Journeys Around Home: The Accidental Explorer

We've arrived at the end.  This is the last official blog post for the semester, and I'm going to miss reading your thoughtful posts on Tuesday afternoons.  The upshot, though, is that we'll get to exchange ideas in a longer form, as we transition from these short writing assignments to longer ones.  But before we make this transition, how about one last hurrah?  You know the drill: questions and comments--composed in 12-mintue bursts--posted here, and then shared as appropriate in the in-class discussion.

Don't forget to bring your annotated bibliography to class on Tuesday!

Happy reading, researching, and writing,

kevin

Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir

This week's reading is timed to correspond with the One Campus, One Book events, notably tonight's 7:00pm panel discussion featuring our own Ishmael Hope and his collaborators on the video game Never Alone, and Ernestine Hayes's Friday 7:00pm Evening at Egan Lecture, so in addition to reading carefully and posting questions and answers in the comments here, I'm urging you to attend one or both of these events to engage with the broader UAS and Juneau communities dialogues surrounding the book and the issues it raises.

As always, I look forward to next week's conversation.

By way of duplication of announcement, I'm also pasting below the details from the handout about the seminar paper from last night.

SEMINAR PAPER DETAILS

English 418: Travel

Per the description on the syllabus, this 10-12 page paper will be on a topic of your choice. While you will certainly draw on the course texts and discussions, you are not required to write on any of the coruse texts directly.  You will, however, be expected to enter into a critical conversation, so some outside research will be required.  That is, your essay should be informed by your careful reading of key secondary materials, but you should use these secondary sources as a means to enter into an ongoing scholarly conversation surrounding the text or issue you choose rather than as "support" for your position.

Here are some of the steps that will make this paper process more productive. 

Tuesday Nov 10.  Prospectus. (optional, but HIGHLY recommended)

The prospectus should be a very quick (no more than a page in length) summary of what you imagine will be the main points of your paper.  It should gesture toward a scholarly conversation you imagine you might enter, noting the key questions at issue.  It should also indicate your position, and outline or hint at some of the textual evidence you might use to defend your position. 

 Tuesday Nov 17.  Annotated Bibliography.

The annotated bibliography should include a mostly complete bibliography with at least 4 secondary texts (properly formatted following MLA style guidelines); 2 items in this bibliography should be annotated.  These annotations must be no longer than 150 words and should contain:  a clear articulation of the argument of the essay or book, a brief explanation of this argument, and a quick sentence or two that explains its relevance to your own argument.  (As a point of reference this paragraph contains 85 words—concision is key). 

Tuesday Nov 24. Conference.

This formal 5-minute conference presentation should be a preview of the key ideas for the seminar paper you will complete in the following weeks.  While literary studies disciplinary practice generally entails writing a 2.5 to 3-page paper to be read out-loud—notably, writing to be read out-loud is different than just writing a paper—you are welcome to approach this presentation according to your own preferences.  However you present your ideas, you will compose a 3-page paper to submit with your presentation.  It will work best if you think of this as a preliminary version of your final seminar paper.  

Tuesday Dec 1.  Full draft workshop. Entire session will be dedicated to a peer review workshop of your papers.  You should have at least 7 pages.    

Tuesday Dec 8. Final paper due to my office by 5:30pm

Please submit the final version of your paper with the prospectus (if completed), annotated bibliography, and peer review drafts.

  

Choose your own Adventure: The Prequel

After yet another great discussion last night, I'm logging in to say thanks, and to post the prompt for next week.  

Just like the first edition, this "prequel" to the Choose Your Own Adventure asks you to find a "primary" text that (hopefully) speaks back to the dominant tradition we are engaging together and that might be the central text for your seminar paper.  It's fine if your text is more theoretical or "secondary," especially if this the direction you plan to take in your seminar paper. 

After you find it and read it carefully, you should succinctly summarize the narrative as best you can, highlighting how the text is both like and unlike course texts (in 250 words or fewer), and then offer a short critical analysis of the text that explains why you think it is important for us to consider (a paragraph at most), all of which you will post here in the comments.  

