What the Literature Tells Us About Us

You have been thinking about identity in America this week quite a bit.  How do you feel the literature we read, the essays, stories, and poetry will help you to define what "identity" even is in America today?

Identity in America

Yesterday in class you all wrote how you would define your own identity.  What kinds of criteria did you use?  Do you use age, gender, religion, race, ethnic background, hair color?  What kinds of criteria do we tend to use when we "identify" others--and do we honestly think others use that criteria when they "identify" us?

What sources are you using?

Now that some of you have established what aspect of the American Dream you will explore in your essays, you should discuss what sources (besides  the literature) you plan to use.  Tell each other how you found each source and how you intend to use it in your essay to support your thesis.

What is it exactly, the American Dream?

What particular issue or aspect of the American Dream are you planning to explore in your essay? Try to be as specific as you can here--as you prepare for invention on Tuesday.  Will you look at how the dream is alive? Is a nightmare? Is possible? Is based on income? race? gender?  This list is not exhaustive but is meant to get you started.

The American Dream and Social Inequality

Use specific examples from the essays and stories we discussed this week in class to show how social inequality (based on income, gender, and/or race) influences how the American Dream is defined and achieved.  You can even speculate on whether or not you think the idea of the American Dream still exists.

We started this in the discussions in DIWE, but now you can further develop your ideas--especially about the essays or stories that we didn't have enough time to discuss fully.

Take the Week Off

We will begin this discussion again with a prompt on March 27. Have a nice--and safe--Spring Break.

Crime and Deviance in America

Irrespective of some form of absoluteness, the idea of crime and deviance is spatiotemporal—they differ from  time to time, from one social context to the other. The idea of the American Dream can be very important in understanding the social construction of crime and the associated consequences.

American dreams aspire individuals toward hard work and success. Does the concept of the American dream have the same meaning for everybody? How could the idea of American dream lead to the adaptation of deviant routes toward realization of one’s dreams?

Being Men, Being Women

Very nice discussion. I hope you can see how it works. I am posting early this week. Your first response is due by 10:50 on Tuesday, March 3.

Okay, this next week you will be working on writing drafts of your short story analysis. Which of the stories that we read for this week seem to be the most revealing about any aspect about what it means to be a man or a woman in our society? What kinds of ideas does the story present? Do you agree or disagree with those ideas?

Truth and Fiction

Yesterday in class we discussed the definition of fiction--stories that originate in the imaginations of the author. Now, I said that just because fiction isn't real doesn't mean it isn't true.

What do you think of that? Do you agree? Why? Do you disagree? Why?

Journey Through Life's Course

Now that you are drafting your poetry explications, can you think of how your poem describes a journey through life's course? You can, of course, use this as part of your explication. All the poems are in the chapter entitled "Journeys," so they all describe some kind of a journey. Discuss both the literal and the figurative journey, if you see both.

I apologize for the late post.

This week we will all be embarking on a new form of jorney--a cultural journey. A cultural journey could be tied to a specific time and space. However it could also have a universal appeal. Some of the readings from this week in English dicusses some timeless journeys including ""Ulysses", "A far cry from Africa".
Think about "Cultural Universals"-practices, beliefs, emotions and ideas that transcend the boundaries of a specific time and locale. What could be one such Cultural Universal? Why do you think all people, and all cultures would follow it? ( e.g. Literature is endemic to all societies, and is thus a cultural universal. When literature becomes popular it is immortalized through translated works. Thus Homer could be a Greek poet, but we all know about the Odyssey)

Quantitative and Qualitative Research

How do you understand the difference between quantitative and qualitative research in Sociology? What application do you think those ideas share with the kind of research you need to do when writing an essay for English class?

Sociological Imagination

In Sociology, you talked about the idea of the Sociological Imagination, connecting the personal to the political. Let's expand that discussion to include the connecting of the personal to the cultural or the societal. How do you see the sociological imagination at work in the stories we read this week?