Your grades have been posted...

Your grades have been posted.

The grades you earned have been recorded. It may take the college a day or two to process and post them to your student records. To look at them, go to your VCCS student account--the one you use to sign up for classes--and look under transcript or degree progress.

Thanks for the good semester. If you have any questions about your grades, please get in touch with me early next week. I'll also be happy to return physical portfolios.

Steve

Sorry for the confustion this morning...

It's 9:30, and I am in the office.


Sorry for the confustion. For the past week, I've been driving my wife's old '69 Bug, while she's been driving my car. I've been driving the Bug because of a gas leak. This morning on the way in to pick up portfolios, the Bug ran out gas, so for once, it's the professor who was running late to a final.



As I said in a very early post about everyone needing to make late posts once in a while, life happens to everyone, even professors. The good thing about life happening to me--at least for you--is that each time it does, I create a get out of jail free card for the entire class, and it either gives you a tad bit of extra credit or strikes a late from your class participation grade.



For those who might be worried, I am fine, and the car is fine. It's parked beside the side of the road. A kind administrative assistant gave me a ride in and left the note on my office door, so I was able to get everyone's portfolios, but--again--I do apologize for the confusion.


Steve

The Assignment Link for Week Fifteen is Now Active

This is the last week of learning. Where has the semester gone.

After reading the assignments for the week, make sure to write and ask any remaining questions.

Steve

Examples of effective portfolios and reflective cover essays for ENG 241.

Examples of effective portfolios and reflective cover letter/essays from ENG 241.

Note, I wanted to get these up sooner rather than later, and it's the first time I've offered example portfolios to students; so, I have yet to any commentary as to what you'll find with each example. Some are full portfolios. Some are only the reflective cover essay. Almost all are examples of "A" level work. I'll try to provide some annotation by early next week.

In addition to the link above, I've added a link to the example page in this week's assignments. Look under: "Reading for the Week."

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Examples of Effective ENG 111 Course Portfolios

I have posted this link in this week's assignments, but here it is another time.  Remember, suspenders and belt are best insurance.

I am looking for examples for ENG 241; but, so far, I've only found a few, and I wanted to give you as much lead time as possible. 

As always, write with any questions.

Steve

Assignment Links for Week Fourteen Are Active.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

I will post assignments for the coming week tomorrow, Wednesday, 20 April.

Cloud Computing and the Constitution

Since we recently discussed how the Constitution continues to get interpreted and how important it is that common citizens stay informed and involved, I thought I'd share a recent piece which crossed my inbox on cloud computing and new threats to freedom of speech.  In case you are wondering, you are now among the 64% of Americans using a cloud based net application.  If for no other reason, this is true because you are using blogger:

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/04/the-constitutional-issues-raised-by-cloud-computing.html#posts

Steve

Extra credit history events in Richmond today, Saturday, 17 April

A few folks have either stopped by my office or emailed about ways to bring up a class participation grade which might be suffering or to earn a few more points to move a "B" to an "A."  My advice, as always, is to ask questions, so I can help you do your best in the course and to look to the extra-credit page.

I build in the extra credit because in an online course there are some teaching objectives it's hard to reach without it.  From your SDV course, some of you know you are kenisteitc learners, that is, you're more likely to learn and retain information if you absorb through physical experiences linked to the learning.  Visiting the Capital  Jefferson designed and 14th and Cary, where he argued Virginia into accepting the "Statue for Religious Freedom," can help folks learn about the time period, the authors, and the lit we've read in ways I can't hope to mirror through reading and writing assignments alone.

Today's a good day to earn up to five points extra-credit towards your final grade.  Today Richmond celebrates its history, especially as tied to the Civil War.  :Seventeen locations have open doors today, and they're free--today only.  There's also a host of special programming from Segway and Canal Boat rides to talks about slavery and African American labor in Richmond industries.  Places from the John Marshall house to the Maggie Walker house will be open for business.  You could do much worst than touring a few spots, like Brown Island on a Segway, on a nice Spring day and get half a letter grade boost toward your learning.

Here's the link:

http://futureofrichmondspast.org/events/april17/Civil-War-Emancipation-Day-schedule.pdf

Here's what you need to do to earn the extra credit.  Visist two or more of the sites and events over the course of the day.  Take pictures.  Write up a review in which you connect the sites and events to the reading for the course, tell your classmates if you liked what you saw, and then tell us a little about your visit.  That's it--a few paragraphs, a good day connecting the reading you've been doing to the place you live, and a couple of pictures.

Enjoy.

Steve

The Assignment Link for Week Thirteen Is Now Active

Thanks to those who wrote to ask about my father.  My brohter called yesterday.  My father is in the last stages of Alzheimer, and he is at the stage where his body is shutting down, he's only conscious once in awhile, and he's forgetting how to swallow.  The family made the decision yesterday to discontinue his IV and to let him go ahead a die.  It's time.  Hospice and my mother's church are there for the rest of the family, but--as you can guess--the immediacy of the problem and the effects on the family presented a difficult day.  Sometime over the next couple of weeks, I'll be taking of to go down and say good-bye, attend the funeral, and to be there for my family.  We have no way of knowing when this will be.

I'll keep you in the loop, but if I stopped teaching right now, you've learned more than most any other of my sections of ENG 241.  Your main job over the next weeks is to finish a first rate portfolio, so I can give you the high grade you've earned.

This week we'll touch on New England and the Puritans, then we'll jump to the Virginia colonies and settlement.  That will be the last reading for the course.  I'll leave you a full week to work on your portfolio, but you should begin now, as it's not a project to be rushed.

Steve

Posting the assignments for the week will be delayed by a day.

I heard some bad news about my father this afternoon, and dealing with it has put me behind in polishing and activating this week's assignments.  I'll post them tomorrow.  Here's the short version:

Reading:

Read Mary's Rowlandson's captivity narrative.  She's found in the section on New England fairly early on.  The captivity narrative is the story of her going through an Indian raid and the captivity of her and her family during King Phillip's War.  In all likelihood, you've never heard of the war, but it killed more per capita than any war in which the US or US colonies were involved before or since.  One out out every eleven people in the MA colony was killed.  Think about this number.

Writing:

Start updating your mid-term cover essay to become your portfolio cover essay.  As you do, make sure you have solid claims to make about what you have learned in the course and can point to one or--preferably--more pieces of evidence--mainly from your blog and class discussion--to demonstrate and discuss this learning.  I'm not just interesting in what you've learned and in your performance in the course, I'm much more interested in how you learned what you learned and--most important--how you see it affecting you now and in the future.  Remember, not all you've learned has come from the reading.  If the semester has gone well, you've learned a lot from the constellation of thinking, discussion, and writing which surrounds this reading, and not all of it will be "book learning."

