Assignment Links for Weeks Six and Seven Are Now Active.

I have activated the links for weeks six and seven, and I've combined and shortened the assignments for these weeks.  Sorry for getting them activated late, but I've been diagnosed with a kidney infection which had me unable to access a computer before today.  Flat on my back and in great pain was the last way I expected to spend my week when I headed out for the Triad last Friday and a family wedding.

I hope you've spent the few extra days getting caught up or just taking a breather.  Over the next week and a half, you'll be reading a slave narrative by Harriot Jacobs, which will give you a first hand account of life as a slave in North Carolina.  With Jacobs, we'll begin a shift in our study of Romanticism from what Romanticism was and how to characterize its literature to how Romanticism worked in society and changed what it meant to be an American.  As you will find out later in the course, our society began with an odd combination of Protestant and Rationalist roots.  As a society, we believed that all shared equal rights, but as rationalist, we tended to believe that those who didn't rise to the top of society full of opportunities and equality were lazy or worse.  As a society, we had to learn to care for and about others.  Romanticism played a large role in giving us a philosophical and social basis for caring for others less fortunate than ourselves.

As you read Jacobs, remind yourself of what you have learned about Romanticism.  It emphasizes the viewpoint of the individual.  It tends to value feeling over cold rationality.  It seeks high emotion.  Think how these traits play out in Jacobs, and think how a Romantic audience or an audience trained to read as a Romantic would react to Jacobs and the pathos, that is, the emotional argument, she constructs.

Now think how essential it is to get someone to feel if you want them to act.  Understand this interplay between feeling, feeling for others, and feeling enough to act, and you'll begin to understand how important Romanticism and its literature was to our own American character.

Steve

No office hours Monday 27 Sept.

Saturday night, I began developing a dull pain around my kidneys or in my lower back.  I'm not completely sure what is going on, but movement is no worse one way than another, so I'm betting it's not my back.  It got much worst during the drive back from the Triad Sunday, and I plan a doctor's visit today see if there is anything he can do to help.  At present, getting up and around is painful and just laying around is no joy; so, you should expect:

1)  I'll not be holding office hours today; and,

2) Weekly assignments may be a day or two late being posted.

Steve

No office hours Monday 20 Sept.

Don't worry.  I'm just taking a day off.  We will have class this week and assignment link for the week have bee posted.  I'll also double up student office hours on Wednesday from 10:00-2:00 to make up for missing today.  

This week's reading should be demanding.  You are reading Emerson's essays, "The American Scholar" and "Self-Reliance."  You'll also be learning about Transcendentalism, an insightful philosophical and artistic movement founded, in part, by Emerson, and I have you watching a claymation version of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave."  This last should help you understand the role of the poet/philosopher in society and the relationship between Platonic Idealism and Mysticism and American Romanticism.  

Enjoy, and--as always--ask questions.  Just don't expect any answers from me on Monday 20 Sept.  I'm going to try and get rested back up from the travel and my nieces wedding.

Steve

Dr. Brandon will not be keeping office hours today, Tuesday 10/14

Dr. B. is sick and will not be in today. Contact me with questions. Assignments for the week are posted on the website.

Help with the Emerson Reading for Week Five

Help with the Emerson reading and concepts this week.

A student wrote and asked for some help with the reading and assignments for the week.  My response is below.  Reading Emerson is difficult, but it's supposed to be.  He wrote at the very boundary of where words work and can work.  I hope the following helps with some of the concepts, so you can get a better handle on this difficult reading.

Try taking a section of the one of the essays and struggling with it.  The writing can be tough.  Work on it sentence by sentence and phrase by phrase.

Emerson was a Romantic, just like Thoreau and just like Poe, but Emerson sought the Romantic sublime in different ways than did Poe.  Emerson was about finding your best self.  

Start with the assumption, which Emerson believed to be true, that almost everything we experience in the world is an illusion.  You can think here of the Christian idea that this world is less real and less important than the one for which we are preparing ourselves when we die.  Both Emerson's belief that this world is mostly illusion and the Christian idea that this world is less important than the next come from the same roots, namely, the thinking of Plato and his theory of forms.  That's the video you watched earlier in the week.  

