Translations

Discussion Questions:

• What do we mean when we say something is "lost in translation"? How does this get explored in Friel's play?
• What is the connection between Yolland's budding romance with Maire and his developing love of Ireland?
• What is the significance of naming? Do/should names carry history with them?
• Is language a vessel for culture? In other words, without the language, do you lose the connection to a culture and its past?
  
• Do you agree with Owen (that the Irish locals should learn English) or not?
  

W writing contest!

ATTENTION CURRENT “W” STUDENTS!

Contest for all current “W” students – One entry per student

Submit entries to 215 Spes Unica by Wednesday, December 16th.

Please include on the title page:
The title of the class and name of instructor
for whom the paper was written.

Awards are presented at Honors Convocation on May 2, 2010.

Contest sponsored by the Saint Mary's College Writing Proficiency Program

Final Exam Location

Your final exam will not be held in our regular classroom. Instead, it will be upstairs in Spes Unica:

Dec. 16, 4:15-6:15
Madeleva 206

Power Discussion Questions

Here are the questions you generated in class:

• How does the relationship between Ama and Omishto change throughout the story? (beginning, the hunt, the trial, and beyond)
• Does beauty say something about power (p. 18-19)? Is beauty powerful?
• How do people who belong to different worlds be faithful to one or both…especially in regards to what is lawful?
• Why does O’s mama call her Omishto for the first time on p. 117 when they arrive at the courthouse?
• What leads up to O admitting she’s in two worlds (p. 97), as compared to her opinion on p. 13 where she doesn’t seem to think she’s in two?
• In her autobio, O begins her school essay with “I am a Taiga.” What is the purpose of this statement?
• How do the differences between O and her sister, Donna, parallel those between her mother and Ama?
• Why does Ama take the tracking bracelet home so they can find her when she can easily get away with it?
• What constitutes “life” in a house? (Ama’s house as “dead” yet it enlivens)
• How does the environment at school allow O to understand more about herself and what’s going on around her?
• P. 105: the panther as both loved and hated; the idea of the panther

Power Reading Questions

One place to turn to learn more about the author, Linda Hogan, is at the NativeWiki website. There, you'll also find valuable resources pertaining to many indigenous populations and native peoples.

Reading Questions (optional):

• In what ways does Omishto feel torn between different worlds? How does she describe these worlds?
• How would you characterize her relationship to place?
• How are her ties to other people/characters distinct from her ties to animals and nature?
• What kind of a narrator is she?
• Why is the novel titled "Power"? What different kinds of power are at work here?

Extra Credit: Play

You are invited to attend the world premiere of Confessions of the Chaff. This compelling play, set in Ireland in 1942 centers on the secrets that that are about to explode around the Mahan family, the community and the church. Come out and support many members of the SMC community including:

A cast of students from SMC, ND and Holy Cross

Playwright: Susan Brabant Baxter, Lecturer in Communication Studies, Dance and Theater

Actors: Katherine Sullivan, Asso. Professor in Communication Studies, Dance and Theater
Richard Baxter, Director of Special Events

Extra Credit: reading

Please come enjoy a fiction reading by novelist Joshua Cohen TONIGHT at 8pm, in Early Meeting Rm. E in the Student Center.

Born in 1980, Cohen is the author of four books. He has been compared to the likes of Kafka, Joyce, & Beckett. This is reading you don't want to miss!

Extra Credit: Unveiled

Tuesday, Nov 10 at 7pm Rohina Malik, will be performing her show "Unveiled" at Carroll Auditorium. Unveiled tells the stories of five Muslim women living in a post-9/11 world.

About the play
Four of the women live in the U.S. Maryam is a Pakistani-American, Noor is a Moroccan-American, Inez is an African-American, Layla is an Arab-American, and lastly, Shabana is a South Asian-Londoner. They differ in age and where they are in their lives. Some are wives and mothers, (and) others are single and career focused.
Tea and coffee is an important part of Islamic culture. It is a symbol of friendship, tradition and hospitality. As the women make their cultural drink, they begin to unveil who they are — their hopes, fears, hardships and triumphs.

