Class of 2011 – Written Test

Hi everybody!

As we decided in class last week, your written test will be taken online, here in this blog. Your task is to comment on four of the short stories studied throughout Unit I of our course, namely:

• A Rose for Emily;
• To Room Nineteen;
• I Sing the Body Electric!;
• First Love, Last Rites or another short story of your choice, studied in Unit I.

To post your comment, click on the title of each short story above, and you will be directed to the corresponding post.

You must produce one or two well-written paragraphs – introduction, development and conclusion – answering the question that is proposed on the text of the post. You may also, of course, interact with your classmates and / or with the previous students who used this blog. Each post is worth 2.5 points, and remember you may comment as many times as you wish.

Your deadline is June 05th.

Good luck to you all!!!

Oral Presentations

Our oral presentations are going to begin at the end of May, as scheduled. These are the groups I have received so far:

May 24th – Kazuo Ishiguro: “A Family Supper” – Group #1: Adriana, Cristina e Luciana Aragão

May 26th – Salman Rushdie: “The Prophet’s Hair” – Group #2: Anita, Mariana & Nathalia Pacheco

June 02nd – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: “The English Woman” – Group #3: Ana Paula, Marcus & Sandra

June 07th – Nadine Gordimer: “Which New Era Would that Be?” – Group #4: André, Bruna & Luciana Rangel

June 09th – Sherman Alexie: “The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven” – Group #5: Caroline & Cláudia

June 14th – Rudolfo Anaya: “The apple orchard” – Group #6: Evelyn, Francisco & Pedro

June 16th – Sandra Cisneros: “Bien Pretty” – Group #7: Fabiana, Nani & Nathalia Viana

June 21st – Alice Walker: “Everyday Use“ – Group #8: Ana Beatriz, Nino & Rômulo

June 23rd – Maxine Hong Kingston; “No name woman” – Group #9: Fernanda, Jorge & Marina

Please check if your groups are correct, Ok? If you’re not part of any group, you can either create your own group or join a pair!

A reminder to some of you: participation in the blog does not cover for absences in class!!! Some of you are already in an extremely difficult situation, as you are required to be present in 75% of the classes.  This week I’ll work on an attendance chart and I’ll let you know by Monday exactly where you stand.

Welcome, class of 2010!!!

Class of 2010,

Welcome to “Contos & Encontros”!!!

This blog will be part of our new routine for the next term. We will work on a project I started developing in 2008, when I used the blog to teach the same course you are going to take now.  Back then, as I was at UC Riverside  doing research for my PhD, the course was almost entirely virtual – now, we are going to use the material produced then and stored here, but we are also going to profit from the benefits of our face to face encounters twice a week…

Here you will find all the information you need to prepare for our classes – from the course syllabus to reading requirements and tests you will eventually have to take, including links to some of the short stories available online. Your main obligation throughout this term will be, of course, to read all the short stories as well as the theoretical and critical texts assigned in the course syllabus below. You are also required to participate in our virtual discussions and debates – I expect each one of you to post at least one comment whenever an activity is proposed. Of course you are free to carry on chatting… 8)

The official language here is English; however, in the virtual classroom as well as in the real classroom, sometimes we let our mother language slip in. That’s Ok, I myself will use Portuguese whenever it’s necessary… As most of you know, it is part of my personal beliefs to stimulate you to have fun while you study. You can start enjoying yourselves by consulting WordPress’ list of smilies… (As part of the fun, if any of you have your personal blogs and would like to have them linked in our blogroll, just send me the links!)

There will be two other people helping me out here in the backstage. One of them is your former LNA professor, Vanessa, who will take the practical credits required by her PhD course here with us. The other one is still incognito – in fact, the position is open to any of you who have already taken Matrizes LNA / LIN. You just have to sign up for the “Monitoria” test, study hard, do a great test and be #1…

Let’s start working then – our course syllabus is posted here for your reference throughout the term. If I need to make any changes, they will be posted in a new entry, and then updated here. All the material will be available next week at the copy center (5th floor, bldg. C).

