My goal this semester has been to look at literature in a social and political fashion. My goal for this unit is for us all to examine literary texts as we become aware of our own social/political ideologies. We will be adding words to our vocabularies, terms such as ideology, interpellation, etc. We will be reading about ideology and we will read Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto. We will spend time in class discussing these readings and looking at the ways that our own ideologies are shaped by people and institutions in our lives. Your essay will be an examination of your own reading of the text in terms of your ideology and an attempt to see if that reading, as well as your community service activities, impacted, changed, or shaped your views. By the end of the semester, I hope that we have discovered our views on our social/political worlds, identified some of the things that shape those views, and made some conscious decisions about the validity or limitations of those ideologies. Whew--that's quite an undertaking! Let's have fun with it.

Tentative Schedule (you know me, all things subject to change!)

Class summaries linked by date.

M, 3/30: Introduction to "Personal Context" Poem reaction; identifying "worldviews"

W, 4/1: No foolin'--Reaction questions and responses; assignment: get James Kavanagh's essay: "Ideology" from reserve. YMRF1809. It is also in the book: Critical Terms for Literary Study (Lentricchia), on reserve: PN81.C84.

F, 4/3: No foolin', No Class (Read away!)

M, 4/6: Discussion of "Ideology" essay and definition of term
Group update #3 due

W, 4/8: (Have the Manifesto read by now) Begin discussing Marx (background, etc.)

F, 4/10: Continue Manifesto discussion; hand out essay #3 assignment sheet
virtual class

M, 4/13: Analyze another person's ideology; discuss interpellation

W, 4/15: Media and ideology (everything I am, I learned from TV…)

F, 4/17: Media continued… We might even watch some videos…woo hoo (you need to spend the weekend working up a "preliminary rough draft"…)

M, 4/20: (Preliminary rough draft due to be posted to web page for comments) Other ways our ideologies are shaped. Discussion of your thesis statements and responses to the Manifesto.

W, 4/22: (Table of Contents for Group Anthology Due) Rough Draft workshop day

F, 4/24: Bringing your community service into the mix. Discussion of assumptions, challenges, changes…

M, 4/27: (Rough Draft Due) BRING A COPY FOR PEER EDITING TO CLASS

W, 4/29:

F, 5/1:

M, 5/4: Final Draft Due, Group Anthology Presentations Begin….

The rest of the schedule will come out as we get closer to the END, which I know comes fast so we will all try to be on the ball and make it happen.