Archive for August, 2009

I hope you procured your copy of Gulliver and have already landed on the island of Lilliput. *If you haven’t been able to find a copy of the text, we need to talk immediately.

Still haven’t seen any Class Introductions so I’d would like to see those ASAP, but this week we’re turning to the first journal assignments. For help getting started, please read the following overviews and make your first posts THIS WEEK.

Satire Journal Assignments

Defining Satire Thread

Satire Sighting Thread

I have added a few more links to the Media Archive, but would welcome your own examples in the journal assignments.

For those who missed it last April, one final addition is the online edition of the Pessimist from last spring, so feel free to weigh in on how these articles fare in your satire definitions as well.

ACU Pessimist, 4/1/09

I hope all of you arrived safely back in Abilene. I think I’m finished with our course site (for now). Come on in and look around. The Syllabus and the Schedule will probably be the best place to begin since they should clarify how the other pieces will fit into our work together.

TEXTBOOK: Probably the most important first step is to find a copy of Gulliver’s Travels. We’ll mainly be reading Book 1 and 4, so if you still have an anthology from Major British Writers, you probably have the book already. Otherwise, the Campus Store has a dozen copies for my ENGL 495, so feel free to pick up one of those. Our colloquium will meet the end of the third week of school, so we’ve got a great deal to do in the next few weeks. Talk to me immediately if you have textbook troubles, and I’ll see if I can find an extra copy.

Sometime this week, come on into the class blog and look around a little. Before we begin Gulliver, I’m asking you to post a short introduction to the Class Introductions discussion thread in the sidebar. You’ll respond to several questions. No one will be marking your responses up with a red pen (we’ll save that for later!), but this will give me a chance to begin to connect names and faces.

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of “laughing until it hurts,” so this semester perhaps we can make some sense of the curious territory between pleasure and pain, between comedy and critique. Thanks for being a part of the conversation.

If you’ve looked at the schedule for our next several weeks, you’ve seen the first short assignment before you begin reading is to spend a few minutes reviewing the Breaking News timeline. This interactive timeline will introduce you to figures and events in the news during the “long eighteenth century,” roughly 1660-1800 and the golden age of English satire. Taking notes as you read about the different monarchs and religious groups may help you keep the important names and dates straight. Though this isn’t a history class, satire is a contextual art form so some attention now to key dates and figures should help you make connections later.

Breaking News Intro

Once you’ve viewed the Breaking News introductory film, explore the timeline itself on Dipity.

Breaking New timeline

Breaking News transcript