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Blog Posting Instructions
Throughout the term you will post blog entries on the dates indicated on the syllabus. You must also comment on at least one of your peers’ blog postings within 48 hours of their due dates. Our blog will be limited to members of our class and not available to the public. The instructor will provide an assignment for the postings indicated on the syllabus, but you are also welcome to post and comment whenever you feel inspired to do so.
Your blog entries must be at least 250 words and analyze quotations from the text as well as an image, sound, or video clip that you will include or indicate with a link.
Blog postings provide an opportunity to shed light on the contexts that inform the texts we will read. You should build from the topics we have addressed in class and in our projects, taking the readings a step further and posing questions for your classmates to consider. The blog is also a place where you can receive feedback as you develop your projects.
You must use MLA citation format to acknowledge the sources to which you refer or the images or media you incorporate in your posting.
The four required blog entries and comments count as part of your participation grade for the course.
Blog postings are due at least 30 minutes before class. To be counted as one of your four required comments, a comment must be posted within 24 hours of a blog's due date. You can post additional comments at any time.
For MLA style see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
For quoting practices see: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/01/
and https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/
For avoiding plagiarism see: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/930/10/
Blog Rubric
The instructor will evaluate your blog postings using the five point rubric above, ranging from 0 (no credit) to 4 (exceptional). Grades will be posted on Blackboard. Rubric adapted from http://www.samplereality.com/2009/08/14/pedagogy-and-the-class-blog/
Blog Posting 1: To the Lighthouse
Due at least 30 minutes before class on 9/27
Virginia Woolf had her father’s photograph album with her while writing To the Lighthouse. This photograph album, now housed at Smith College, has been digitized and is available here. These images may have inspired Woolf's artistic choices. But elements of the creative process are also unknown to the author and readers can draw connections that only they can see.
Your blog posting assert an argument that you will support by analyzing at least one photograph alongside at least one quotation from To the Lighthouse. You can save the image using a screen shot and include it in your blog posting. You can also consult and cite the caption that goes with the image. Browsing through the photographs, consider aspects that remind you of the novel. You might address a particular moment in the novel or a character. Other ideas to consider include Woolf’s creative process, memory, the idea of creating art based on life, photography, the relationship between photography and memory, and the differences (and similarities) between images in the photographs and images in the novel.
You must cite Mark Hussey’s introduction from his edition of To the Lighthouse. You can either quote from or refer to the introduction or the notes using your own words and citing the page number in parentheses.
If you use a Kindle edition, cite the Kindle location, which you can find this by cutting and pasting a passage from Kindle.
Your blog posting must be at least 250 words and is due at least 30 minutes before class on Friday.
You must include a list of works cited at the end of your blog posting acknowledging all sources you have consulted, including webpages. You must use your own words and cite all sources appropriately in all of your work this term.
Blog Posting 2: Binti
Due at least 30 minutes before class on 10/16
Nnedi Okorafor's novel Binti is about a college student in space. How could this be relevant to us here in Old Westbury? This is your task for the second blog posting. Use one of the templates from They Say/I Say to assert an argument about what Binti can teach college students in 2017. Some questions you might consider (you are not required to address them all): What does this science fiction world say about our own? What role does technology play in its world and ours? What is the role of STEM or STEAM education in the novel and what is its relevance to current students? How might you adapt this novel for a different medium? You can address these aspects as they relate to your argument. Select a narrow focus that you can address in 250 words. You must analyze at least two quotations from the novel. Your posting must also analyze at least one image related to a topic, concept, or product that you discuss. Make sure to cite the source of your image.
Remember to use correct MLA format for in-text citations and list of works cited acknowledging all sources you have consulted, including Binti.
Your blog posting will be at least 250 words and is due at least 30 minutes before class. Remember to cite all sources you consult using correct MLA format.
Blog Posting 3: Persepolis
Due at least thirty minutes before class on 11/8
In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi adopts the graphic form to narrate the protagonist's development, living a life of art herself. Your third posting will use the templates from They Say/ I Say to assert a thesis interpreting the significance of at least one frame in the memoir. You will include an image of this frame in your posting. Drawing on the tools for interpreting visual rhetoric in Understanding Rhetoric, address what your frame or frames communicate. Topics you might consider (you are not required to address all or any) include, the way the drawing communicates emotion, the relationship between the words and images, the ways that the frame's meaning would differ in a different medium, and what it teaches us about the genre of the graphic narrative. As you consider the relationship of your frame to the book as a whole, analyze at least two quotations from Persepolis.
Your blog posting will be at least 250 words. Remember to cite all sources you consult using correct MLA format. Also remember that MLA style does not include commas in parenthetical citations. You can also check the “Formatting Quotations” guide here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/
Blog Posting 4: Exhibition Planning: Women, Technology, and Art
Due at least 30 minutes before class on 11/15
For our final project this term, each student will contribute an artifact to our exhibition and compose an article about it for our catalogue. The exhibition will have a theme that we will decide and your artifacts will respond to this theme as you interpret the texts we have read this term. In preparation for this task, you will make an argument about Women, Technology, and Art, analyzing two quotations from at least one text we read, using the templates in They Say/I Say. For this posting, you cannot repeat the content of your previous postings, but you can continue along similar lines. Your posting should address the ways that you would like to contribute to the exhibition.
Your posting will respond to the following questions. Use paragraphs rather than responding in a list.
1. What kind of artifact will you design? Print or digital? A physical artifact or a video or recording?
2. How will your artifact relate to our theme and other artifacts by your classmates?
3. How is your artifact significant in relation to the text you address and topics we have discussed this term? How does it respond to the topic of Women, Technology, and Art. Analyze at least two quotations from at least one text we read to support and develop your response.
4. What areas would you like to research further in your catalogue article? Film and performance? Science fiction? How a particular author's work has been interpreted? A combination of these ideas? Begin to collect sources and think about the argument you will make and the relationship of your artifact to it.
Your blog posting will be at least 250 words.
Blog Posting: MoMA: Extra Credit
For extra credit, you can visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
How do we contemplate the significance of an original painting when we can see images of it in books or online? In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), Walter Benjamin asked a similar question at a time when photography and film were increasing in prominence. In your blog postings, consider Benjamin’s theories in relation to the paintings that you see. Benjamin, for instance, argues that the “aura” of an original work of art includes the ways that the original object changes: “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art” (221). How does seeing the original alter your sense of more widely available digital images of it? How do you understand well-known images differently after seeing less familiar original paintings? Benjamin observes that “in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced” (221).
In your blog posting, select one painting to address in depth and, if possible, include an image of it (it may be one that you locate online). Take note of the exhibition caption addressing the painting, write it down and analyze its contents in your posting. You should also analyze the display of your painting and its relation to the exhibition as a whole. In addition, consider such aspects as the overall design of the exhibition, organization of space, elements of mood and tone, order, display, size, and organization of the paintings, and the presence and behavior of other viewers. Does the exhibition have a sense of narrative? Are the paintings organized chronologically or thematically? Are there many paintings on each wall, or do some walls feature fewer or a single painting? What is the impact of these choices? What arguments does the exhibition make? What effect do these elements have on the ways that viewers make meaning? In your response you should also make a connection to at least one text or concept we have addressed this term.
Your blog posting will be at least 250 words and is due at least 30 minutes before class. Remember to cite all sources you consult using correct MLA format.
Work Cited
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Print.