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