Sounds simple, but like before,  this should involve doing a bit of research, reading around to find the right text.  As you're doing this work, I'd highly recommend keeping a running list of the sources you've consulted.  I recommend this because you should think of this assignment as an opportunity to continue working on your seminar paper.

Finally, you should prepare to sell your particular primary source to class with a tightly organized 3-minute presentation (again, it's probably best if this doesn't involve technology, but if you want to sing, dance, or otherwise make this presentation exciting, then by all means).  My hope is that we'll not only have another annotated list of texts in the comments here, but that the presentations will also remind us that there a lot of ways to approach the idea of travel.   

Until next week, I leave you to contemplate this seasonally appropriate cover image from the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

May your warehouses be free of haunts, 

Kevin

The Last Frontier?: An Orientation

 I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here, but I wanted to thank you, again, for a great conversation last night.  Everyone is doing a great job of engaging the reading material, and each week I'm even more impressed with the level of dialogue than I was the previous week.  Consider these breaching humpbacks an exhibit of my level of excitement.  

Next week, our attention will turn from globetrotting travels to a consideration of home.  The Thornton and Campbell readings are posted at UASOnline (note that the Thornton reading is divided into two files and Campbell is marked "In Darkest Alaska" on the course website).  Additionally, you should check out this companion book to an Alaska State Museum exhibit for an material-oriented overview of the history of travel and tourism in what we now call Alaska:   http://museums.alaska.gov/documents/lure_of_ak_catalog.pdf

As I mentioned last night, we're moving back to a more theoretical approach, so budget your reading time accordingly.  As usual, post your questions and answers in the comments here.  

Until Tuesday, I leave you with the top hit for a google image search of "Alaska"--a bear walking on water.    

Kevin

Wild: From Lost to found of the PCT

Despite my comments tonight, I hope you all enjoy next week's reading of Wild.  (By way of a confession:  I actually got totally hooked and read most of it in a single sitting this Sunday).  As I mentioned as we were leaving tonight, Strayed's book will help us move from the urban to the not-urban, but we should continue to track some of the same issues we've been considering all semester.  What's the status of travel here, for example, and one that I'm interesting in thinking through with this book in particular:  how do narratives change our interaction with places?   

As always, post your questions and comments below. 

I'll say more about this as the date approaches, but as a reminder, we've agreed to remove McPhee from the syllabus and instead do a "choose your own adventure" class in which you'll present a primary text, preferably one that speaks back to the dominant cultural "canon" we've been engaging in class.  I mention it here as you'll want to do some advance planning, probably starting this week, to track down your text if you don't already have one in mind.  

Until next time, 

Kevin

(FYI: the above image is from Oprah's photo album, and it's actually the author, not Reese Witherspoon, and I'm happy to see that the pack is actually as big as described)   

Travel on the Silver Screen: Midnight in Paris

We have a winner!  As reported in class tonight, Midnight in Paris edged out Walter Mitty in a close race.   We'll watch Woody Allen's film in the first half of class next week, building on our discussion of Hemingway, travel, and expatriation.  I've posted to the course website an excerpt from Caren Kaplan's excellent book Questions of Travel, as well as short pieces from Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson about traveling to Paris in the same era as the "expats."  All three of these will help us better engage with the film on questions of travel.  Feel free to post questions about any of the readings in the comments below, or even about Woody Allen or his film, if you're so inclined.

Until next week,

Kevin

Ernest Hemingway

Apologies for the delay in getting this post up.  I started it right after class and then, well... sunshine?

In any case, thanks again for a great discussion; it was fun to work through London's London last week.  We might begin our discussion this week by talking a bit about literary naturalism before we move to literary modernism, as I want us to think about the impact of intellectual history on changing notions of travel and mobility in the early twentieth century.  Or we might just see where the conversation takes us... it went in some interesting directions last week, so let's just keep the momentum, eh?  

Per our usual routine, after you read The Sun Also Rises please post your question and 12-minute attempt to answer it in the comments here.

See you Tuesday,

Kevin