In any event, as pre-writing start reviewing the material you've produced in the course and connecting these with claims you can make about what you've learned.

Sorry to be late with posting the work for the week.  My father is dying, and right now, my family needs me more than y'all need to know what to do tomorrow.

Steve

The basic lesson of the Enlightenment Section of the Course

Good job to everyone this week.  I always enjoy learning on the week where students share hard won advice.  


I hope many of you recognized the joy which comes from sharing your hard gained wisdom, and you also discovered that American discourse was built upon the willingness and usefulness of the many to share their wisdom and learn from their fellow citizens.  


It's one thing to say, "every man is created equal." It's another to learn that every person IS created equal, and every person is worth listening to and is someone from whom you can learn.  


Too often today, we reserve our learning and listening only to "experts," and we forget the basic lesson of the Enlightenment and the new democracy, namely, you can learn from and trust the common person to be wise.  Each has wisdom and a viewpoint which is worth going out of your way to listen to.  The recognition that everyone has wisdom to share is the basis of trusting the people with the final say in government and is, ultimately, the basis of our society.  It is also the basic lesson of this section of the class.  


Everyone is a potential Franklin.  Everyone has something to contribute.  The main task of our society is getting out of the way of everyone and creating chances at opportunity and free speech, so society at large and you individually can benefit from this immense pool of wisdom and talent.  This was the lesson which Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Henry gambled their lives, liberty, and sacred honor to teach the world.  Ultimately, to be an American citizen you have to be willing to say your say, but you also must respect your fellow citizens enough to learn to listen to them and trust them.  


Take care, and--as always--write with questions,


Steve

The Assignment Links for Week Twelve Are Now Active

This week you'll read and listen about the wide range of religious belief in America.  In particular, I've concentrated the reading on the religios beliefs of the founders in the personas of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Franklin, and I've also concentrated on the Great Awakening--a period of intense religious ferver which preceded the Revolution.  


The Great Awakening is represented by a sermon by Jonathan Edwards and a podcast on George Whitfield.  You can think of these last two as the rock stars of their age.  Woman fainted when they spoke.  Men of good judgment (Franklin Autobiography)  gave all they had to charity.  Remember Franklin's going to hear a preacher and first decding to give him the copper coins in his pocket but ending up giving all he had--including the gold?  That was Whitfiled to whom Franklin was listening.

You'll also get to hear Enlightenment's take on Christian Religion.  These will come in the form of Jefferson's "Statue for Religious Freedom" and Tom Paine's "Profession of Faith" in his Age of Reason.  The founders took religion seriously, and many placed great value on the role it played in encouraging civil debate and discussion.  For some, like Jefferson, religious discussion--a subject we usually avoid in modern America--acted as a means through which each individual could weed out superstition from true belief.  If you want to get a handle on just how differently many founders viewed Christianity, google "The Jefferson Bible."

Your blog post for the week will have you writing your own profession of faith--a la Paine, and a discussion thread will have you attempting to track down religious believes you--as a class--share in common. This last discussion should give you some idea of the problem religious diversity was to the founders.  How do you bring together colonies, many of whom had state sanctioned religions?  As you read, listen, and write this week, begin thinking of the "Right to Religious Freedom" and "separation of church and state" as brilliant solutions of building a shared sense of political nationalism among diverse states and people.

As always, write with questions.

Steve  

John Brown Exhibit Extra Credit

Just in case you find yourself looking for something to do over the Easter weekend, the Virginia Historical Society on Boulevard is doing an exhibit on John Brown's raid.  It's a long running exhibit, so visiting isn't limited to Easter weekend. This exhibit is about the man behind the raid on Harper's Ferry.  You read about the raid in one of  Thoreau's essay, and the raid was the event leading up to the song "John Brown's Body," which you also read.  You may be more familiar with the harmony for the song as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  It can also be well argued that without John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, the Civil War may not have happened.

The way you receive extra credit for this or any of the other extra-credit trips is to take a picture(s) of yourself at the exhibit and post it to your blog.  Along with the picture, write a short review of it for other students, with emphasis on what you learned pertaining to the course or the literature we've read.   Remember, you get extra extra credit, if you make one of the field trips with one or more people from the class.  These extra credit trips and virtual filed trips are a good way to make up missed class participation points, that is, if you've been less than diligent in participating in class or committee discussions or you've been late with assignments.  

The John Brown exhibit field trip will be worth 3 points toward your final grade.  

Steve

The Assignment Link for Week Eleven is Active.

As always, contact me with any questions.

The Assignment Links for Week Ten are Active

I hope you enjoyed your Spring Break, and you return rested and ready to hit the ground running.

This week, you'll read selections from the Federalists and Anti-Federalist Papers.  There were collections of essays published as the new Constitution of 1787 was being ratified.  We tend to think of the Constitution as rock solid and always having been around, but in the years surrounding 1787, our current Constitution was being hammered together to replace a document called the Articles of Confederacy, which had run the new country following our victory in the Revolution.  The Articles defined strong states and a weak central government.  Remember, the country had just fought one strong central government, and we didn't want to put a new one in it's place.  The Federalist argued that we needed a stronger central government, while the Anti-Federalists argued that concentrated power corrupts and leads to tyranny.  What was at stake were which of a host of different visions of the nation and of democracy would prevail.  As the Federalist--folks like Madison and Hamilton--wrote to get key states to ratify the new Constitution which created a strong federal form of government, the Anti-Federalists--like Patrick Henry--were trying to get folks to think through the full ramifications of putting so much power into a central government and that we should take another stable at creating a better document.  

This week, you'll be thrown into the midst of these debates.  Your blog post will have you updating Madison's Federalist Paper No. 10 and--in particular--looking at the various threats he saw in "faction" or "party" to the nation.  You'll have to decide if you think he is right in arguing that only a strong central government can limit the danger inherent in factions or--for that matter--if factions are as much of a danger as Madison suggests.  Remember, you've got two hundred plus years of history to see if things worked out as Madison predicted, and all the founding fathers wanted citizens to think about how to change the government and, if needed, to make it better.

The forum discussion on the thread, "Week 10: Improving the Constitution," has you discussing and debating specific changes to the Constitution which would make it better.   This week, not only much you post your suggestion for change or adoption one already posted, you are required to follow up and to challenge one or more suggestions made by those in the class.  Remember, this is a civil debate--the kind built into our society by the founders.  You are debating ideas, evidence, facts, etc.  When you offer an opinion, you must back it up and explain why you hold your opinion.  You are not attacking an individual or a group.

