Closing thoughts? Share here.

Also, please share revisions of paper 3 here, and any other papers you were pleased with this semester.

Please post your final creative projects and presentations here.

Relevant and beautiful piece in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/30/t-magazine/black-authors.html?fbclid=IwAR2RmFVdL3GxZnUTuwTFp_Pfi2DU9Z4yINEJQpEcxstGpTg2TuxS8mrAp8I

Here is a list of updated questions for Paper 3. Let’s use this space as requested to give feedback to each other, and to really get to the heart of what makes a good (compelling, original, debatable, significant, focused) question.

• In her book Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine places unnatural images and stories of erasure together to draw attention to the relationship between white perceptions of beauty and psychological erasure of black bodies. (Clara)
• How does Claudia Rankine use second person narrative and images with historical content as a way to create more intimate relationships between races and within a race, respectively, in order to overcome discomfort about the discussion of race? (Tatiana)
• In a lyric written about the lives of black people and the struggles they face in modern America, how does Rankine use white, or negative, space, coupled with often dark images and black text, as a larger metaphor for her book? (Sammy)
• How does Rankine depict breath as central to her experience of the racialized world? How does the inability to breathe connect itself with lack of space, environmental insecurity, and Hurston’s “sharp white background” to represent Rankine’s emotional and environmental suffocation? (Rhys)
• How does Claudia Rankine use words and space to examine how occupation of space and spatial awareness prolongs and intensifies racial divides?   (Kaila)
• How does Rankine use the particular visual medium of photographs in Citizen to reflect the feelings of alienation from the population that are prevalent in modern American black society? (Justin)
• How does the Avant-­Garde form in which Rankine writes her Lyric, accentuate its meaning and underlying message to white people about subconscious racism and the history of racism in America? (Skylar)
• How does Toomer’s experimental use of color, specifically in reference to physical appearance, reflect his vision of a new hybrid race, beyond constructs of black and white? (Jaden)
• How does Rankine’s deliberate placement of white spaces in contrast to blackness actively engage the reader and promote the acknowledgement of race as opposed to color-blindness? (Isabelle)
• Does the modernist structure of Jean Toomer’s Cane repress the reader that is not part of the hyper-educated elite? Is the fragmentation of narration used in Cane that is indicative of a fragmented black identity in America actually working to make Cane less accessible? (Aidan)
• How does the musicality of Rankine’s Citizen challenge the traditional lyric and allow Rankine to advocate for individual action to combat racism? (Acadia)

   

   

   

Here is the space where you respond to the films of Lee and/or Beyonce (preferably both). Remember: Lee’s film was released in 1989. Please also consider both films in relation to recent conversations about Cane and Citizen.

You may be interested in these supplementary materials at some point:

Spike Lee Interview: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html?gtm=top&gtm=top

Kiese Laymon: “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America”—http://gawker.com/5927452/how-to-slowly-kill-yourself-and-others-in-america-a-remembrance

The play that I usually teach in addition to Citizen and “Do the Right Thing” is Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight Los Angeles, 1992 and its adaption into the film of the same name…for future reading/viewing if you’re interested in learning more about the Rodney King riots.

How does Citizen as a text query and challenge the idea of what it means to be a “citizen”? Point to examples in thematic content and/or stylistic effect to support your thinking. You may also address anything else about the text, or pose relevant questions as part of your response.

Please view this Baldwin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Abhj17kYU#action=share

Please read this Claudia Rankine interview: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/27/claudia-rankine-poet-citizen-american-lyric-feature

“In Praise of Latin Night at the Queer Club”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-praise-of-latin-night-at-the-queer-club/2016/06/13/e841867e-317b-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html?utm_term=.ae6edee2636a

Here is the list of words that you collectively recorded as the most important words in Giovanni’s Room: boyish, belonging, room, drunk, sardonic, volatile, lost, dark, body, touch, dirty, trapped, desperate, frightened, forget. Here’s a space for sharing the in-class flash fictions you wrote using these words. If you would like to spin a “happy” flash fiction (given that most of the pieces shared in class were not “happy”), feel free to take on that challenge.

Please post responses here. Focusing on one scene is recommended but not required. And if you are interested in connections between this film and Giovanni’s Room, feel free to share them as well.

Respond to Werner Herzog’s film here.

UPDATE:

As you think about how to respond to Herzog’s film (on its own and/or in relation to Torres’ novella), please remember to not just discuss (evaluate) Treadwell as a figure/character/person, but also to consider HOW Herzog is using the medium of documentary film (the techniques of) in order to represent very specific ideas through his particular aesthetic lens on Treadwell. You must treat Treadwell as a subject of the art object (film) itself, even if/though it is a “real” story; it is still a crafted (version of the) story. It is Herzog’s story. And Herzog’s is one of many lenses that could be put on the question of “our nature,” human nature, through telling the story of Treadwell exactly as he does—how does he? Why does he make certain filmic choices? How does his storytelling as the narrator (the insertion of himself into the story) and the various other techniques employed, visual and otherwise, shape our understanding, our critique, our judgment, our empathy, etc. of and for Treadwell? How does he get us to probe our ideas about wild vs. human nature, about what he calls “the common denominator of the universe…chaos, hostility, murder,” and many other intellectually provocative concepts. [The responses posted so far about the film are very good in weighing in on the ethical and psychological aspects of Treadwell, but I’ll just point you to Rhys’ direct address of Herzog’s filmmaking (and the connection drawn to Torres’ writing), which is what I expect you to be doing with all texts this semester.]