Really, truly, the last extra credit opportunity

Roger Bonair-Agard

This weekend there are going to be a couple of literary events that you may get extra credit for attending. You'll need to post, as a comment to this blog, a detailed account of your experience at the reading you choose to attend-- a review of sorts, as if for a newspaper like the Tucson Weekly.


One event, at which your teacher will be reading, is called "Arizona Writers for Justice," a response to the Ethnic Studies ban Friday (tonight) at 7pm at Casa Libre en la Solana (on 4th avenue). 


The other is called "Young at Art," an event put on by the University of Arizona's Poetry Center. The fantastic poet Roger Bonair-Agard will be performing there Saturday at three, as will a host of young local folk with lots of talent. 


Go to either or both, write a detailed (300 word) review about either or both, and post as a comment to this blog for extra credit.


Have a nice weekend!

Final Reflection: What Role Can and Should Race Play in the Classroom?

"The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created."

-bell hooks

 In class, we are going to read "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," and your reflection paper will be a response to this narrative. What can we do in a classroom setting to draw attention to some of the inequities that Peggy McIntosh brings up? Write your own manifesto on the role race can, can't and should play in the classroom.


I'd like for you to reflect on the experiences you've had with race in your life and over the course of the last couple of semesters you've had at school. Some questions you may ask yourself are: How do conversations about race usually go with your friends? Do you ever feel that the experiences you have match the way race is discussed? Are we able to discuss it in a refreshing way, or do we always say the same things? Are there dangers to discussing race? Is it possible to agree? What isn't being said? What would happen if certain things did get said? How does it feel to disagree on issues about race in class? What is a productive way to integrate discussions about race into social and academic settings? What were some problematic or memorable conversations in class this semester? Are there any topics you'd like to continue dissecting after the class is over? What would you do if you were going to make race a topic in a class you planned to teach? 


I'd love to take some of your responses to the department to let them know your opinions on how classes involving race and ethnicity function in a university context. Given the recent Ethnic Studies Ban enacted for Arizona high schools, this is a hot topic and your feedback is invaluable. Your final for this class is due Wednesday, May 4th, the last day of class. You cannot pass the class without completing this assignment.


800 words
Times New Roman Font
Double Spaced
Due in class on May 4th
100 pts


(**Bring food if you want! We can have a mini-party).

Creative Revision Ideas

Please post, for the benefit of your peers, the idea you are proposing for your creative revision. A video? A school curriculum? A commercial? Three sentences including information on:

1. What your controversy is
2. What your project is going to be
3. What audience you are most concerned about reaching

Remember, your edited proposal is due Wednesday, April 20th. The projects (and your five minute presentation to the class) are due starting April 27th, depending on the day you sign up to present.

Last Extra Credit!! Kara Walker

Kara Walker's work is known for provoking a strong emotional reaction in her viewers. It could be argued that her work is an attempt to force us back into the reality of what the ante-bellum south was like to live in. For that reason, we must consider not only the gruesome nature of her compositions, but the way in which those depicted events may have impacted the lives of those who actually lived through them.


For your extra credit assignment, please take a look at some examples of Flash Fiction, a kind of story writing that is meant to communicate a character's entire world in around 1,000 words or less. One of the most famous stories is a six word fiction by Ernest Hemingway that reads: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." The website "Brevity" publishes examples that you should take a look at to get a sense of how these kinds of narratives operate.


Now that you have a sense for the medium, write a 500 word short story from the point of view of one of Kara Walker's characters. Take a look at her work and be sure to mention the title of the image you are working with so that it can be referred to alongside your creative work.

Cover Memo

Due on the date of your Presentation (April 27th-May 2nd) as part of your Creative Revision Portfolio
Creative Revision, Presentation and Cover Memo: 100 pts


Today in class we will work to refine your proposal ideas so that they can be "packaged" for presentation to a real or hypothetical institution that could potentially sell, distribute, showcase or otherwise validate your idea. We'll work with peers and as a class. Here is the assignment sheet for the cover memo you will eventually want to create, which will serve as the first page of the portfolio of materials you turn in on the day of your presentation:

The cover memo is a letter to the institution that will be (realistically or hypothetically) responsible for dispersing your work to the public. If your revision was to make a video, perhaps you should address the memo to The Sundance Channel about an independent film or TV series you’d like to propose to them, based on your project. If it’s a commercial, address it to a non-profit organization (think along the lines of Mother’s Against Drunk Driving) that may find use of your advertisement, because they have similar values as those comprised by your argument, and may wish to fund you. 