OK, once you accept this this world is illusion, the next logical question is how to you see through the illusion to what is real and important.  Being a Romantic, Emerson thought that this came from our imaginations, intuition, and emotions--not reason, which he thought was bound up in the belief shared by most that the illusion is real.  The first major step is to learn to trust your "self" and its intuitions and subtle emotional reactions to the world around you.  Most of the time, Emerson isn't talking about intense emotion, as was Poe, he's talking about being so attuned to one's own self, one's own emotions, and one's own intuition that one can feel empathy with others and the "real" world around us.  He saw Nature as being filled with little bit's of God, just as is every person, and he thought that if we are in tune with our selves and didn't get lost living the world everyone wanted us to live, as opposed to the life we want and need to live, we'd be able to feel a resonance with Nature and other True Selves.  

His often expresses these ideas through capitals.  In the essay, "The American Scholar," for instance, Emerson says talks about "man," little "m," and "Man," capital "M."  "Man Thinking" as opposed to "man thinking."   The capital "M," Man is the true, real Man.  He thinks for his self.  He isn't influenced by others, except as that this influence resonates with his True Self.  He reads the past, but through the filter of this own Thinking Self, his True Self.  He listens to others closely and feels for and with them, but again only as these feelings and empathy resonate with his True Self.  He is at once connected to others and capable of helping them, AND he is independent or reliant only on his Self.  In necessary, he can stand alone against everyone, because his sense of Truth is dependent, not on what others think of say, but on what he knows to be True through his own experience of the Real world.  He is like that prisoner who escapes in the video.  He knows a truth which is beyond that with the other prisoners, who remained chained, can ever know, so he refuses to be bound by the illusions of the crowd; indeed, he feels for the crowd and wants to help them to see the truth, but he also feels pity for them, because their own ignorance blinds them to the very possibility of seeing the world as it really is. 

I hope this helps.  It covers a lot of territory in a short amount of time, but it helps explain a particular strain of Romanticism, one which sees the Poet/Philosopher/Self as more insightful than the crowd but no different from it other than in experience.  In this, the Self becomes a figure of nostalgia, genius, and insight, and a source for sublime insight.

As always, write back with questions.

Steve 

The link to week five assignments is now active.

Getting the most out of your reading...Slow down and share.

The current mania for reading quickly and getting only the gist of what is being said rather than trying to re-read, think about and savour is an invention of the last hundred years. It came about in the early 20th century, when psychologists realized that those who read silently scanned text more quickly than those who read out loud or sub-vocalized.  It soon became accepted practice in school to train students to read silently, while before it had been best practice to teach reading out loud.  Indeed, the McGruffy reader was an oral reader.  

Throughout much of the 20th century, good reading has been equated with fast reading, and it wasn't until scholars went back and began reading diaries and trying to recover the reading practices of the world prior to the reading revolution of the early 1920s that we realized that much of the writing you are reading this semester wasn't meant to be read quickly or silently.  Indeed, our reading practice of reading silently has encouraged us to consume more and more but appreciate and enjoy less.  Think here of super-sized fast food as opposed to a good sit-down meal.  Just as there are different speeds and ways of eating, one you use when you are rushed and one use employ when you have the time to enjoy, there are different ways of reading.  The texts you are reading in most of 241 are not genre novels, school texts, or magazine articles meant to be devoured. 

Here's one trick we know went with reading in the past: Take the time to share what you enjoy, and you'll enjoy it more.  As you stumble across passages, quotes, or ideas you enjoy, share them with your committee and explain why you enjoyed them.  You are learning to articulate why you enjoy the reading your tastes led you to enjoy, and--just as a good meal is better shared--a text is more enjoyable when discussed and when you've taken the time to enjoy it with conversation.  Emerson knew this. This was why he published these lectures, so his audience could slow down and take the time to understand and discuss with others his thoughts.

Consolidated Committees and a Chance to Get Caught Up

Good morning,

I have consolidated the Committees of Correspondence and moved a few members of the class around.  You'll want to look at your new committee assignments on under the General Assembly tab, and this will affect whose blogs you read each week.  Mostly, it will make sure you have blog posts to read and learn from each week.

Another milestone in the class was reached this morning.  Namely, everyone in the class now has a blog set up for the class, so everyone can fully participate.

Finally, each semester, I build in two weeks to get caught up or get ahead.  One of these weeks is the third week of class.  Baring emergencies, the roll for the class is stabilized, and I like to give those who picked up the class during the add period a chance to get caught up with all assignments before moving on.  For those who'd like to get ahead, I'll activate the Week Four assignment link this morning.

As always, if you have any questions, let me know.