Class Summary: 3/2/10

Class opened with a discussion about how we felt our papers and the public comments Anne left for us.  When asked, Anne admitted that it was a different commenting style for her because she wasn't changing the grammar and style of every single sentence.  Instead, she spent more time on the ideas presented in the papers.  Though the class was largely silent, those who did speak up seemed to prefer the online comments to handwritten comments.  However, there was some dissent from students seeking more assistance with improving their writing, not just their ability to make an argument.

Our goal during class today was to narrow down our 18 proposals for the next 6 weeks to a mere 6 proposals.  We divided into groups of 3 to discuss the proposals and come up with only one option for our individual group.  When we reconvened, it became apparent that the primary goal was to cover as many types of literature as possible, with the most popular being novels, graphic novels, and movies.  Most of the class seemed to agree that it would be most interesting to focus on a single theme that was addressed in all three types of literature.  The suggestions included identity, villainy, mysteries, satire/parody, and (obviously) 2 others that hopefully aseidman will remember since I've forgotten entirely.

One of the issues we realized we were having is that we all wanted to provide suggestions of things we could read.  Unfortunately, we were all trying to come up with new works that we hadn't read, but since we hadn't read them, we couldn't think of them.  It was quite the conundrum.  As a result, though, our homework for Thursday includes us making specific suggestions of works to read in regards to everyone's themes.