Week Seven: Influence

This week we are looking at a case study of adaptation and influence.  Please read a selection of the writings of Stefan Zweig, several examples of which you will find on the course resource page. You can try the selection Wes Anderson himself curated for publication in England, The Society of the Crossed Keys. In that collection is the novella (long, long short story) "Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman," which, if you read just one text for this week, read this one.

There is a novel and some short stories available to read as well. Read a selection and then watch Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. After you have read and watched the texts, write a blog post that discusses how Zweig's writing may have influenced Anderson's movie.  Be as specific and concrete as possible. We will discuss the issues of influence in relation to these two artists in class.

You can begin by considering what common elements you find in both texts. You should consider the range of possible elements, characters, plot ideas, story form and structure, themes, moods, mythologies, philosophies, etc., etc. 

Which of these common elements do you think constitute direct "borrowings" that Wes Anderson makes from Stefan Zweig? Are some of these elements just "accidentally" in common, for example are the specific elements you are considering present in the work of Wes Anderson before Grand Budapest Hotel and thus a coincidence of tastes or outlook as opposed to direct influence? Questions of influence can be tricky even when authors admit or even celebrate them as Wes Anderson does with Stefan Zweig.

Writing Assignment for Last Week: Using the questionaire by Junot Diaz, apply one of the worldbuilding questions to whatever you read for last week's discussion of diverse postitions. Write your response in answer to the question you chose.

Week Six: Reading from Diverse Positions

This week we are reading a series of linked short stories that all together form a novel entitled The Dewbreaker, by the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat. If you haven't time to read the entire novel you should at least try to finish about half of it. There are a number of convenient stopping places and you should read as much of it as you can, We will be discussing the novel in class with the intention of using the text to help us discuss the diverse position of texts and readers. There is no required film this week. 

As an alternative text to read for this week you might consider The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a pulitzer prize winning novel by the Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz.

If you are interested in reading short stories that are written from a different position than is typical in American fiction try these stories which you can read by following the link to their title:

Hitting Budapest  by NoViolet Bulawayo
Whites by Julie Otsuka
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by YiYun Li

One of the very important exports of Haitian culture has been its popular music. You can go to the Haitian Music Icons page which curates a short set of youtube music videos highlighting classic performances from Haitian popular music tradition. Many of these performances are developments of Compas (in Kreole, "Konpas") a variation of the merengue that is to Haiti what the Tango is to Argentina. Among my favorites on the music icons page are performances by Nemours Jean Baptiste, one of the "creators" of 20th century Compas; the orchestre Tropicana de Haiti; the Tabou Combo; John Gesner Henry (Coupe Cloue); Sweet Mickey, Michel Martelly who just stepped down as president of the country; and T-Vice. The last two are substantially influenced by their involvement with the Haitian community in Florida.

Writing Assignment: We are carrying over the writing assignment from last week and I have asked you to write your blog post for last week's stories using one of typical questions that are asked by readers who come from feminist critical positions. These questions might include the following:

Are there any female characters in the work that you identify with?
How are relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles) portrayed in the story? 
What are the power relationships between men and women in the text?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculiniity and femininity in the world of the story?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders in the story? How so? Does this change others reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the ooperations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work express or imply about the possiblities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about the history of women in literature or the arts or about women's creativity?

Use any one of these questions and apply it to one of the stories we read for last week to write this week's response.  

In Class: We will undertake to examine the following questions in relation to this week's reading:

(From the syllabus of Junot Diaz for his course in world-building for the Writing program at M.I.T.)
What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 
What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? 
What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world? 
How are our characters connected to the world? 
And how are we the viewer or reader or player connected to the world?”

In Re: to our recent discussion of Wonder Woman: You can follow the adventures of a muslim female superhero here, beginning with this episode of the web comic Quahera.

Week Five: Reading from a Critical Position

Pussy Riot by Igor Mukhin

Established positions are like towers from which one can overlook the mediascape. As a case study, we will read several short stories and see a couple of film clips and discuss them from the point of view of a specific critical position.

Reading Assignment: Before class, read at least four of the short stories selected for this week. Several are listed and linked below. These links will also appear on the course resource page.

"Lust" (1984) by Susan Minot 

"Even the Queen" by Connie Willis

"Planet of the Amazon Women" by David Moles

"The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953) by Flannery O'Connor

"Where Are You Going; Where Have You Been" (1966) by Joyce Carol Oates 

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid


Writing Assignment for last week's reading: Please write about a female hero, a heroine,  that you have designed. What are her most important qualities and characteristics? How does she manifest her power? What about her would you like women to emulate?  How would you represent the positive aspects of her character? 

Link to Feminist Frequency videos and backgrounds on Tropes vs. Women in popular culture and video games. Excellent critical work by Anita Sarkeesian.

"More than anything, I feel that this meta-discourse, talking about the talk, is part of how it feels to be a 'woman in music' (or a 'woman in anything.' for that matter--politics, business, comedy, power). There is the music itself, and then there is the ongoing dialogue about how it feels. The two seem to be intertwined and also inescapable. To this day, because I know no other way of being or feeling, I don't know what it's like to be a woman in a bank--I have nothing else to compare it to. But I will say that I doubt in the history of rock journalism and writing any man has been asked, "Why are you in an all-male band?"
--Carrie Brownstein from Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

An important source in third wave feminism and its impact on the contemporary feminist practice of groups like Pussy Riot is the Riot Grrrl communities of the 1990s and their successors. Many of the significant firgures in these communities are still active. One aspect of the work of these activist artists is they way they move across various media, seemingly fearlessly but at least with considerable tenaciousness and not infrequently with considerable effect. Here are some links:

Don't Need You The Herstory of Riot Grrl
Excerpt from Grrl (2013) documentary
Bikini Kill "Suck My Left One" and "Rebel Girl" (1992)
Bikini Kill Washington DC 1992

Molly Crabapple with "Shell Gane" her Tryptych

Pussy Hat Project Link