Be sure to LOOK INTO THE PUBLICATIONS, ORGANIZATIONS and INSTITUTIONS that you may potentially “pitch” your creative project to, so that you are sure that the kinds of things they publish or promote actually fit with your subject and aesthetic.

In the form of a formal letter, your memo needs to include:

The name and address of a person at an institution to which you can pitch your project

“Dear XYZ,” or “To Whom it May Concern,”

A brief introduction of who you are, and how you heard about them

A short summary of the information indicating why this project is important, listing off significant statistics and ideas that will hook them into caring about your topic (use three to five points from your documented argument).

A description of what you did for your creative revision

A conclusion summing up why your work will help their institution

More info on who you are and why they should care

Sincerely, Your Name, and signature, and (fake if you want) contact info.

Discuss potential institutions, given the medium you chose for your project, with your incredibly diverse, intelligent, innovative, manipulative peers. REMEMBER: for assignments like these (and proposals), if you follow the basic format requirements, you will probably do very well grade-wise. This letter is sort of like a short rhetorical essay, where the issue at hand (instead of euthanasia or media corruption of feminine beauty ideals) is that you need to inform this institution or change their mind about YOU. Here is a sample:

**

Ralph P. Jones, Director

Jones Gallery

72 Atlantic Avenue

New Haven, NY 11212

(228) 253-0807

Dear Mr. Jones,

I am a freshman at the University of Arizona, with an interest in social justice and visual arts. I have visited your gallery often during my frequent visits to New York, and based on the mission statement for your institution, and the aesthetic of the artists you’ve shown in the past, I think I have an exhibition idea that may interest you.

Summer squash has been an endangered vegetable since 1863, when Thomas Mann first suggested that its rind may be useful as fertilizer. Ever since his article was published in the famous Berlin newspaper, Das Zeit, farmers around the world began to overproduce this vegetable, even in climates where it may not be able to ripen fully, in order to capitalize on it’s rich skin. Today, summer squash has been morphed into a specimen wholly unlike it’s former self. The rind is tougher, the flesh less sweet, and the nutritional value has plummeted to provide about 10% of the vitamins and minerals it once contained. Some summer squash is riddled with blemishes, so that shoppers now avoid it in supermarkets, lowering its production rates in states like Iowa, Nebraska and North Carolina where it grows in abundance. And despite all of this, recent chemical fertilizers have eclipsed the agricultural need for summer squash in terms of cost effectiveness and availability. Its genetic nature was forever changed in service to an historical fad. 

I’d like to propose an historical exhibit charting the biography of this once-gorgeous vegetable, from its many, sustainable uses in the North American continent during the 1600’s, through the hellish years of Mann’s manifesto, to the paltry speciman that it is today. The portraits, reproduced from archives and also taken by myself, respectively, will comprise a show entitled “Ode to a Squash from Another Summer.” The objectives of your gallery, to “encapsulate the very essence of light and motion,” through the exploration of vegetables throughout history, will be well served by this educational and also evocative collection of stark, black and white images.

As I said, I am a scholar at the University of Arizona. I have been interested in photography since age three, when my father handed me a disposable camera, and have participated in group shows, one solo exhibition, and numerous online photography journals since my junior year of high school. My subjects are often human, but as my workshop teacher, Judith Tanzman once told me, my strength is in bringing a wealth of emotional truths and motions to the quiet world of still life. I hope you’ll consider the enclosed materials, which should give you a sense of the exhibition I am proposing.

Sincerely,

Aisha Smith

1234 Tucsonita Lane

Tucson, Arizona, 85716

(123) 456-7890

Final Assignment

Creative Revision 

aka: Your pitch to change the world

CASE ONE: While trying to figure out a way to solve issues like poverty and unequal punishment in the so-called "war on drugs," David Simon decided that instead of writing a long editorial to the New York Times, he would better reach his audience by creating a TV show. He used HBO, a network known for taking creative risks. Members from the cast will, for example, go speak to students at Harvard about the causes of poverty to be sure that the show's intentions are being thoroughly understood and discussed.

