Week Eight: Defining the Writer's Position and the Situation of the Text

Karen Russell from the MacArthur Foundation Awards Site

Last week we worked toward understanding how the position of the reader effects the reading of the text. To underscore that concept, the Fifth Writing Assignment is described below.  Please complete the writing by next week and post it as an entry on your blog. (See revised course requirement below about student blogs).

Reading Assignment for Week Eight: Please read Sleep Donation, a short novella by Karen Russell. Please try to have it read before coming to class. There will be additional in-class reading next week.

Preview: Karen Russell (Wikipedia Entry) has emerged as a prominent writer of the millennial generation.  She has been the recipient of a number of awards including the MacArthur Fellowship. You can go to her Amazon page and read some of the mediated and unmediated comments, the reviews on this page are generally intelligently written by readers who are interested in reading good writing, they can be generally helpful to preview the work we are reading (Her Amazon Page). Popular writers attract a lot of empty discourse and self-important flatulence in their Amazon reviews, but literary writers tend to get a high percentage of thoughtful responses. This can be a good place to enter the conversation you will be carrying on in your own blog.

Here is a link to an interview in which she talks about How She Writes.

Required Film: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2013) dir. Wes Anderson,

Fifth Writing Assignment: Write a blog post that discusses how your situation, your personal position, affected your reading of The Dewbreaker by Edwidge Danticat. You should have at least read the first story in this novel made of short stories. One way you might define your position on the story is to consider what you don't relate to or what elements of the story are not similar to your life or experience. In other words, contrast your situation with that of the story instead of compare.

Revised Course Requirement: As we discussed in class last week, I am suspending the regular use of Canvas as the course interface. Instead I am asking you to create a blog on Blogger or similar network and use your blog to post your writings and comments for the remainder of the course. As soon as you have created your blog and posted something on it, send me the URL so I can add it to the blog list for the class on this page. Please do this before our next class meeting. Bring you laptop or table to class please.