Have fun.  Be nice to one another, and think about the role of Enlightenment debate, reason, and opinion-support play in our society, which--I'll give you this hint--only works when its leaders can debate, offer opinion, and differ under the rubric of reason and evidence.

It's Spring Break, but...

This week is Spring Break at Reynolds and for much of the rest of the world.  Enjoy your time off. 

Remember, however, there are two upcoming deadlines, and plan your work accordingly:

1. If you already haven't, by Thursday, 25 March, you should have completed a 4-5 page reflective essay in which you argue for the grade you've earned so far this semester, critique your performance in the class with an eye toward a plan for improvement, and--finally and with the bulk of the paper--develop a series of PEA (Point, Evidence, and Analysis) paragraphs describing your learning (in detail) throughout the semester.  Use your learning reflections.  I want you to have this reflective essay done, so you'll have a feel for how to prepare one for your final portfolio and so you'll have a mid-term draft to work with for the final portfolio.

2.  If you want to get ahead on the reading, read the section on the Federalist Papers under Madison, et al. Most of us have lived for so long under the Constitution that we take it as a kind of background noises and subconsciously assume it was always there, but the Constitution was created.  As you've learned by reading Franklin's speech to the Constitutional Convention, getting it out of Convention was difficult, then it had to be explained and ratified by enough states to become the supreme law of the land.  The Federalists--those who argued for centralizing power had an up-hill battle on their hands, and--in the process of making their argument--they did one of the best jobs of explaining the Constitution and how it works of almost any writer since.  It's reading every American should experience.  Remember to slow down, read in small chucks, take the time to think about what you have read, and then to go on to the next chuck. Don't try to absorb it all at once. 

Remember to write with questions about either assignment.

Steve

Assignment link for Week Nine is now active.

As always, write with any questions.

At the end of the week, you will have written your learning reflection for the first half of the semester, thought about any errata in your performance or learning, and learned from your committee members.  Using these as a basis for your thinking, make an informed decision about staying in the class or withdrawing from it.  You know about how much work is involved each week, and you should know if you have been--by and large--able to keep up, learn, and produce material which will make a find portfolio at the end of the semester.  You should also know by now that I don't expect perfection, either in terms of keeping up or in terms of your learning; my basic expectation and the basis of any decision I make about your grade is that you are growing and learning.  Base your decision about staying in the course or withdrawing accordingly.  Remember, the last take to withdraw with a grade of "W" is 25 March.

This week, you'll also continue to read one of the founders.  This time Jefferson.  As you read Jefferson and Franklin, try to forget that they are larger than life.  Try to forget that they are part of the background noise of our society.  Remember, they were people, just like you.  People who grew, thought, changed their minds, and made mistakes.  Just like you, they worked to correct and profit from any mistakes they had made; indeed, they built a society which three goals in mind: 1) build the ability to change into the fabric of society; 2) build in opportunity to grow; and, 3) maximize individual liberty, reason, and education.  The education link might surprise you, but look at the achievements of both founders.  Both established schools; in fact, when Jefferson wrote the epitaph which appears on his grave at Monticello, he listed three things as accomplishments in his life:  1) having authored the Virgina "Statue for Religious Freedom;  2) having established the Virgina university; and, 3) I'll let you look this one up.  Allowing for public education helped maximize the contributions which individuals could make to society; it allowed individuals to make the most of being free to pursue opportunity and happiness; and, it created an opportunity to train each citizen in the use of reason and debate to guide this growth.  

Keep up the good work.  We're half way through, and most of you are doing a blessed good job.  It's been a pleasure to watch your thinking, reading, and discourse skills grow throughout the semester.  In the process, you've gotten a better handle on American literature, history, and society, and--I hope--a better handle on your best self and your ability to make a difference as a citizen and person.

Take care,

Steve

Discussion of the Assignments for Week Eight/Assignment Link is Now Active

This week we step back in time, and we take an important turn in the course, that from the Age of Romanticism and into the Age of Reason.  Because this is such a big turn, this week, part of your reading will be a discussion of where we have been, a review of Romanticism, and an overview of Enlightenment thought to get you started into this new unit of the semester.  

Most of the literature we've read the first half of the semester took place in the New Republic (1789-1830) of the Antebellum [that is, "Before the War] Period (1820-1861).  In one way or another, it was influenced by Romanticism.  If you noticed, I first set up a few touchstone authors--Poe, Thoreau, and Emerson--who you could use as representative Romantics.  From them, you learned that Romantics:

• valued the individual;
• valued feeling over thinking and reason;
• valued the underdog;
• valued the savage and "close to nature" noble savage over what they saw as the corrupting forces of civilization;
• valued cultivating emotion, sensitivity, and the ability to feel;
• valued individual, place, and group genius;
• tended toward idealism and Protestant Christianity as grounding philosophies; 
• used Plato and Neo-Platonic philosophers and various forms of mysticism as authorities;
• often used Nature--capital "N"--as a means of finding resonance with the Godhead in others and throughout the world; and,
• the list goes on.

You also learned that the Romantics fostered change in society by helping others to feel for the oppresses and by using a cultivated ability to feel deeply and to feel for others as a kind of index to oppression.  

What I didn't discuss with Romantics much is how their loose, individualistic artistic and philosophical stance came into being as a reaction to the dominant philosophy of the predecessor generation.  Harold Bloom, a Romantic critic and writer, argued that one means of understanding change in literature, the arts, and philosophy was to recognize that each generation rebels against the literature, philosophy, and the art of their parent's generation.  It's a means of defining one's generation and peer-community in difference to the mistaken values of the parent.  While there are holes in Bloom's model of change, by-and-large, it can be useful when thinking about the Romantics, who rebelled against the idealism and optimism of Enlightenment Philosophy and the so-called, Age of Reason.  

Loosely speaking, the Age of Reason begins at the end of the Renaissance and with the beginning of the Modern Era, that is, sometime in the late 1600s, and it never has really ended.  Although, most folks quit seeing it is a dominant influence around the time of high Romanticism.  Roughly, you can think about the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment as running from 1700-1820 or so.  