CASE TWO: While trying to figure out how to end crime in New York City in the 1980s, the creators of the "Broken Windows" theory came up with a simple plan: clean up broken glass and erase all graffiti from the subways every single day. The crime rate went through a revolutionary shift and New York's crime rate-- for both murder and petty crimes, has been much better ever since.

CASE THREE: While trying to figure out why anti-smoking campaign tend to fail for teenagers, Malcolm Gladwell realized that these campaigns have never truly delve into the reasons why people decide to smoke in the first place. He had a hunch, and interviewed all of his friends and acquaintances, and found that everyone he knew who chose to smoke had a distinct memory of a favorite person-- an especially unique aunt, cousin or friend-- who smoked, but who also had a way of engaging with life that they found special, unique, full of some intuitive wisdom that was both risky and life affirming. Which is to say that the psychological underpinnings for smoking were entwined with that person's deepest sense of self and their understanding of how to live their life. Understanding the full complexity of this, Gladwell argued, should change the way we approach anti-smoking campaigns. 

For your Creative Revision, I'd like to invent a solution to the problem at the root of your controversy. Solve it and begin designing a way to put this plan into motion. The plan and any subsequent materials that you use to illustrate this plan will be part of what you present for your final presentation and turn in for your final project. This plan must involve working with other people through the form of an interview, a survey, or some mode of public engagement that you come up with on your own.

The first due date for this assignment is Monday, April 18th. You will need to type up a one-page, single spaced proposal explaining the way in which you plan to invent a solution to your controversy's problem. Depending on the extent of the plan you come up with, your Creative Revision may be more of an elaborate plan in which various elements are explained and illustrated, much like a portfolio that you'd give to your boss in order to illustrate an advertising campaign. Or, your plan may be feasible enough to begin work on before the assignment is due, in which case you'll be presenting a finished project to the class during your presentation. The second due date is Wednesday, April 27th, when the class will begin presenting these ideas. 

In the proposal, you'll need to include a thoughtful consideration of the following:

• What have you come to understand in the past few weeks about the way you are able to communicate with other people about your controversy? Are they bored by it? Confused? Do they tend to know more about it than you? Do they need so much background information that you end up giving a history lesson?
• In plainest terms, and in your own opinion, what is the biggest problem at the heart of your controversy?
• Who is the most prominent victim of this problem? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.)
• Who can help alleviate the problem? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.)
• Who then will your target audience be as you work to solve it? Identify five specific characteristics of this person or persons (ie: they wear ____, they listen to ____ on the radio, etc.) How can they best be reached? 
• What will your "public intervention" be? An interview? A survey? An experimental performance piece on the mall? You and a bull horn? You dressing up as someone else to see how they are treated throughout the course of a day? BE CREATIVE.
• What do you want them to do once you've gotten them to think about the issue?
• Write a detailed description of the most ideal consequence of your bringing this issue to the attention of your desired audience.
• Explain what steps you will take to demonstrate the legitimacy of your proposal before your presentation is due.

It is important that you realize that your proposal is like the assignment sheet you are drafting for yourself, and you get to determine the way in which you will ensure to have done sufficient work. If your proposal is insufficient, you will need to revise it so that you are holding yourself to a high (or if you tend to go overboard, reasonable) enough standard.

Two Arguments: One Good, One Bad

Your assignment for next Wednesday (April 6th) is to find two opinion pieces: one well composed, and one poorly composed. Check out book reviews on Amazon.com, film reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, editorials and columns on the New York Times, letters to the editor in the Arizona Daily Wildcat or Tucson Weekly, etc. Even videos and blogs and Youtube commentary can work, especially if you're looking for some poorly argued opinions... Then, summarize each text, pointing out what was strong about one and weak about the other. Be sure to quote from each. Meanwhile, keep in mind this question: what is it that can make a person change their mind? What doesn't work in an argument?  Should be around 200 words or so.


Remember, this is required. 


Have a good weekend! See you Wednesday. Go see Cornel West (extra credit opportunity posted below).

Cornel West, Friday the 1st at Centennial Hall (7pm)

Cornel West is famous for being the big-time academic who got fired from Harvard for putting out a rap CD. Of course, as is the case with most things, it's way more complicated than that, but this anecdote should be reason enough for you to go see him speak. He speaks his mind, he's pretty radical, and he is fiercely intelligent.


