Week 11 Journal Prompts (Mar. 28 - Apr.1)

What are you considering as your primary text for Essay 3? What is this text about? What appeals to you in this text? Where are places you might focus? What are issues you think you might focus on? Which of the authors that we've read in class seem to speak to your text the most?

OR

Take the attached BuzzFeed-Style Theory Quiz. What theory did you get? Does the description of this theoretical style seem to mesh with what you value in a text? Why or why not? Who that we've read so far in class seems to mesh most with your theoretical style? In what ways?

To use your new-found theoretical framework in your searches, consider checking out the following flowcharts:

Theory & Theorist Flowcharts for Philosophy, Religion, Formalism, Reader Response, Narratology, Historicism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Gender & Queer Theory,

Theory & Theorist Flowcharts for Critical Race, Cognitive, Marxist, Postcolonial, Game Studies, Performance, Disability, Posthumanism

Week 10 Journal Prompts (Mar. 21-26)

Catron notes 36 questions you can ask to “fall in love” (really, build a closer connection) with another person.   Click the link above and go through the activity with a buddy (friend, relative, significant other, etc.) and reflect on that experience: what surprised you about this activity? How does your experience mesh with or differ from Catron’s?  Do you feel differently about that person? In what ways?

OR

Choose one of the music videos we did not get to talk about in class today. Answer one of the following question-strands:
1. How the video uses narrative? What narrative is being constructed, in what ways?
2. What role does gender play in our reception of this video? How are masculine or feminine expectations/behaviors communicated? What are these expectations? What assumptions does the video engage or destabilize with regards to gender?
3. What are some of the ways this video exposes some of the potential problems (either implicit or explicit) in romance narratives?

Nobody Needs to Know (Last 5 Years, on Netflix), Try, Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup, Stuck Like Glue, The One That Got Away, Gaston, Expectations vs. Reality (500 Days of Summer)

Week 9 Journal Prompts (Mar. 7-12)

Unit 3 is mainly focused around preparing for and writing your final paper, because of that I haven’t asked you to read much outside of class. This gives us a lot of flexibility in Unit 3: What are some things we haven’t covered yet you’d like to get to? What are some topics within the soulmate genre you’d like to consider more in depth? What are some objects of analysis you’d like to suggest?

OR

Outline your Essay 2.

Week 8 Journal Prompts (Feb. 29-Mar. 4)

Respond to the end of Atonement. Is a soulmate narrative the best medium for Briony’s atonement? Has Briony atoned? Why or why not? How does the conclusion’s revelation change how we read the previous chapters?

OR

Use one of our secondary texts as a lens to read the final chapter of Atonement. What does this lens draw attention to? What aspects of this conclusion does it best illuminate?