Enlightenment thinking gave us the true beginning of the Scientific Age.  It allowed democracy to come into being and created most of the supporting intellectual infrastructure--ideas like, the Social Contract, all humankind is created equal, the belief that humankind can understand the world and make it better through debate and reason, the value of the individual's insight as an instance of seeing something in their observations of our shared world that others had missed, the believe that the universe runs on unwavering basic laws and principles, religious freedom, the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and--finally and most important--humankind can come to understand how the universe works and to use this understanding to build better lives for everyone.  Without the Enlightenment, America would never have come into being.  The nobles and the church would likely still be in charge of Western civilization.  Most people would not be educated, and the Industrial Revolution would have taken a radically different path.

Just as the Romantics rebelled against their figurative philosophical parents, Enlightenment thinkers rebelled against the religious grounded controversies of the 15th and 16th Centuries.  The centuries which had seen the Inquisition, the religious Thirty Years War in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, witch trails, the growth of the notion of the Divine Right of Kings, the Enclosure Movement, etc. et etc.  In the stead of an old world order based on religious conviction, superstition, the privilege of the nobility, Enlightenment thinkers latched onto science, shared reason, and ultimately came to see society as a compact of individuals, not ordained by God, by by choice.  

Most of those who embraced high Enlightenment thought did not reject Christianity, but they did apply the measure of reason to received Christian doctrine, and high Enlightenment thinkers tended toward religious views based on what came to be called, Deism or the belief that there was a God, one who created the universe to run by knowable laws, a God who was not capricious, and one who started the universe to run, and then only intervened in the world only occasionally.  In such a world, our lives and the world were what we made of them and our value to God was in our ability to use reason to understand and appreciate God and the universe God created.  Deist tended to believe that the object of life and individual action was to use the God given faculty of reason to understand the world we share and to mediate the worst of human's animal passions, which they saw as deriving from one's emotional passions, individual selfishness, ignorance, and human tyranny.  According to most Enlightenment thinkers good and truth could be observed and noticed by everyone, that is, if  everyone practiced reason and resisted their worst, animal natures.  

By and large, good action consisted of helping others (and yourself at the same time) to live easier, understand the nature of the world, and to enrich the lives and freedoms of others.  Enlightenment thinkers also tended to believe that the more people who could exercise reason and had good information about the world--an education--the more we could know and the better we could make the world and our lives.  They were optimists who saw the increase in human understanding and freedoms only increasing--that is, if tyranny of thought, superstition, and ignorance could be overcome--and, as our shared understanding of the social and natural world increased, allowing better lives for all.  

Finally, Enlightenment thinkers tended to look toward Rome and Greece as their intellectual forbears, to see the intervening period before the Renaissance as a Dark Age, and to believe that we were in the process of regaining our intellectual heritage and stepping out of the Dark Age into the light--hence, the name, "Enlightenment."

If Enlightenment thinking sounds familiar, it's because you encounter it in most scientists and Engineers, and it is the intellectual foundation on which the institutions and Constitution of the United States was built.  

Just as you have Poe, Emerson, and Thoreau as touchstones of Romantic artists and thinking, over the next several weeks, you'll get Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine as touchstones through which to understand the Age of Reason and the birth of America.  

We'll begin with Ben Franklin, who was kind enough to leave us an autobiography.  While biography and autobiography is a familiar genre today, it was once a rare genre, and the idea of someone like Franklin, not of noble birth nor of particular religious value as a saint, to write his own biography was at the time Franklin was writing a fairly radical undertaking.  However, it is very much in keeping with the Enlightenment.  Franklin saw himself as an example; indeed, his apprentice with nothing to man of wealth and statue, has become an archetypal, rags-to-riches genre which is familiar to each of us.  You'll also see elements of how-to writing in Franklin's autobiography, as he talks about such ambitious undertakings as a plan to make himself morally perfect through exercising virtue and avoiding vice and in his discussion of how he (and we) can create a better life for ourselves and others by bringing people together to act for each other's good in the creation of such institutions as a public library, volunteer fire companies, or in propagating ideas or scientific inventions into daily usage.  If for nothing else, read Franklin to figure out how to retire by age 42 and help people around you along the way.

A New Regimen for Getting in Touch and Meeting with Me.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with vertigo, which is a fancy Latin word for dizziness.  The vertigo first presented itself during a visit to Baltimore and following a cold, and the doctors seem convinced it is related to a chronic sinus infection.  As a result, I have been on antibiotics, heavy decongestants, and allegory drugs for over a month, but symptoms have become worse rather than better over time.

I don't usually share health issues with a class.  So far,  I have been able to make every class I have had to teach and interact with and help students.  However, the vertigo has affected my ability to drive, and episodes come and go unpredictably, though they do get worse as the day progresses, which means I am limited in the times I will be at my office.  While I can still make arrangements for face-to-face meetings, and I will be happy to do so, if you need to see me in person, until further notice, the best way to contact me is via one of the website contact forms or via phone, 804-885-3727.  Moreover, until further notice, please contact me to arrange each face-to-face appointment rather than stopping by my office, as I want to make sure I am there when you do stop by.  

Steve  

Assignment link for Week Six AND Week Seven are not active.

Note the assignments described in the link this week cover a two week period of reading, discussion, writing, and review.  


Because of the volume of reading and the writing which accompanies it, this series of reading and writing exercises covers a two week period.  


I won't tell you how to divide up the reading and writing so as to fit it into a two week period.  I will tell you it can't be done well in a single week. Having said this, I suspect you'll end up with a few days to look back over your work for the semester to date and to consider how you can revise it and improve specific posts and add to the discussion.  


Part of what I am doing in this two week period is opening up some time for you to think about such issues and what has been said to date about the reading and issues it raises.  As part of this thinking, make sure to take a look at what has been written by your committee- and class- mates. In particular, I encourage you to look at your own writing and think about places where it could be informed and improved by reference to the literature you've read, discussed, and written about.  


As always, write with questions.  I've been very impressed with the thinking and discussion to date, and I'm looking forward to what you'll do with the issues raised in this and last week's reading.  Perhaps the single most important questions a citizen of a democracy can ask is what are the tactics which one should use to create change in a democratic society, and what causes are worth which tactics and my investment of life, liberty, and happiness?


Steve

A Brief History of Slavery, Oppression and Evil in the New World

Each semester when the class studies the literature surrounding slavery and Abolitionism, I see a variation on the question, "I wouldn't condone slavery.  How could they?" My response is that slave owners and early Americans were just people, no better and no worse than others--including us today.  Helping students "get" the fact that the authors they read are people just like them is often the first step toward getting students to move beyond seeing history and literature as something foreign and safely left behind when you move from school to life.  We create and live history everyday, and the literatures--the written texts which help create our history--may seem everyday, unimportant texts to us, but they're not.  We study literature to understand ourselves, others, and our past; others will study the texts we create to understand their selves, their past, and us.  