If you'd like to earn extra credit, please go to the talk and take lots and lots of notes. I'd like for you to reconstruct the lecture as you would the scene from a movie. Give a sense of who was in the audience, what major things West said, how people around you seemed to feel about his words, the kinds of questions people asked, etc. Make it easy for me to know what it was like to be there. You are welcome to, even, use the style of a script. If you do a creative job at making me feel like I was there, you'll get a few extra credit points. If you ask him a really thoughtful question, you may even earn more points. But even if you don't choose to do this assignment, you should go. It's an honor to have such a world-famous speaker come to Tucson.

Imitation

As you begin to transform a fairly formal, academic research paper into a personal essay, you'll need to play around with the kind of voice you want to use on the page. Your homework is to find a paragraph (should be about ten to twelve sentences minimum) in your favorite book, article or poem (if it's a poem, it should be at least three stanzas, let's say), and to, as we did in class, mimic it as closely as possible. Use the same punctuation, number of words, and even some of the same verbs and nouns if you'd like, but be sure the pacing is closely styled after that of your author. For your title, please write: "Imitation of _______ by _______ ________" inserting the title and author's name.


If you don't have a piece of writing at hand, you are welcome to choose one of the short stories, essays or poems from the excellent literary magazine, Gulf Coast, to imitate. (Be sure to click on one of the brown titles, these are the ones available to read online). Don't forget to write "Imitation of _____ by _____ _____." 


Have fun! 


And remember, this one is required.

Tucson Books!

Hey, nothing ever happens in Tucson. Wait, there's a huge book fair! Your assignment, should you choose to accept it (for UP TO five extra credit points) is as follows: 1) Attend a reading or panel discussion at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend. There should be local and visiting authors of all kinds, so find a topic, film screening or author that interests you. (Watch this trailer to get a sense of what the event entails.) 2) After going to at least one event hosted by the Tucson Festival of Books, please pretend that you came home to find a nasty editorial in the Arizona Daily Star about how there is no culture in Tucson. In the form of a comment to this blog, please write an editorial (300 words) refuting this claim, using detailed observations from your experience at the book fair. In other words, (whether this is your actual opinion or not) you are arguing that Tucson does in fact have a cultural scene, and detailed references to your experience at the book fair are your proof.


Enjoy!

Extra Credit Opportunity: due the Friday before Spring Break

First, re-watch "Many Moons" and be sure you've written down a list of observations. Using at least five examples from the "text," discuss the underlying message(s) encoded in this video. Why was that object, text, lyric or dance move used in the video? How does this "short film" contribute to the discussion we've been having about black female sexuality in the media? What is the visual rhetoric of this video implying about our culture at large?

Second, watch and jot down details from L.E.S. Artistes by another genre-defying artist, Santigold. Think about the themes here: distinctive personal style, lyrics, historically resonant visual tropes... Are there any similarities with Monae? What is it that both of these artists seem to be saying about the identities expected from them by the media? Are there other artists you can introduce to this discussion, who defy the expectations imposed on them?


Your totally unique, thoroughly analytical response (with as many quotations and references to critical articles about the artists and interviews with them as you'd like) should be about 600 words. You can earn, depending on the quality of your response, up to seven extra credit points. 

Topic Ideas on this Weekend of Brainstorming...

Hey Gals and Guys! Someone posted this interesting billboard (and the reaction to it) on Facebook today, and it made me want to remind you that there are certainly compelling ways to discuss a familiar topic like abortion. But you want to be sure that you are giving that same ole' discourse some kind of "spin" or edge, adding life and (perhaps literally) color to an old debate:

So while you should avoid paper topics that are simply listing the pros and cons of abortion or gay marriage, consider shifting your stance a bit so that the question has more to do with: what ethnicities are most impacted by abortion legislation; how are heterosexual relationships defined in Country Music videos; how do Hispanic or Black culture deal with gay, bisexual or transgendered populations. In fact, adding "race" or "ethnicity" to a familiar topic could give it the sense of refinement that a compelling research paper needs. Some mix and match with keywords could be a fun way to start your weekend research, especially if you're not sold on your topic yet... like, oh, say:


"global warming" + "fashion"
"abortion" + "Zen Buddhism"
"Kanye West" + "dental hygiene"
"polar bears" + "Coca Cola"


Play a bit. It will ensure your sanity and my own.


