Our First Class & Next Week

Have we answered everybody's questions about course texts, in-class writing and requirements for the papers?

Great meeting all of you and I look forward to a love/hate relationship with you as a group...just kidding...glad we got off to smart start.

For next week:  Visit the Pace computer lab for your printing needs.  You'll need to bring copies of the George Orwell's essay "Politics & the English Language" and James Baldwin's short story "Going to Meet the Man."  We will have separate discussion on each of these texts but connect them with our course theme and talk about how they represent core issues for our work together.

The Orwell essay - considered a classic - will give us the basis for talking about government involvement in creating political fictions as well as the abuse of language.  Has anybody else noticed this trend:  "patients" and "customers" are often replaced by the term "clients"?  Embedded in such shifts in language is a demand the we also shift perspective and roles in the transaction (between doctor/patient or seller/customer).

The Baldwin story will go a long way in explaining how a person can grow up surrounded by political fictions - the air he breathes - and let it go unquestioned, unchallenged and then face unpredictabel consequences for participating in the fiction.  In this case, a white police officer in the South is forced to confront his racist upbringing and its deeply personal impact on his ability to...make love?

Next week we will also be much more specific about the topic for Paper 1.  The general topic is "the personal IS political."  Write about ways that power is used - positive or negative - to aid or hurt individuals who seem to be powerless to change the situation because the control over it is so powerful (the political). 

You will be asked to make a choice of the following:
1.  Write an autobiographical paper in which you identify a a personal political fiction. It can be in your own family or in  a friend's family (so you are a witness or a bystander).
2.  Write a paper in which you identify a political fiction (there are many) in the Baldwin story.  Describe the situation, how it is a political fiction, what has caused it to become a reality, who or what is impacted, what has been the response (if any) and what ahs been the outcome.

Take a moment, too, to read what I have at the top of the blog in the Welcome message for more on a definition of political fictions.  I believe this is an engaging approach to an English class and I hope you are able to find something in the course materials that keeps you interested!