So, here is a brief history of slavery in the Americas and why the Anglo who taught a slave girl Bible verses could think of herself as doing good and slavery as a good for all.


The acceptance of the ideas of equality and freedom were far from universal in America, especially early one.  Most people thought the Revolution would fail, and it took Washington's victory at Trenton and Tom Paine's propaganda to begin to get folks out of their homes and into the field.  Even then, ideas like a Bill of Rights were controversial among many of the leaders, who feared giving voting privileges to what they called, "the mob."  By the time of the Revolution, long standing ideas of class and race were already well entrenched.  The Enlightenment challenged these ideas and provided a strong, self-consistent world view and, equally important, the discursive means on which to construct a society which would, eventually erode in-equalities based on gender, race, and class.  Notice I said, "erode," because the supper-structure of these very powerful memes remains with us, and gets used every day in how our own society works.

The Christianity argument is more complicated, and it is made more complicated because we tend to associated Christianity with love of neighbor and others as "brothers" and "sisters."  As a religion, Christianity is at its best when it focuses on these aspects of its ideology, but you need to remember that the humans and human institutions which embody Christianity are now over 2000 years old.  Religions and other social ideologies do not survive for this long if they are not robust enough to allow expression of the entire range of human action, nor do they survive if they cannot be co-opted and used for the ends of those in power.  For over and eon, the Church existed side-by-side with feudal systems of government, and these were the norm until the Catholic Church was challenged in the Reformation.  If you want to see how brutal Christians can be to other Christians, study the 30 Years War and the history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  You also might look at the Christian institutions which grew up to support the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain.  These effort to unite Spain under a Christian government succeeded the same year that  Columbus sat sail--1492.  

Here is the kicker.  One means used to justify contact and conquest of the Americas was bringing the heathen Indians under the rule of Spain and Portugal, making these areas Christian and, in the process, bringing Christianity to the peoples of, say, the Caribbean.  There were honest, well-meaning court cases where folks worked out and established in Catholic and secular law that Indians were indeed human and had souls and, hence, deserved the same treatment as the Moors and Jews of Spain, that is, a chance to accept the king and Pope as rulers and to accept and be taught Christianity.  Of course the flip side of the coin was that this acceptance had to be immediate, and if one didn't accept King and Pope as one's ruler, then one acknowledged that you and yours deserved to be treated as vassals in revolt, whose family could be taken and who deserved to be made slave and have war made on you and yours.  Ninety plus percent of the Indian population in the Caribbean died.  At the time, the word genocide didn't exist, but it applies.  Even though it was challenged and the worst of it was mitigated by Christian brothers like Las Crusas, all was done under the legal and moral fiction that Spain was doing the Indians the favor of giving them a chance to go to heaven and move from being savages to becoming Christian.  

OK, here is how all this ties back into Jacobs, the Bible verses she was taught, and why you can't see the people of the era as ignorant.  Without the Spanish depopulation of the Indians of the Caribbean, chances are the use of Africans as slaves would not have happened, at least to the degree that it did.  Those dead Indians were the peon population which allowed plantations to spring up in the Caribbean, plantations which were driven by a growing taste in Europe for sugar--once a luxury only enjoyed by the nobility.  The death of the Indian population created a labor shortage which was filled by building on traditions of slave trading in West Africa.  In many respects Africans made better plantation labor slaves than had the Indians.  Africans were displaced, so they didn't have ken hiding in the back woods and ready to absorb them if they ran away.  Africans were usually marked by the color of their skin, so they were easily recognizable as slaves in any mixed population.   Taken from many language groups and social traditions, they were often reliant on the social infrastructure of Spanish society to provide a common language and communal structure in which to live.  

As the institutions of social control needed to make a society based on slavery work, Spain developed ideas about race, which they borrowed from the interactions with Moors and Indians, which were  to become mainstays of how slavery was justified in the minds of the slave owners.  One of these was that the Spanish were ultimately doing African Slaves good by exposing them to a "higher" civilization than their own and, in specific, introducing Christianity and the opportunity to be saved.  These notions easily transferred into the English traditions surrounding African Slavery, since English Plantation life was largely modeled on that of one of their main trading partners--the Caribbean.  By teaching Jacobs the Bible, her owners and others in the community were allowing Jacobs to become like them.  They gave her an opportunity to be saved, and slavery was seen as a small price to pay for such an opportunity.  Moreover, there are passages in the Bible which can be interpreted and used to justify slavery as an institution.  Once you can build on the idea that someone is not yet your equal and you are doing good by educating them, you can justify all kinds of evil.

Most of the thinkers in the Revolution knew that slavery was incomparable with the great experiment and the keystone of the new American society that "all men are created equal."  That picture in the assignments for the week came from an early advertisement for the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society.  Ben Franklin was a founding member.  Washington and Jefferson both acknowledged that if the Christian God were a Just one they trembled for the price American would have to ultimately pay for the stain of slavery.  As you will see when you read the Declaration this semester, Jefferson and Franklin did all they could to get the delegates to adopt a version which condemned slavery as a British affront to natural human equality.  The proposed text never made it into the final version.  They tried again when our current constitution was adopted, but the truth was that the young Nation needed the south to be strong enough to survive when surrounded by European powers on every side.  Sometime look at who controlled the continent and surrounded the New Republic.  The founders were confronted with the need for some kind of compromise, and the one they picked was to allow slavery to continue as an institution while creating the ground and the institutions, like religion freedom and freedom of the speech and press, which would erode and challenge slavery from within.  Sometimes, you don't fight and win the good fight; sometimes you fight the battles you can win and which set up others to carry on the good fight.  

These men were not evil; at least, they are no more evil than most other humans.  Most people don't get up and decide to oppress others.  Everyone has self consistent rhetorics, ideologies, and rationalizations which allow us to overlook the evils we propagate.  The founders and the slave owners did as well.  This isn't ignorance; at worst, it is selective blindness and an unwillingness to sacrifice for others.  Few realized that a taste for cheap tea, chocolate, tobacco, and sugar drove plantations systems which had to have slaves to produce them.  Think of all our own outcries surrounding cheap gas, which we "need" to sustain our own way of life, but most buying gas do not consider themselves evil.  Those wearing cheap cloths rarely think about the producer of those clothes and the lives these producers live and the oppression and poverty they must endure for a $10-20 tee shirt.  We see the shirt and the needs we have for the money we save to take care of our own family, who seem so much more important, than families half way around the world.  We can tell ourselves that we are doing good for these families by providing them with some income.  You could go on considering the evils of our own society and those we condone in our everyday lives.  We too are human.  