Just a thought! Have a nice, sunny weekend. 

Lauryn Hill: as seen through bell hooks' rhetoric of love

After reading the handout "Lauryn in Love," please take a moment to reflect on the way in which this article may echo some of bell hooks' ideas as expressed in the introduction to Salvation that we read in class, and in the quotes from the book in your handout. Consider that all celebrities, through their publicists, their clothes, their photo shoots, their political activism, their responses to interview questions, and their general image, are constructed. What is the underlying message of Lauryn Hill as an icon? How do we articulate her meaning as a symbol in the world of music? As a prominent figure in the history of black female celebrities? Use one quote from the article "Lauryn in Love" and one quote from the bell hooks' quotes handout in your response. 

The Rhetoric of Blending

Both Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau discuss blended families in their essays. And yet, the tones they use to discuss such familial structures, and the sociological perspective each has on the experience of living in these kinds of households, are quite distinct.  


1. Please find three quotes from each essay that demonstrate the difference in tone that the authors use to discuss mixed/interracial/blended families. Pay very close attention to word choice, looking at adjectives and adverbs in addition to verbs and nouns that may be communicating tone or stance on a subtle level. 


2. Then, integrating these quotes into your own words, explain what you think the major difference is between each author's ideology when it comes to the notion of growing up in a blended family household.


**
EXTRA CREDIT: 


3. If you are in the noon class, please post the brief in-class writing you wrote Wednesday in class, comparing the rhetoric of Emily Raboteau and Das Racist. I want the other class to see what you came up with.


OR


If you are in the 11AM class, take a look at what the other class wrote. It turns out that the way we went about analyzing the video was all wrong. In the noon class, we analyzed the lyrics first, as Philip had suggested, and it did make a major difference in the kind of cultural analysis we were able to make. We also looked at a different video, "Chicken and Meat" and wrote solo instead of in groups. If you want extra credit, take a look at this article that Das Racist wrote on their genre and discuss, in a few sentences, why they choose the somewhat ridiculous expression of music videos and hip hop when, as this article suggests, they have the ability to use a more straightforward form of articulation instead.

Here she is...

Please read "Searching for Zion" by Wednesday.

Eula and Jimmy Stranded at a Super Bowl Party

James Baldwin

There they are. One dead, one alive. One black, one white. One male, one female. One straight, or at least married, one gay. Both have written extensively about race. Both are, let's say, bored by this super bowl party they came to as a favor for a friend. Combining the casual and theoretical, the deep and superficial, please write a dialogue between Eula Biss and James Baldwin on the occasion of their boredom during this sporty American tradition. What would they be talking about? What has happened of late in the news that they might discuss? Feel free to describe their body language, facial expressions, pauses etc. 

Try to have fun with this one while simultaneously, honestly getting into some heavy commentary about race. 300 words.

Eula Biss

You can read your homework (due Friday) "Relations" by Eula Biss by clicking here.

Baldwin vs. Thomas...

James Baldwin and Michael Thomas both write, in the essays you've been assigned to read, of a death. They orient their personal narratives about some kind of spiritual growth around this premise or prompt. However, the way in which they use the theme of death, the manner in which they wage some kind of argument based on the way it impacted them, and the styles they use to articulate this argument are subtly different. How would you describe the rhetorical stance and style of each author based on "Notes from a Native Son" and "I was not Michael Jackson"? 300 words.

Michael Thomas

Boston born writer Michael Thomas is best known for his novel, Man Gone Down. While it's fiction, much of the narrative in this book is derived from his own experience. The essay he wrote for the New York Times entitled, "I was Not Michael Jackson" is a Nonfiction essay written about his family. Click here to read the essay for homework.

From Baldwin's Biography to Yours...

In "Notes of a Native Son," James Baldwin describes his own experience with racism. He also describes the way that racism not only impacted, but infected his father, much like the tuberculosis that eventually killed him.


How about you-- when has race impacted your life? Describe an instance in which your ethnicity played a role. It can be negative, positive, explosive or extremely subtle. How do you know race was a factor? Were there words spoken? Or was this a moment where you read the subtext through intuition? Use dialogue, setting and characterization to make the scene as vivid as the one Baldwin describes. 200 words.

