashback scenes (most of these, I think, have been marked in italics, to make it easier to have some sense of what time frame you are supposed to be in).  This creates significant tension in the narrative right at the moment when Dessa escapes from her captors at the end of Chapter 2 into Chapter 3 (pp. 67–80).  I think we're supposed to be as anxious as Nehemiah to know where she has actually gone, but then the narrative moves into an extended flashback -- which is actually a bit frustrating!  But that puts the reader in the frame of mind of the characters, which is a clever narrative technique.

An interesting connection with our essay reading from Angela Davis is about how gender roles and identity are transformed under the conditions of slavery, in many ways that make (or allow?) women to be as powerful and capable of men in terms of the labor they can perform and the suffering they are forced to endure.  The simple fact that Dessa is capable of murder makes her more masculine from the perspective of Nehemiah: "Truly, the female of this species is as deadly as the male" (p. 43).
(updated:  Thu. Dec. 1)