Once you get your head about the fact that everyone in history were every bit as human and as smart as you and were dealing with their lives as best they could, you'll be a step closer to understanding history as it happened as opposed to how we wished it would have happened.  The fact that the founders were willing to sacrifice so much to get the great experiment started deserves gratitude, respect, and study.  The fact that people like Garrison, Jacobs, and Child were able to look at the institutions everyone else saw and accepted and say, "These do evil and must be changed," deserve gratitude, respect, and study.  It take a tremendous among of courage to be able to see and articulate a better way of living and to then sacrifice to bring these better ways of living into reality against all the existing competition.  

By the way, this is one reason that the Early Ame Lit class exists.  By studying those who resisted positive change and those who were able to help pull it off, we learn techniques and methods we can use to make positive change in our own lives, society, and world.  At the least, we begin to develop a sense of who deserves to be taken as a personal hero.  In turn, these heroes help us recognize those in our own world who are moving use in good directions and helps use focus our support of them, so we can use our own resources do help were we can in the best way we can.

The Assignments Link for Week Five Is Active.

Notes on class performance, Thoreau posts, and on reading the blogs...

I posted what follows in one of the discussion threads, but I wanted to cross post here as a means of your getting a better picture of how your blogs and the discussion fit into the larger picture of the course.  It's also an opportunity for me to point out just how amazing your classmates are proving.  It's going to be a good semester.

The cross-post follows:

What an amazing class we have this semester.  I've been reading your Thoreau posts on your blogs and following the online discussion concerning stuff what what it means to led a full, good life.  I've been impressed by the experiences and insights reflected in these posts. It points toward the discussion this semester being a rich, full one, which will help make the reading easier and more meaningful.

Billy's and Iwona's blog post in particular stand out in my mind.  Like Billy and Thoreau, I have found myself heading toward water and nature aa a why to get get away from the "noise" of society and gain the quite needed to get in touch with my best self.  Since moving to Richmond, I've found myself drawn to the James, first for its history but, increasingly, for the river itself. Being Cherokee, the mountains and nature have always been a basic part of my life, and it was good to see that the Romantic love of Nature is still at work on other's lives and in their road to discovering their best selves.  You'll read more about this when you read Thoreau's essay, "Walking," and there is an extra-credit assignment which is as simple as getting out in nature for a walk and then writing about it.   Iwona's comment, "I will not be afraid to be myself, to express my feelings and to say what I expect of me not what “everybody else” anticipates from me. ," also struck home.  Not only is the comment a mark of someone who has become and in becoming a good adult citizen, it is also a short version of what Emerson and Thoreau wanted for their readers and were trying to help us find in our own lives.   If you find yourself needing a short version of all Thoreau and Emerson are about, combine Billy's looking toward nature to find himself and Iwona's and Billy's learning not to be afraid of being their best selves.  As you will find in reading their blog posts and Emerson's "Self Reliance," learning who your best self is and letting this best self  out takes courage.  It is very easy to let your best self hide behind, as Iwona says, what others expect of you or, like Billy in high school, use others and their worse vices as a screen for a self we don't yet fully know.  It takes courage to say what your best self feels, to get to know this self, and to then act on these feelings.  Reading Thoreau and Emerson can help in this process, and it's the main reason for their popularity today.  

Soon, we'll be reading how the Romantics took what they knew of their best, how to get to know these selves, and how to construct a good life and translated these ideas and feelings into acting in society and making a difference in their communities.  You'll hear about Thoreau's notion of civil disobedience, which is just his getting in touch with what he saw is his best feelings toward others and refusing to support, through taxes the worst of what he saw in society.  For Thoreau, there was a difference between a higher moral law and civil law, and he let his ability to feel for others help him define what he though of as the more important law, that is, moral law.  Thoreau's notion of civil disobedience was radical in the 1840s and '50s, and it was radical when Gandhi read Thoreau and Emerson and adapted their ideas on passive civil disobedience.  Gandhi managed to lead India out from under British colonial rule and become an independent nation, all by getting millions to get in touch with their best selves, feel for others, and act on these feeling.  Thoreau's notion was equally radical when Martin Luther King read Thoreau and Gandhi and used passive civil disobedience in leading the civil rights movement (see King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail.), and we celebrate King because he helped the nation lay a foundation of law for treating African Americans as equal citizens.  In the process of reading your classmates and the upcoming lit, you'll discover the role played by Romantics in Abolitionism, that is, the fight against slavery.   After all, it is difficult to give yourself permission to get in touch with your best self and to feel deeply and not learn to feel for others.  Abolitionist tracts, based on the Romantic tradition of getting readers to identify with and feel for others, were the emotional and often the ideological foundation which allowed a person from the North to know that going off to fight in the Civil War was right.  For those in the North, the war became, as much as anything else, a fight to free the slaves and to try to end the mistreatment of others inherent in slavery.  Look, for instance, at Howe's "Song of the Republic," from the first week of class. It was based on an Abolition song about a martyr to the fight against slavery, that is, John Brown, the man who led the raid at Harper's Ferry, WV.  

American Romanticism, in particular, the Transcendentalist (Thoreau, Emerson, et al), has served as a foundation for the American penchant to feel and root for the underdog, the oppressed, and those just needing help.  This Romanticism, often unrecognized as Romanticism, remains a part of American society and how we view and act in the world.  Of course, it was also the foundation for believing that races are different from each other and one basis for the notion of manifest destiny, that is, the belief that God had ordained that America was destined to civilized the west, conquer the continent, and provide room for the great experiment of democracy and liberty to succeed.  Romanticism is, hence, a foundation for some of the best and worst of what it means to be American.  It helps justify reaching out to help, as in Haiti, and invasion under the guise of spreading democracy and helping the oppressed.  

As always, write with questions, and keep up the good work,

Steve

Office hours cancelled for Doc B, Thursday and Friday, 4-5 Feb.

I have been fighting off a chest and sinus infection since last Friday.  The cough which has accompanied it has become much worse overnight, and my voice is affected. The upshot is that I won't be keeping office hours today, Thursday, 4 February.  I don't normally have office hours on Friday, but I am also cancelling all meetings and appointments Friday as well, as I have a doctor's appointment in the morning and want to get in as much rest as possible, all with an eye toward being rested and--hopefully--well enough to tackle a full week next week.

If you had planned on stopping by my office, please email using one of the forms on the webpage, as my voice isn't all it could be.

Thanks,

Steve

Assignments Week Four

I have activated and updated the links to the fourth week's assignments.