There will be a Q&A session after the play. If you have any questions, please contact Multicultural Services and Student Programs at (574) 284-4721

Extra Credit: CWIL Colloquium

Living Difference(s): Dialogue as Spiritual Practice

When: November 6, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Where: Warner Conference room, Student Center

Join us for this CWIL colloquium presented by Phyllis Kaminski, Professor, Religious Studies.

How can we share the world in ways that truly recognize difference(s) --- sexual, racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, to name just a few? In this talk Dr. Kaminski will share insights from her presentation at the 2009 Luce Irigaray Circle Conference on the theme: How Can We Meet the Other? One way is dialogue. As a spiritual practice, this kind of dialogue is necessarily personal, leads to personal and social commitments, and aims at radical transformation beyond the boundaries of single traditions. Q & A to follow.

Light refreshments provided.

Extra Credit: Christian Culture Lecture

William Chester Jordan

Crusader Prologues: Preparing for War in the Gothic Age

Tuesday November 3, 2009 7:30 p.m.
O'Laughlin Auditorium
Saint Mary's College

Free and open to the public

About Speaker William Chester Jordan

William Chester Jordan is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Princeton University. His many books on medieval culture include Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (1980), The French Monarchy and the Jews from Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (1989), Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies (1993), The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (which received the Medieval Academy of America’s Haskins Medal for the outstanding book on the Middle Ages for 2000), Europe in the High Middle Ages (2001), and Unceasing Strife, Unending Fear: Jacques de Therines and the Freedom of the Church in the Age of the Last Capetians (2005). His latest book is A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century (2009). He is currently the president of the American Catholic Historical Association.

About His Talk

How did crusaders prepare themselves and those they were leaving behind psychically and spiritually for a holy war? The lecture addresses several aspects of this preparation and hopes thereby to enrich our understanding of the crusades in general.

Appropriating Shakespeare

In "Encounters with Othello" (a 'cultural context' section in the Bedford edition of the play), Kim Hall reminds us that "other artists and writers over the centuries have tapped into the potential of Shakespeare's Othello...each one approaching the play with concerns provoked by his or her personal history and cultural moment" (342). If we read Tim Blake Nelson's film, O, in that light, it raises the following questions:

• How does O "tap into" the potential of Othello?
• In what ways does O speak to its own cultural moment?
  

Hall also suggests that Shakespeare's plays serve "as a site for addressing many complex social issues" (343). What "complex social issues" do you see this film taking on? How are they different or similar to those explored in Othello?

Take contemporary racial tensions as an example. In Othello, the title character represents an appropriated "other" (Othello rises to success as a Moor in Venetian society), yet nonetheless reminds audiences of Europe's anxieties over racial, religious, and geographic difference--although he is a Christian and a Venetian, Othello reminds Europeans of their North African Muslim neighbors to the South. Does something similar go on in the film? Is Odin both an appropriation and an anxiety? Are the worries about Odin as multidimensional in this American southern prep school as they are in 16th-century Venice? Or, is something else going on?

Othello (1965): Laurence Olivier & Maggie Smith

We'll be discussing film adaptations and performances of Othello in class on Monday. Please take a look at this 10-minute clip of the play's final scene (Act 5, scene 2) from a 1965 performance with Laurence Olivier as Othello in blackface and Maggie Smith as Desdemona (a.k.a. Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter).

