O Modernism

An excerpt from Ezra Pound's "Sestina: Altaforte," read by the poet. It is written in the personae of the troubadour warlord Bertrans de Born.

A Hypertext version of T.S. Eliots "The Hollow Men"

"IF I TOLD HIM; A Completed Portrait of Picasso" by Gertrude Stein 

photo of Stein in front of Picasso's portrait of her

Click this link to hear Dr. Steven Zucker Dr. Beth Harris talk about Picasso's portrait of Stein

"Should We Read *Heart of Darkness*"?

"Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is one of Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings. Gauguin inscribed the original French title in the upper left corner: D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous". . . read more on Wikipedia.  This is a painting from a series that was mentioned in the Achebe essay.

I took the title of this blog post from J. Hillis Miller's essay in your book on pages 463 - 474.  I certainly recommend reading this for more intellectual fodder.  You may, if you wish, reference this essay instead of the class discussion.

Blog Assignment:

Part A: due by class time Thursday 9.16.10

recommended length: 500 words

Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking from class discussion (any of the three days) and elaborate on how it could be used to further your own analysis of Heart of Darkness.

Part B: due by class time Friday 9.17.10

recommended length: 500 words

Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking from a classmate's comment (Part A) and elaborate on how it could be used to further your own analysis of Heart of Darkness.

Both assignments will be graded separately on the Malden High Open Response Rubric and counted as a homework grade.  Because of the nature of the assignment, a letter grade will be lost for every day it is late.

Agenda for week of 9.13.10

more Swoon, image found at The Brooklyn Museum

The first three days of class will be devoted to your Student Run Discussions of the following essays.  I am interested in Heart of Darkness only in the sense of these essays, which vary widely in ways, or lenses, in how to approach this piece of literature. 

When you are prepping for this discussion, please have moments in the text (either the essays or the novel) which we can look at closely; and please look for the complexity and subtlety of the arguments presented in the essays--you can certainly agree and disagree with points made, but be careful not to read the essays as too simplistic.  Hopefully the essays will be good fodder for discussions and future use.

9.13.10: Day 4. SRD on Chinua Achebe’s “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”, pps. 336 -349.
9.14.10: Day 3.  SRD on Andrew Michael Roberts’ “Masculinity, Modernity, and Homosexual Desire”, pps. 455 - 462.
9.15.10: Day 2.  SRD on Lissa Schneider’s “Iconography and the Feminine Ideal” pps. 474 - 483.

9.16.10: Day 1, Long Block.  Blog due by class time.  Details to be announced, but it will involve an elaboration on the the previous class discussions, so take notes.  In class I will introduce the “Heart of Darkness Found Poem Assignment” and we will look at some Modernist Poetry--probably “Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot / (Fighting in the captain's tower / While calypso singers laugh at them / And fishermen hold flowers.”--that’s a Bob Dylan reference if you didn’t know.  Anyway, I digress.)
9.17.10: Day 7.  Class on Universal Theme and Independent reading set-up.

Overall Objective for the week: There will be a strong emphasis on developing philosophical ideas (about the human condition), as well as making themes more complex and variable for analysis.  

Essential Question: Why do we, as human beings, write?

The week of 9.20.10 will be devoted to the “Heart of Darkness Found Poem Assignment” & “the college essay”.

Post-first class & citing my sources. . .

Here's the poem we listened to in class today:

"Having a Coke With You" by Frank O'Hara

Anyway, thank you.  Have a great weekend.  I'm looking forward too getting started & as promised, here is where I got the idea for the opening activity:


"The Wilderness Downtown": an interactive film by Chris Milk (You need to watch this is google chrome for it to work.)

Welcome . . . Your First Assignment

poster for the first New York solo exhibition by SWOON in 2005

I am very excited for this year--but I'll leave my gushing for our face-to-face meeting . . .
 
I'd like to get a bunch of this bookkeeping stuff out of the way; it's mostly following directions, but will make life easier once it is all set up.

1. Email me your email address to ryanseangallagher AT gmail DOT com (asap).  Create a professional email if you need one.  (I am very google-centric, so it helps to have a google account for blogger, google docs, and google calendar.)  Once you do this I will be able to:

• send you an invite to my google calendar for the class
• set up your snapgrades account

2. Log in to your blogger account.  Go to the Dashboard.  Change your Display Name to your first name and last initial--or some nickname that is obvious.  (If you need help, please come by and I will show you how to do this.)  When you are done, make a comment in this post--a brief hello is fine.

• Also not a bad idea to have email alerts sent to you when I post on the blog, as I use it often, or become a "follower". 

 Summer Work:

• Reader's notebook: you can turn it in today (9.2.10) for full credit, or you can turn it in on Tuesday 9.7.10 for a deduction of 5 points (out of 100).
• This is a completion grade. It will be scored in the Reader's Notebook section of your grades.
• Blog Posts: Ms. Clapp is scoring and giving me the results.  Posts appearing after today (9.2.10) will not be scored.
• This is a completion grade. It will be scored in the Homework section of your grades.

• You will also have a Question 3. style, open-response prompt on Tuesday (9.7.10) in-class.
• This will be scored on the APE rubric, which you will see often this year.
• It will appear in the Quizzes and Open-Responses section of your grades.
• If you would like to look at some examples of this style of writing and practice scoring, here's a link. You will find tons of past exams and actual student responses with actual scores and explanations--(you will soon see that I am a firm believer in your independence with this aspect of the course.)

Okay, that was a lot of information. . . let's see how this goes!

AP Syllabus 2010 - 2011

Gallagher AP Syllabus 2010 - 2011

Senior Portfolio 2010, yo

Senior Portfolio 2010