Because of the snow and the fact I am working from home and without my copy of the anthology, the page numbers for the reading may or may not reflect those for the sixth edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature, the edition we are using this semester.  I think they do, but I'm working up your assignments from sections which used both the fifth and sixth editions.  If you find the page numbers do not correspond to those of Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance," in your text, just use the etext link or find the right numbers by looking in the table of contents.  I also want you to note that Emerson can be difficult for students (and for professional readers like me).  Because of this difficulty, I encourage you to listen to the mp3 of the essay as you read and to read the wikipedia links to get background before tackling the essay.

Finally, there are two new activities this week in the assignments--commenting on the blog posts of your committee and writing a learning reflection.  Neither is difficult, and with these two final activities, you will have been introduced to all the kinds of weekly writing you'll do weekly this semester.

First, you will begin the process of reading and discussing the blog posts made by your committee members *last* week.  You'll be reading your committee's blog posts and commenting on and discussing them most weeks for the rest of the semester.  This is one means I use for you to get to know your committee members, and--more important--for you to learn how to write about literature and the questions it raises for a real audience.  You will also be learning from the different perspective each member of your committee brings to the reading.

By "real audience," I mean an audience which isn't just a professor and who is seeking to learn and be entertained as they learn.  Professors, by definition, usually know more than their students, at least, they do in their specialty fields. [You might be surprised how often this isn't true for areas outside of a professor's specialty.] Real audiences are usually seeking to better understand the reading (or life or world) they share in common with the authors they read.  For many students, being an author, one who is writing for a real audience and seeking to better understand an idea or literature through the acts of writing and discussions is a new experience.  While I could tell you everything I know about what you are reading, most of you would be bored by such lecture.  I think it is much, much more important for you learn how to discuss, write, and read about literature and ideas on your own.  In fact, learning how to discuss and learn from discussing and writing about literature is one of the major learning outcomes for the course.

The approach of "professor says/you learn and regurgitate" is why many of my students hate literature and "English," and it is why most people don't read lit on their own or enjoy thinking about the ideas and questions it raises.  They think that there is a right way to read it and this is how the professor reads it.  While there are better ways and ways which correspond better to what the author intended, professors are only better trained in getting at them.  You are learning these methods and discovering how you learn and understand.  In your blog posts and the discussion of them each week, you'll learn these ways of approaching lit, sort of as a book club would.

Secondly, you'll be doing your first learning reflection post this week.  If you don't know what a learning reflection is and the role it plays in learning, I've linked to a very short explanation in the assignments.  In terms of your grade, 50% is tied to class participation, that is, doing all the assignments each week, doing a quality job on them, and getting them done on time and in full.  However, the other 50% comes from a class portfolio you'll put together.  This portfolio will be made up from selections from the work you do each week in the weekly assignments, but it will also include a cover essay or letter.  In this letter, you'll explain to me what you have learned in the course and where and how you learned it.  You'll also discussion your class performance, how it might have been improved, and argue for the grade you feel you have earned with your work.  These learning reflections allow you time to figure out and articulate for yourself what you are learning as you do the work each week.   Doing a good job on the learning reflections will help your class participation grade; more important, taking the time to write well developed learning reflections will make the job of writing your final portfolio's cover essay much, much easier, as you will have done much of the work in the weekly reflections.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Office hours Monday, 1 February

I've spent the day hoping the streets in front of my home would get plowed, but my wife is just back from a walk in the neighborhood looking at the streets and stopping by the neighborhood grocery.  

It looks as if the interstates are plowed, but secondary and neighborhood streets are still only, at best, snow-packed.  I suspect this will translate into refreezing overnight and dangerous driving tomorrow morning, during my regular office hours; so, I'm going to keep virtual office hours as usual from 8:00-1:00, but I am going to keep them from home.

You can call and speak with me by calling 804-885-3727; you can email me at sbrandon@reynolds.edu, or you can IM me at prof.brandon@gmail.com to get in touch with any questions you may have.  If there is an a need, I will come into campus, but--unless asked--I will only be available from home to help.  

Steve 

Week Three Assignments are Hot.

I've activated the week three assignment link and posted the "About This Week" essay.  You'll find the essay below and the link to this week's assignment on the Assignments page.

Steve

About This Week, Week Three, ENG 241

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and the Highest of Arts

"It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day– that is the highest of the arts.”  --Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,"  HB6  1882. 

One of the reasons I have come to question the value of the traditional literature class is that such classes do little to help us understand what literature can do for us besides allowing a platform for showing off how smart we think ourselves to be.  A class in reading should teach us more. Learning to read literature and use it has little to do with grades or school.  If literature has nothing to teach us that we can use to make our lives better, make us happier, or make the lives of others better, by definition it is useless; and, it deserves to be relegated to the trash. 

Hence, we read for a number of reasons, but the main ones are the same reasons we go to the gym, namely, to create selves who are better able to live long, happy, constructive lives, and--if we are really lucky--we learn to enjoy the exercise and play we use to construct such a self. We read to exercise our minds and hearts.  We read so as to understand ourselves, our world, and others better than we already do.  Sometimes this means reading texts and authors which are difficult to understand and who stretch and make sore the emotional and intellectual mussels we use to read and interpret. 

No one promised that the one idea which will make life meaningful and worth living will be easy to grasp, nor is life fair enough to present such ideas just when we are ready to hear them; so, we read and practice reading and interpreting so as to be ready with the well-developed interpretative skills we need to recognize the good, usable ideas which are illusive, hard to grasp, and which stretch our thinking to degrees we never thought ourselves capable.  As you found last week, learning to get the most out of authors, like Emerson, can be an exercise in building one's interpretative mussel; such hard reading often pays off in the ideas which suddenly make our lives make more sense and allow us to construct lives which are happier and richer than they would be without having struggled through the likes of Emerson, but Emerson is a philosopher king--the Man Thinking.

The person who we will read this week, Henry David Thoreau, is more down to earth and practical than his mentor and friend, Emerson. He is also very different from another Romantic, Poe, who we read list week.  Romanticism is about feeling deeply and learning to "think" about, notice, and experience the world through intense feelings.  Poe sought such sublime feelings in loss, despair, madness, fear, mystery and horror.  Thoreau sought his sublime in nature and the everyday.  Thoreau wants to get us thinking, but he wants us to be thinking about how we live our everyday lives and the sulblime moments which we overlook because we are too busy focusing on "more important stuff."  Equally important, Thoreau wants us to think about how we can construct our lives so we can develop that sublime self we want to be in our heart of hearts.  In other words, while Emerson will call for thinkers who were men of Action.  Thoreau answers this call.  Thoreau wants his readers out living--really living; hence, he writes essays about "Walking"--which we will read later--or "Where I Lived and What I Lived For."  Thoreau's major theme is focused on what it means to live, and he's tried to write a "how to" manual on one approach to which got him in touch with meaning in his own life. 

