Hi all, 

As I was grading the last blog post assignment, I noticed many of you are behind in the work for Benito Cereno. This has been a trying semester, and it has likely gotten more challenging for you as the coronavirus numbers creep up and New York has faced and continues to face more cancelations and closures, most notably the closure of public schools.

You can finish the course despite these challenges, and as we enter the end of the semester, I want to make the workload lighter to help you do this. 

In the final weeks of the semester, I would like you to focus on three areas:

1. Finishing any incomplete work.
2. Revising one of your papers (either the one on poetry or the one on Benito Cereno) for a better grade.
3. Writing the final paper. This assignment has been drastically shortened (to 500 words) and gives you the choice between writing about A Raisin in the Sun or reflecting on the annotations you’ve already done for the poems and Benito Cereno. This means that if you are behind and struggling to begin A Raisin in the Sun you do not have to read it. It also means you don’t have to do blog post #7. If you do that assignment it will be factored into your grade as bonus points. 

Finally, I would like to schedule a meeting with each of you individually. Please go to this Google Doc and sign up for one 15-minute time slot. (If you cannot find a time to fit your schedule please email me and we can work something out.)

Hi all, 

Many of you have likely heard that cases of the virus are growing rapidly and people are discussing various kinds of closures including the possibility that the school system will close again. I know that many of you are greatly impacted by these measures because they affect your jobs and your family members. 

I want you to know that I am here to work with you. We are very close to the end of the semester, and I would really hate to see you not complete the course because of new coronavirus measures. Please let me know if there is any way I can help if you are struggling. We should be heartened that there has been progress made with vaccines, and I would love it if you emerged from this crisis well on your way to completing your degree despite the challenges we’ve been presented with this year. 

Please contact me if you need to catch up on assignments or if you are confused about the upcoming work. I’ve also scaled back the reading a bit to help with the work load. 

Don’t forget to review the second paper assignment.

Completed Work

• Read:  Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Part 3
• Respond: Blog post #6
• Annotate Benito Cereno: By the end of the story new things about each of the novella’s main characters are revealed. Find two places where we begin to see characters in a new light and explain the change that you see.

Upcoming Work

• Read: A Raisin in the Sun, Act I
• Respond: Blog Post #7

Hi all,

We are now in the last third of what has been a semester of very hard work coupled with juggling new challenges we couldn’t have imagined facing a year ago. I hope you have had a chance to catch your breath a bit last week before the final push. 

General Announcements & Events

• I have finished grading the essays. Please let me know if you’d like to revise yours for a better grade. 
• I would like to hold a discussion session this week regarding Benito Cereno. This is completely voluntary, and I will record it. Here are the meeting times:
  • Section 0881: Wednesday, Nov. 11th @ 1:00PM
  • Section 0883: Thursday, Nov. 12th @ 1:00PM
• I have also posted the assignment for Paper 2

Upcoming Work

• Read: Finish Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Part 3
• Respond: Blog post #6
• Annotate Benito Cereno: By the end of the story new things about each of the novella’s main characters are revealed. Find two places where we begin to see characters in a new light and explain the change that you see.

Hi all,

I have started grading your papers, and you should be seeing your grades in Blackboard soon. You can find a video that shows you how to check your feedback in Blackboard in the tutorial videos section of the site. You do have the opportunity to revise your paper, but this is not required. Keep in mind that the course syllabus​ contains a revision policy. Please follow these steps if you would like to revise your paper.

General Announcements and Events

• Registration for Fall II and Spring I is open!
• You will find information about an upcoming film event on the Events & Opportunities section of the site. Writing about this event could be a possible opportunity to earn bonus points. Contact me if you’re interested.
• There are also other job and event opportunities you may be interested in

Completed Work

• Part 1:
  • Read: “Narrative,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
  • Respond: Reading questions about “Narrative,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction 
• Part 2:
  • Read: Begin Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
  • Annotate Benito Cereno according to the guidelines in my announcement.

Upcoming Work

• Read:
  • Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Part 2
• Annotate Benito Cereno: 
  • Make sure you are signed up for our reading group. Here is the link to sign up: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/my/groups?join=VW3M37OJ
  • Make sure your annotations are posted to the reading group; otherwise, I won’t see them.
  • This week: Create at least 5 annotations and respond to at least two of your classmate’s annotations. Your annotations should fit these guidelines.

Hi All,

General Announcements & Events

***Please see the very important instructions about how to access our next reading in the “Upcoming Work” section below.***

Two announcements came across my email that I think some of you might be interested in: a list of opportunities and events sponsored by the Center for Career and Professional Development and a paid internship opportunity

Completed (or nearly completed) Work

This week you focused on your first papers.

Upcoming Work

Next week we begin reading Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. We will be using a version of this text prepared by myself and two professors at Hostos Community College, Dr. Craig Bernardini and Dr. Krystyna Michael. We used Manifold to create this version. 

***Please follow these directions to set up an account on Manifold***

After you register for Manifold, you should join the class reading group by clicking on this link: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/my/groups?join=VW3M37OJ

Annotating this story works very similarly to what you were doing on the course site.  Please make sure you are posting your annotation in our reading group. Here is how to do that. 

• Part 1:
  • Read: “Narrative,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
  • Respond: Reading questions about “Narrative,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction 
• Part 2:
  • Read: Begin Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
  • ***Annotate Benito Cereno according to these guidelines***

Hi All,

I moved this week, so I am a little behind. Many apologies for this getting to you so late. I will be finishing up your blog post grades by Wednesday.

This week we will focus on analyzing the poems on the schedule. You will choose one of these to write about for your first paper. I will be posting screencasts going over the chapters from Culler in the next day. 