Extra Credit: Talk

Fumiko and Richard Halloran, award-winning writers and Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows

“Walking the Intercultural Walk”

Monday, October 5

Noon – 1 p.m., Haggar Parlor

Light refreshments will be served; all are welcome

Annie Dillard & "fleshy" narrative

Annie Dillard on postmodern fiction:
“[Postmodern] fiction, in fact, requires more coherence than traditional fiction does. For one of the things this new fiction does is bare its own structure.… This fiction sees that the formal relationship among parts is the essential value of all works of art. So it strips the narration of inessentials….It bares instead its structural bones, brings them to the surface, and retires. Those bones had better be good….Traditional fiction has the advantage here, I think. In a conservative work well fleshed, we may not notice at once that the joints do not articulate, nor the limbs even meet the torso. There may in fact be so much flesh that the parts cohere as it were bonelessly. But it is easy to see, if we look, taped joints on a skeleton.” (34, Living by Fiction)

Questions to Consider:

• What does Dillard mean when she says that postmodern novels “bare [their] own structure” like bones?
• Why makes “traditional fiction” fleshy?
• How can we apply this body metaphor (flesh, bones, limbs, torso) to Invisible Cities?
  

Placing Othello

While much of Othello takes place on the island of Cyprus, the play opens in and is colored by the city of Venice. As we've discussed in class (via Invisible Cities, Venice served as a gateway between East and West on the Mediterranean. Its streets and buildings showed signs of influence from a variety of cultures, religions, and regions. In the image above, you'll see evidence on this in the domes and arches of St. Mark's Cathedral.

For Paper 1, you are welcome to write on Othello. In what ways does place or setting produce meaning in the play? What ideas do you have about how you might incorporate our discussions of Othello into your assignment? into our broader conversations on the importance of place, space, and location in forming identity?

Othello Reading Guide

Reading Tips:

• As you make your way through Othello, don't forget to jot down summary notes to remind yourself what happened in each scene and Act. When you go to reflect on what you've read, these notes will be hugely helpful to you.
  
• Also, highlight or bracket passages & speeches that you find really interesting, even if you don't fully understand them. Read and reread these sections. Maybe you can ask your roommate or classmate to read a couple lines or scene with you out loud. Hearing things aloud sometimes helps.
• Underline patterns of language, images, or words you notice over and over (honesty, black/white, honor, see/sight...). This way you can identify those areas quickly later on. You might also keep note cards with you as you read so you can write down some of these thoughts and reactions and store them in your book.

Other Resources:

• Feel free to consult a few online summaries from the British Library , Cummings Study Guides, or even Spark Notes.
• Check out Terry A. Gray's outstanding web resource, Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet.
• Some HUST majors recently read Othello, and they took some notes online that you might find useful. Check out their historical analysis and summaries.
  
• Don't forget to consult your book. Kim Hall's introduction to the Bedford/St. Martin's edition of your text is very useful, especially for its explanation of how race is understood in Shakespeare's time.
  

Questions to Think About:

• What are Iago's reasons for plotting against Othello?
• After Cassio gets drunk and fights Montano (2.3), he laments the loss of his reputation (2.3.240). Why is reputation so important to Cassio? How essential is it for the other characters?
  
• Why do Iago, Othello, Branbantio and other characters keep talking about what you can see? Othello claims he needs "ocular proof" of Desdemona's faithfulness--what are limitations does "ocular proof" present? Can we always trust what we see?

Calvino reading guide

As you make your way through Calvino's cities, you might find the following questions helpful as a kind of reading guide. I would highly recommend pausing after each city to reflect on what you've just read, what impressions you have, and what still confuses you (the kind of delicious-hurt-your-brain-in-the-best-sort-of-way confusion).

GUIDING QUESTIONS:

• For each city, we might ask: What vision is this? How is this city known to Polo and to you/the reader? What impressions are you left with? Do any cities resemble each other?
• What are the relationships between the different categories/sections/chapters in the book? Are there any?
• What is the relationship between the conversation that Marco Polo has with Kublai Kahn and the cities we read about?
• What is the function of the journey for Marco Polo? for Kublai Kahn? for the reader?
• Do you notice any patterns emerging? (I'm thinking of things like seeing/invisibility, the past/memory, dreams/imagining, etc.)

Historical context - "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" predates Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own by over 35 years, and, unlike Woolf's British text, takes place in America. What historical, national and cultural conditions might help us understand the broader context that Gilman was living and writing in?
To help you explore answers to some of these questions, I've posted a few resources below.