Thoreau was one of those rare individuals who knew how to live a good, moral, down to earth life.  In every measure which matters, he was a good man.  In fact, his life and thinking has inspired other good men, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Kennedy, to live better lives; yet, people tend to think of him as some sort of back to nature nut.  These folks aren't ready to hear what Thoreau has to say.

Thoreau wants us to be awake to the possibilities life has to offer.  That's it. 

Walden; or, Life in the Woods, the book from which you'll read this week, was about two years Thoreau spent in an experiment in which he tried to figure out the absolute minimum one needed to live a life where one was awake to all life has to offer AND capable of enjoying everything life has to offer  He goes to the woods, as he says in the paragraph following the one quoted above, to figure out how to "live life deliberately."  However, he also goes to the woods because he cares about his readers, and he wants us to live a life as rich as that he experienced while living on Walden pond.

Thoreau decides of living close to nature because he wants to strip away everything which isn't necessary to living a full life, and then build back in only those things which add to a better, even more full life.  He also wanted to strip away the things which can get in the way of living a good, happy, spiritually full life, and he firmly believes that getting in touch with your real self is sometimes easier with some solitude, privacy, and time to think.  By the way, the reason he leaves Walden pond is that he recognized that the fullest life possible wasn't limited to a cabin in the woods, and he has other things he wanted to explore.

Thoreau doesn't, as many will tell you, want you to head off and live in a cabin in the woods.  He's led that life, and he wrote about it so you don't have to go live in the woods.  That is, unless this is the life *you* decide you need to live fully and to get from life all it has to offer. Like Emerson, Thoreau thinks that living the good life begins with developing a sense of who you are and who you want to be and then being awake enough to the world and life's possibilities to take advantage of the opportunities and obstacles life offers.  (This is why Thoreau spends so much time talking about the wonders of the morning and being fully awake.)

You get to the point of knowing yourself and what you want through visiting with others, working, reading, spending time in nature, thinking and, because one isn't complete without helping others, sharing what you have learned and know to help others make their life better.

One of the rather cool things about Thoreau is he isn't a snob.  He doesn't just talk about living; he lives.  He is Man Acting.  He knows and lives the fact that you can construct such a full life being a farmer, pencil maker, handyman, writer, or anything else, but you have to start with spending the time to figure out what you want and then making sure life itself doesn't get in the way.  As the quote above says, this is, according to Thoreau, "the highest of arts." 

Over the past two weeks, you've thought about what it means to be an American, and you've begun to learn about Romantism, the Romantic search for the Sublime, and Romantic ideas about how to live a better life through learning to feel and feel for others.  This is, as one of your classmates said, deep stuff.  This week, you'll bring this deep thinking home, and you'll write about a more pragmatic, practical question, namely, how do you live your life so as to construct the life and self you want to be/become? 

For Romantic, American Transcendentalist, like Thoreau and Emerson, changing society begins with creating people who are willing and able to work toward changing them selves into their best, most sublime selves.  Being one's true, best self and creating a life where one can be this self and continue to develop one's self is the greatest challenge facing you as an individual, but the payoff to both yourself and to society is phenomenal.  This is the great American challenge and dream, and it is the only pursuit through which American culture can develop its own potential.

Transcendentalist were, like most Americans of their time, optimists.  They tended to think of others as essentially good.  One key to learning to understand others is to realize that few get up in the morning and think, "Today is a good day for me to do evil."  Usually, evil happens because people don't understand the consequences of their actions and the limitations of their understanding of the world.  Few people, given a choice between acting selfishly and acting in a manner which will help both their selves and their neighbors, will choose to act selfishly.  The trick then, at least according to the Transcendentalist, is figure out for one's self and then to help teach others how we transcend our own ignorance, how we are connected to others and through Nature, and to show--through our own life--how easy and good it is to live well. 

Think of this week's reading, that is, Thoreau's "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" as a chance to think and write about where you live, where you want to live, what you live for, and how you plan to construct a life worth living. 

You'll find your homework in "the highest of arts" in the discussion thread for the week, which asks you to explore your own relationship to stuff and constructing the good life.  You'll have a chance to get to know your committee mates better, and you'll write a blog post what living a full life means to you.  As you write and respond to others, make sure to attempt to incorporate the reading you have been doing into your thinking and writing; this is one measure I use to make sure you are doing the reading.

Please note the extra-credit day trip tied to Thoreau on the Extra-Credit tab. 

As always, the assignments for the week are spelled out in the week's link off the "Assignments" page, and you should continue to pay attention to the website's home page--the Town Crier--for class announcements and hints on doing well in the course.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

The Assignments for Week Two are now hot.

One of the many reasons I enjoy teaching early American Literature in Richmond is that each spring, we celebrate the day Edgar Allen Poe was born--19 January.  You can look under the extra-credit tab for Poe and the many connections Richmond and Virginia has to Poe.  The area is rich in opportunities to learn about him and the city.  In fact, the Poe museum has a model of Richmond as it would have looked in Poe's lifetime.  UVA still has it's Raven Society and the window in his dorm room where he carved with a diamond a warning to all who would follow.  Baltimore is where he is buried.  There are even "Annabel Lee" river boat cruses in Richmond.  More important, while Poe's is a dark imagination, he is also a fun way to start the semester, and many student enjoy him.

The semester is designed to move backward in broad swaths.  First we cover the Romantic Period, that is, between 1820-1860s; then, we look at the Revolutionary period and New Republic 1750-1830; finally, we look at the era of contact and colonization from contact in 1492 until the revolution in 1776.  Understanding Romanticism and the philosophy, literature, and history which formed it helps students get a handle on the Revolutionary period, and understanding the Revolution, etc.    

Make sure to write with questions, and enjoy.

Steve

Welcome to Early American Literature, ENG 241 03DL, Spring 2010.

Welcome to Early American Literature, ENG 241 03DL.  This blog is where I will post class announcements, clarifications, and updates.  You should plan on reading it each time you visit the class webpage.

To get started with your work for the semester, click on the "Assignments" tab above and then on the link for "Week One: Tuesday, 12 January - Monday, 18 January."

As always, if you have questions, use one of the Contact me forms scattered around the website.

Steve