Weekend Homework

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Given the shootings and attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords here in Tucson last Saturday, it is a very important time to seriously consider the legacy of assassinated Civil Rights Leader and proponent of non-violence, Martin Luther King Jr. For your homework, first please visit the King Institute Encyclopedia and watch or listen to one of Dr. King's famous speeches. Afterward, in the form of a comment to this posting, identify which speech you listened to and spend about 200 words reflecting on the impact of his oratory style, lyricism, and rhetoric in general. How does it feel for you to absorb it? Add some information about how you learned about the Civil Rights Movement-- at home, in school, through personal research? Who and what did you learn about? Through textbooks, films, literature? Explain.

Welcome to Composition 102

Hello and welcome to your new English Class! This semester will be a bit different from 101, because the aim of the class is to work closely with the art of persuasion. Aristotle once said, "Anyone can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy."  As such, we’ll be exploring the techniques used by various artists to transform anger (or grief, guilt, frustration, passion, etc.) into a convincing and persuasive personal and public narrative.  In each unit, we will investigate some aspect of persuasion. 

In this class, we will refine our focus even more than other 102 courses by examining texts that deal with race, racism and African American identity. We will investigate the arguments and philosophies embedded in a series of essays, songs, music videos and visual art texts. While our attention will be on modern texts, we will start out each unit by looking at a text from an earlier era, in order to better contextualize the arguments and narratives being made today.

Two important concepts will act as themes throughout the course—audience and rhetorical stance. We will define these ideas right away and begin our discussion of each text by considering how audience and stance impact the composition. We will hear a wide variety of voices, and hopefully this process of close reading and analysis will lead you toward developing an effective, persuasive voice as well.

Every week there will be some recurring events, such as: 


Monday Presentations-- Student presentations on the artist, writer or musician we are studying that week. Please use multi media sources such as power point, youtube videos, articles, biographies and even film clips. Be formal, entertaining and articulate. This constitutes a portion of your homework grade.

Africa Wednesdays-- The collective reading of one article from a news source about that huge continent we so often over simplify in modern discourse.

Friday Presentations-- Student presentations on a news event or historical issue that relates to our unit's theme. Again, follow the guidelines for presentations detailed under "Monday Presentations."

Just as a head's up, the units this semester will be:

James Baldwin

"O Brother, Where Art Thou?" This unit will focus on notions of black families through the examination of four personal essays, by James Baldwin, Michael Thomas, Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau. Your presentations for the Fridays of this unit will focus on any bit of news that deals with blackness and perceptions of family (while you are encouraged to think of one of your own, ideas for articles or pieces of media to present during this unit may include Bill Cosby's controversial "Pound Cake Speech," the Clinton-era debate over "welfare moms," the seminal journalistic text entitled "Random Family," Gordon Parks' famous photographic portrayal of blacks in Harlem, criticism of the film "Blind Side," etc.)

Erykah Badu

"Lady Sings the Blues" This portion of the class will delve into musical narratives that illuminate aspects of black womanhood in popular song. Though the phrase refers directly to Billie Holiday, we will start the unit by looking into the lyrics of Nina Simone, then we will delve into the videos and lyrics of Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, and Janelle Monae. Friday presentations for this unit should be easy to find and will need to focus primarily on black female musicians and any controversial discussions that have been had about their portrayal, their impact, etc.

Kara Walker

"Cut and Paste" For the final section of our class we will look into the art made by and about African Americans. We will look at the collages of Romare Bearden, at the conceptual art of Adrian Piper and Kara Walker, and the portraiture by Kehinde Wiley. Your Friday presentations will focus on representation of blackness, for which I highly encourage one or all of you to research the critical writings of philosopher (and yes she spells her names with no caps) bell hooks.

Ultimately, you are encouraged to come to class with diligence, an open mind, and a sense of playfulness. While we all have a lot of work to do, if our approach to it is not fun, we probably won't learn half as much. Instead of waiting for class to interest you, try to take the initiative to be creative and enterprising, there is certainly a space for that this semester.

Blog note: Please be both honest and respectful in your blog postings. While you should not oversimplify your arguments out of fear or shame, you should also be as careful as possible that you relay your opinions with a mind to whether or not you are respecting another person's right to an opinion, and certainly their emotions.