• "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'": Here you'll find Gilman's own response to the "elephant in the room" question, especially given her own personal experience at the hand of mental health "professionals" like S. Weir Mitchell (mentioned in the story).
  
• What's going on in art? For a sense of how women are being represented in late 19th-century American art, check out The University of Virginia's American Culture pages on this very topic. You'll have to scroll down to the bottom to get to links to other related topics like women & domesticity, women in literature, etc.
• What is a "nervous disorder" anyway? At the turn of the 20th century, a condition called neurasthenia was determined to be the root cause to many cases of anxiety and depression, especially in the U.S. and especially for women. The actual medical validity behind such cases, however, was often suspect, creating instead what some have called a "culture of neurasthenia" in which women were often portrayed in nervous, weakened states. Women said to suffer from such conditions were many times prescribed rest cures or periods of severely restricted activity: no reading, no exercise, no sewing, reduced diet, strict bed rest, etc. The American Journal of Psychiatry has a helpful article, "The Rest Cure Revisited," explaining the history behind the supposed "cure" and the physician responsible for its use, S. Weir Mitchell (the same doctor Gilman references in her story, one she was herself treated by).
• Where was the story originally published and what did it look like? For links to images of the original pages from The New England Magazine, see Cornell's Making of America website. The image you see above was included in the initial publication.
  

Girl, Interrupted - Discussion Questions

Here are a few questions for you to consider as you reflect on Girl, Interrupted.

• What does it mean to be a girl, interrupted? Why not an interrupted girl? Why a girl?
• Why is “ambivalent” the perfect word for Susanna?
• One of the women says at one point that it’s a good thing the place works on a sliding scale so that the “locking picking trash” is also admitted. What other class tensions did you notice? Why might these be significant?
• What did you make of Susanna’s final definition of crazy: “you or me amplified”?
• How does the film affect your reading of "The Yellow Wallpaper" or vice versa?

Also, you might find it interesting to note that Claymore is modeled after Harvard's McLean Hospital, a mental health facility largely known by fame of some of its patients including writers and musicians.

Extra Credit: Talk

Susan Douglas is speaking on Wednesday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Little Theatre, located in the Moreau Center for the Arts. Her talk, supported by the Ann Plamondon Endowed Lecture Series, is titled "Fantasies of Girl Power: How the Media Make Feminism Seem Unnecessary and Sexism Fun."

Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and is also chair of the department. She is author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (2004); Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination (1999), earning her the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture; Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1995); and Inventing American broadcasting, 1899 - 1922 (1987). Her column "Back Talk" appears in In These Times every month. She has appeared on the "Today Show," the Oprah Winfrey Show," Working Woman," CNBC's "Equal Time," NPR's "Fresh Air," Weekend Edition," "The Diane Rehm Show," "Talk of the Nation," and various radio talk shows around the country.

A reception and book signing will follow her talk.

Extra Credit: Art Gallery exhibit

Now open at the Moreau Art Galleries in the Moreau Center for the Arts:

“Talking in Place”…a solo exhibition by Tia Factor in Sister Rosaire Gallery. Featuring works on paper that function as imagined cartographies of landscape and architecture.

Exhibitions run from August 24-September 25, 2009. Join us for the Artist’s Reception on Friday, September 11 from 5-7pm!

"How to write a good comment" from Grammar Girl

Since many of you may choose to attend an "extra credit" event (like the film screening on 9/21) and follow-up by commenting on the blog, I wanted to offer some suggestions and guidelines about how to post an effective, useful comment. For this task, I've outsourced to "Grammar Girl"--a website created and hosted by Mignon Fogarty to provide "short, friendly tips to improve your writing." This site is a great resource in general, but the post that I'd like to highlight is on how to write a great comment. Please take a look, and use her tips as a guide for creating the perfect comment. Her reminder to "make a point," for example, is especially important for you all. Avoid summarizing the event or merely stating an opinion. Decide what it is you'd actually like to say before you hit "comment."