COURSE SYLLABUS

Title: The short story in the English-speaking world, from Modernism to the present days

Unit I – 20th century short story in Britain & the U.S. – the canon

MARCH

08th – General orientation;

10th – Text for discussion: “Review of Twice Told Tales”, by Edgar Allan Poe;

15th – Text for discussion: “The Lonely Voice”, by Frank O’Connor;

17th – Virginia Woolf: “The Legacy”;

22nd – James Joyce: “A Painful Case”;

24th – Katherine Mansfield: “Bliss”;

29th – F.Scott Fitzgerald: “Bernice bobs her hair”;

31st – Ernest Hemingway: “Hills like white elephants”;

APRIL

05th – William Faulkner: “A Rose for Emily”;

* Required reading: “The Grotesque: an American Genre” – William van O’Connor

* Suggested reading: “O Velho Sul” – Edward Ranson & Andrew Hook

07th – No class (due to the strong rains);

12th – Flannery O’Connor: “Good Country People”;

14th – Truman Capote: “Miriam”;

19th – No class (canceled by the teacher);

21st – Holiday; no class;

26th – Doris Lessing: “To room nineteen”;

28th – Angela Carter: “The Bloody Chamber” (Previous reading required: “Blue Beard”, by Charles Perrault);

MAY

03rd – J.D. Salinger: “Pretty mouth and green my eyes”;

Note: John Cheever’s “The Cure” will be discussed in Sonia’s course, and must be commented in the blog afterwards;

05th – Ray Bradbury: “I sing the body electric!”;

10th – Kurt Vonnegut: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”;

12th – Raymond Carver: “A Small, Good Thing”;

*Required reading: “The Stories of Raymond Carver: The Menace of Perpetual Uncertainty”, by Jon Powell;  “Breaking the Ties That Bind: Inarticulation in the Fiction of Raymond Carver”, by Michael WM. Gearhart;

*Recommended film: “Short Cuts”, based on Carver’s short stories (dir. Robert ALTMAN)

17th – Ian McEwan: “First love, last rites”;

19th – Fay Weldon – “Weekend” + James Thurber: “Nine needles”;

Assignment for Unit 1: To be decided – probably an in-class test (valid for both this course and “Ficção & Poesia”) to take place by the end of May.

Unit II – 20th century short story in the English-speaking world – other voices

24th – Kazuo Ishiguro: “A Family Supper”;

26th – Salman Rushdie: “The Prophet’s Hair”;

31st – Jamaica Kincaid: “Girl”; Chinua Achebe: “Dead man’s path”;

* Required reading: “Empire, geography and culture” & “Images of the past”, by Edward Said

JUNE

02nd – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: “The English Woman”;

07th – Nadine Gordimer: “Which New Era Would that Be?”;

09th – Sherman Alexie: “The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven”;

14th – Rudolfo Anaya: “The apple orchard”;

16th – Sandra Cisneros: “Bien Pretty”;

21st – Alice Walker: “Everyday Use“;

23rd – Maxine Hong Kingston; “No name woman”;

Note: Bernard Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” will be discussed in Sonia’s course, and must be commented in the blog afterwards;

Assignment for Unit 2: Group presentations + class discussions of the short stories in this unit.

Final results

Dear students,

this will probably be the last post in our course! First of all, I’d like to say that I think this was a very enriching experience – and a pleasant one! Hope you share my feelings…

My criteria for evaluating you were:

1. Blog – As I stated in the very first post of this course, all students were required to post at least one comment for each short story. There were 31 activities total, and I decided to disconsider one, so as to have an easier number to deal with. Your initial grade was then given according to quantity. However, some students who did not comment all the activities presented very good quality comments on the posts in which they actually participated. I rounded up these students’ grades, as a bonus for the quality of their work. Note that I didn’t bring the grades up a lot, especially to be fair to those students who participated in all the activities without losing the quality of their comments. Also, note that I never brought any grades down for lack of quality in the comments – or for agreeing with a former comment, as long as this position was justified in the comment. On the other hand, I disregarded those comments which consisted simply of “I have nothing to say” or “I agree with everybody”.

2 – Study notes – I have read all your study notes and graded them in terms of relevance of the topics chosen and clarity of ideas. I did not give any low grades to your notes – those who got a low average are totally responsible for that, as it means they haven’t delivered one or more assignments. (Note, however, that I have only read your notes, not revised them, and that’s why I’m not sending the files back to you. If any of you, by any chance, does not have a file and would like to have it, please let me know).