General Reminders and Announcements

• Paper 1 is due October 16^th via Blackboard
• I will be including links to opportunities and events taking place at LaGuardia here so you have an idea of what’s going on at the College and how to get involved.
  • The LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative will be holding several events this semester, including one this week. This initiative focuses on ways to perform and foster humanitarian work.
  • The Grace Leadership Program will hold an event over Zoom on Thursday.

Completed Work

*NEW* Use hypothesis to annotate Paper 1 assignment with any questions or confusion you have about the prompt

• Part 1:
  • Read: “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
  • Respond: Reading question about “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
• Part 2:
  • Read: “This world is not conclusion” by Emily Dickinson
  • “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” by Emily Dickinson

Annotate these poems according to the guidelines in my announcement.

Upcoming Work

Week 4 (10/05-10/09)

• Part 1:
  • Read: “Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
• Part 2:
  • Read: “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott & “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich: Annotate these poems by finding places that use some of the techniques Culler discusses.
  • Respond: Reading questions about “Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler

Week 2 Newsletter

Hi All,

I hope you are all settling into your classes!

General Reminders & Announcements

• I have posted the assignment for paper 1 on the course site. I would like you to take a look at it and annotate it with any questions you might have. Use the same tool that you use to annotate the poems. The paper will not be due until 10/16
• Annotations: This is just a reminder that there is a tutorial for how to do these on the course site.
• Please check out my screencast about the Jonathan Culler chapter you read this week.

Completed Work

• This week you finished “What is literature and does it matter” by Jonathan Culler and wrote a blog post about this chapter. 
• You also read poems by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes and annotated these poems. I will be sending out an assessment of the annotations you made at the beginning of next week. 

Upcoming work

Next week you should do the following:

• *NEW* Use hypothesis to annotate Paper 1 assignment with any questions or confusion you have about the prompt
• Part 1:
  • Read: “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
  • Respond: Reading question about “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
• Part 2:
  • Read: “This world is not conclusion” & “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” by Emily Dickinson
  • Annotate these poems according to the guidelines in my announcement.

Dear Students

This is the first of the weekly newsletters I will send out this semester. I am sending this out on a Monday, but in general I will send them on Fridays. For the most part, they will be divided into three sections: “General Reminders & Announcements” (these will concern our class as well as any opportunities, etc. that come up college-wide), “Completed Work” (this will discuss what we have done and will usually focus on the week that the newsletter is sent), and “Upcoming Work.” There will also be a “Highlights” section at the beginning that gives you the most important stuff. But, please read the entire newsletter each week. I will post them as announcements on Blackboard and the course site, and I will email them to you. These will supplement what on the course syllabus, but also check the syllabus once or twice each week.

Highlights:

• Change to schedule: I want to spend a little more time on “What is Literature and Does It Matter?,” Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler.
• Please respond to Blog Post #2, which is based on this chapter.
• In the second half of the week, read the poems on the course site by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.
• I will ask you to annotate these as well, but I will post instructions on Tuesday.

General Reminders & Announcements

• It is very important that you keep in touch with your professors, especially while we are holding classes online. All of us want you to succeed in our courses and learn things that will interest and benefit you throughout your lives. Communication—in the case of this class, by email—is very important. Please reach out to me if you are confused, want to schedule a meeting, wish to discuss late work, etc.
• I have taken one pass at grading Blog Post #1, and I will take another one tonight. If you haven’t done so already, please post yours by the end of today. As I’ve told some of you already, I would like the work for each week to be completed by Friday, but if you get behind on a given week reach out to me and we will work something out.

• As I read through the posts, I noticed that some of you have not “published” yours yet. I didn’t grade these because I assume you are still editing the post. Please click the “Publish” button once you are done. I also didn’t give you a grade if you posted your blog response as a comment on someone else’s post. Please post all blog responses as stand-alone posts.

• I have decided to post tutorial videos to the course site As of now, you will find two, one that offers a shorter guide for how to post to the blog and one that covers hypothesis, which is a tool I will be using to comment on your blog posts.

• And, last thing about blog posts, I want you to think of these as informal opportunities to try out ideas from course material. The questions are open-ended, and my hope is that help you to think through ideas from this material. It’s not as important for you to get a question “correct” as it is for you to address it specifically and as fully as you can.

• Paper 1: the assignment for this paper will be out on Tuesday. Look for an announcement on that day.

Completed Work

• The big, important task of Week 1 was getting started. You learned to navigate how each of your professors have interpreted this online learning environment. This is a big challenge that you should all congratulate yourselves for seeing through. We have all made different choices, and we have different skills: some of us are very good at digital learning and some of us have never touched a computer. Good job!
• You also introduced yourselves using the course blog, and I enjoyed reading about all of your interests and what brought you to the College. I won’t get the chance to meet you in person until we go back to campus, and even then, you will have completed this course and gone on to bigger and better things. So, it was really nice to get a chance to learn about you in your posts.
• In the second half of the week you started “What is literature and does it matter?” from A Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory by Jonathan Culler. This chapter gives you a pretty good overview to a question that should be on your minds. Namely, what makes something literature and is there a point to studying it? You might also be wondering about how writing about literature bears on your degree program. Culler approaches these questions by highlighting the ways that literature asks us to think about language itself, how it’s structured, how others use it to influence us, how we use it in various capacities. Thinking of literature as the study of language makes us more attuned to the function of language, and if you grasp nothing else this semester, it is this that I want you to take away from the course. I will be posting a screencast lecture regarding this chapter later in the week.

Upcoming work

• I will post a video tomorrow about making annotations to the poems as well as instructions. Look for an announcement.

Part 1:        Read:          Finish: “What is Literature and Does It Matter?,” Literary  Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler

                 Respond:     Question on course blog

Part 2:        Watch:        Video about annotations

Read:          “Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen

“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

Annotate these poems according to the guidelines in my announcement.