Extra Credit: Film screening 9/21

"Pray the Devil Back to Hell"
Monday September 21st, 6 pm
Vander Vennet Theater, Student Center
Professor Edith Miguda from the History Department will introduce the film and lead a discussion following the screening.

Synopsis:
Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the gripping account of a group of brave and visionary women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn to shreds by a decades-old civil war. The women's historic yet unsung achievement finds voice in a narrative that intersperses contemporary interviews, archival images, and scenes of present-day Liberia together to recount the experiences and memories of the women who were instrumental in bringing lasting peace to their country. A Film by Abigail E. Disney and Gini Reticker (USA, 2008, 72 minutes)

www.PraytheDevilBacktoHell.com

This event is sponsored by CWIL, Justice Education, Campus Ministry, and Intercultural Studies.

Required Film Viewing

There will be two viewings for Girl, Interrupted before our discussion on Thursday (9/16).

1. Sunday (9/13) from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Vander Vennett Theater (downstairs in Student Center).
   
2. Monday (9/14) from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Vander Vennett Theater (downstairs in Student Center).
   

Reading Questions - A Room of One's Own

Use the following questions as (optional) guides for reading and reflecting on A Room of One's Own.

Chapters 1-2:

• Is this a work of nonfiction or fiction? (16)
• Why does Woolf say that her text can be written by anyone....any "Mary"?
• What does the narrator discover in the various places she visits: the lawn at "Oxbridge," the dining facilities, the British Museum?
  
• What is the take-away message at the end of Chapter 2? What must women have in order to write?

Chapters 3-4:

• Who is Judith Shakespeare, and why is she so significant to Woolf's argument?
• What do you learn about the history of women writers in Chapters 3 and 4?
• What does Woolf seem to suggest about the importance of rooms? What sorts of rooms does she discuss?
• At the conclusion of Chapter 3, Woolf addresses the college women in her "audience," remarking that they have "got [them]selves to college and enjoy sitting rooms--or is it bed-sitting rooms--of [their] own" (56). As women in college, what are your reactions to Woolf's ideas about the importance of having rooms of your own? What are your own relationships to your dorm rooms, bedrooms, or campus study rooms? What effect do these spaces have on your mind?
  

Slow looking...the new close reading

Given our conversation last class about close reading, I thought you'd enjoy this recent article from The New York Times about how we "look" at art. The author calls it "slow looking" -- a perfect comparison to what we have to do every time we read.

To blog or not to blog?

A blog (short for web-log) has many functions...and faces. We'll be discussing its definition in class on Monday, but there are two main benefits of using blogs -- particularly in classroom settings:
1. They are user friendly (no need to know programming languages).
2. Blogs encourage and support user interaction through the commenting feature--something you'll be using a lot in this class.

For class on Monday, I'd like you to do a little blog surfing on the internet. Using the links below, you'll notice blogs come in a variety of forms. There are personal blogs, professional blogs, community blogs, political blogs and educational blogs that range from musings on fashion to travels abroad to who should be the next president. Come to class ready to discuss features you feel are essential to what makes a blog different from a regular webpage, a chat room, a discussion board, Blackboard or even something like MySpace or Facebook.

To begin, you might want to check out the definition offered by Wikipedia (we'll be talking more about wikis later in the term). Also useful is an article, "What We're Doing When We Blog," written by blogger co-creator, Meg Hourihan. If you'd like to check out some sample blogs, try looking through the blogs listed on BloggerBuzz (see "blogs of note" on the right hand side) or on a site called technorati that keeps a list of the top 100 blogs. Also check out Google's blog search to find more that interest you.

Enjoy!

Welcome!

This is the Lives & Times blog for the Fall 2009 semester. Here you can find announcements about class and links to online resources. Occasionally, you'll be asked to read articles and sites online, and these will be linked from here.