3 – Final paper – Congratulations on your choice of themes! I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how creative some of your choices were! In some minutes you’ll receive your papers by email.

Have a very nice vacation, all of you!!!

Last call!!!

Dear students,

I have just received an email saying that the deadline for delivering the final grades has been changed to July 15th. I have already finished evaluating your participation in the blog and your assignments, and am halfway through the correction of your final papers.

As I will have this extra weekend, I have decided to give a final chance to the students who haven’t delivered all the study notes. Note that failure to deliver one of these assignments brings your grade down considerably – let alone not delivering two or even all of them. Some of the students listed below have had very little participation in the blog and are at risk of failing the course if they don’t deliver the missing assignments. (Of course, late comers won’t have the same grade they probably would if they had delivered the assignments on time, but it may make a difference between a failing and a passing grade – don’t waste the chance!)

1. Anderson Petrucelli – Assignment #3;

2. Anderson Elias – Assignment #1;

3. Bárbara – Assignment #2;

4. Danyelle – Assignments #2 and 3 (Dany, I got your email and asked you to resend everything - I haven’t received your final paper either…)

5. Diana – Asignments # 1 and 3;

6. Érica – Assignment #2;

7. Maria Fernanda – Assignments #2 and 3;

8. Renata – Assignment #3;

9. Simone – Assignments #1, 2 and 3;

I will send a general email to the class about this post, but I know not all of you check your emails every day. So, please, whoever sees this post, call your friends and let them know about this final chance! And those of you listed above, don’t waste this opportunity – remember, there’s no “V.S.” to students who don’t do the required assignments.

Comments for this post are open without moderation, so feel free to ask any questions!

Update: I forgot to say that the deadline for sending these late assignments is Monday, July 14th!

The magic barrel

We finally come to our last short story in the course… You’re going to miss it all, you’ll see!

The first step to take here is to consult one or two sites about Bernard Malamud, the author of “The magic barrel”:

- The Unofficial Bernard Malamud Homepage;

- Encyclopedia Britannica Online

It is also a good idea to read something about the Jewish tradition of matchmaking, so that you understand the context of the short story better…

And you are free to make your final comments!

No name woman

The short story we are going to discuss today is a short story, of course, but it is also a chapter of a novel, Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese-American writer from California.

There are some sites you can consult to learn more about this author:

- Voices;

- Maxine Hong Kingston;

- Time Magazine: 60 Years of Asian Heroes;

- Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire.

You are free to make your comments!!!

Last day of class

Hi everybody!

I will try to post the two final activities today, so you will have the whole content of the blog almost one week in advance, Ok?

Also, I have decided to postpone closing the blog – instead of closing it on June 30th, I will leave it open until July 1st. If you read between the lines (and I hope you’re getting really great at this!) you will understand that I wouldn’t want anybody to miss our last meeting (on the 30th, at 6 p.m. – don’t forget!) because of the blog…

See you Monday!

Everyday Use

All right, before anyone thinks he/she or his/her computer is going nuts, I’m already telling you that this post was supposed to be published on Monday only – but I’m in a hurry to wrap things up around here so I can stop worrying about the blog, Ok? You don’t have to comment in advance – but if you want to, that’s fine with me…

The first step to understanding what this short story is about is reading about the Civil Rights Movement, which you can do here.

You can also read a bit about the author, Alice Walker, ( here, here and here ) …

… who also wrote The Color Purple, adapted to the movies by Steven Spielberg in 1986, featuring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey – seen it?

You’re still free to make your comments, but I would like you to pay close attention to the quilt and its significance. What does it symbolize?

Bien Pretty

In relation to Sandra Cisneros’ “Bien Pretty”, your first step must be to learn about Spanglish, the language that is a mixture of Spanish and English. You can read a bit about it – and even listen to some examples – here.

You can also visit the author’s official website, by clicking here.

Cisneros’ most sucessful novel is The House on Mango Street, which is available at the library, for those who would like to know her works better.

Even though this post is being published a little bit in advance, I’ll go on letting you free to make your comments without guiding lines – probably till the end of the term…