Telling Histories    

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Mon

4/9

1. Introductions; syllabus; Orientation.
2. Why will we read works related to the Holocaust?
3. Icons
4. History's and Victims and Victimizers
5. ASKING QUESTIONS
6. Write brief Diagnostic Essay

Wed

4/11

1. Buy ALL textbooks
2. Maus I pp 1-15
3. CW 1 (Note that "CW" stands for "The College Writer" and the number refers to the particular chapter in the book. )
4. By the end of the week, get set up to start blogging.  Here is the link.

Week 2

Maus, Genre, Representation, and the Telling of History

Mon

4/16

1. Maus pp 15-70
2. CW 2-7 and 22 (Chapters)
3. (optional: Maus II.  Many students get so engaged with the story in Maus I that they can't wait to read the second part)

Wed

4/18

1. Maus pp 70-End
2. Make a Blog Entry in which you discuss the relationship between Artie and his father.

Week 3

Rhapsody in August, the Bomb, Silence, and the Family Politics of History

Mon

4/23

1. Maus II (optional)
2. CW 9, 13, 14, and pp. 79-80
3. Post your interview proposal as a Blog entry at some point before class.  Discuss whom you wish to interview, why, when, how, where, and about what (this may change once you get your interviewee talking).  Also, discuss what challenges you foresee in the interview process.  Will there be barriers of culture, language, distance, personality, illness, etc.  How will you overcome these?

1. View Kurosawa's film Rhapsody in August (98 minutes)
2. Assign Essay 2 (Interview Report/Proposal)
3. Interview proposal due
4. Writing Focus:

The forms of College Writing, Analysis, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, the reasoning behind peer workshop.

Wed

4/25

1. Keep working on Essay 1
2. Start working on devising interview questions
3. Arrange Interview
4. Complete a blog entry; comment on two others.

Week 4

The Reader, Argumentation, and the Question of Responsibility

Mon

4/30

1. Write Essay 1.1 and bring three copies to class for peer review.
2. Print out and read Howard Zinn speech.
3. Read The Reader 1-46.
4. Write a blog entry and comment on two others.

1. Peer Workshop for Essay 1.1
2. What is "responsibility"?
3. Begin discussion of The Reader
4. Continue discussion of Rhapsody in August; How (and if ) we remember the past and why we choose to; what's at stake in the present?
5. Zinn and the "people's history" vs. the Victor's version
6. The confessions of the victimizer; transgression; The Reader.
7. Writing Focus:  Conducting an interview.

Wed

5/1

1. Write Essay 1.2 (revised version of Essay 1.1)  and reflection.
2. Keep working on Interview

1. Essay 1.2 due with reflection. (postponed)
2. Argumentation: taking a position, the enthymeme, basic logic, the appeals, evidence, the Toulmin Model. 

Week 5

Getting at the Whole Truth

Mon

5/7

1. The Reader 84-163
2. Warning! Quiz today.
3. CW 29
4. Conduct Interview

1. Essay 1.2 due with reflection.
2. Quiz
3. Discuss The Reader
4. The question of responsibility: What do we do with our parents' guilt or our own?
5. The conversation between parallel threads in a fictional narrative, figurative vs. literal approaches to the truth
6. Grasping complexity

Wed

5/9

1. Essay 2.1 (InterviewAssignment) due.
2. Continue reading The Reader
3. Conduct interview

1. Peer Workshop 2.1.  Note that this "draft" is the complete transcription and summary of the interview you have conducted.  It is, by itself, worth half your grade on Essay 2.
2. View and discuss Alain Resnais' Nuit et Brouillard (30 Minutes)
3. Continue discussion of The Reader and issues of responsibility.