You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2009.
Check out Alison Bechdel’s review of Jane Vandenburgh’s A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review. Bechdel is an artist and cartoonist, and so composes the review in a milieu that makes sense to her. Highly recommended.
In case you missed it, there’s an online space for I Live Here that has some interesting material related to the book. Check it out at http://www.i-live-here.com.
I updated the Course Calendar with correct, up-to-date info for the rest of the semester, so be sure to check that out.
For class next week (April 1st, no foolin’), read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others chapter 5. It’s on electronic reserve at the library. Print out a copy (or bring your laptop with the pdf on it) and bring it with you to class.
We’ll also be discussing the last two “chapters” (well, what do you call them? Books? Stories?) of I Live Here, “Ciudad Juarez” and “Malawi.”
For class, be prepared to discuss your answer to this question:
Does I Live Here support or contradict Sontag’s argument in Regarding the Pain of Others? Why?
Finally, and most importantly, your proposal for your final project is due. Your proposal should explain what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, and any particular challenges you foresee it raising for you.
Your final project is the capstone project for your English major. This is where you get to show off what you’ve learned, what you can do, and how very interesting your ideas are. I’m open to practically anything, but I have one condition: your project must address in some way the issue of multimodal storytelling. That is, the combination of words and images is as old as written language itself (human-made images predate written language), but we’re still not quite sure what to do with it as a serious art form (or forms). Most people today think of illustrated books as being for children. As we’ve seen in this course, that’s not (exactly) true. Illustrated novels for adults raise interesting questions about literacy, literariness, interpretation, art, and media, to name just a few. Your final project must address (in some way) a question about illustrated novels that you feel is important and significant. That particular question, how you address it, and what conclusions you reach are up to you.
For those of you who think better with lists, here’s the summary of what should be in your proposal:
Your proposal doesn’t have to be long. 1 page is probably too long, in fact. Just try to be as complete as you can in explaining your idea(s) and decisions. Bring your proposal with you to class.
Man, there’s been a lot of discussion online about the WATCHMEN movie/book! It’s exhausting keeping up with all of it. But to facilitate our discussion today, here are some of the more… let’s say interesting… ones.
To start us off, here are the awesome (and awesomely dense) opening credits to the film. The company that made the credits posted this to the Web, but then took it down. It’s still around, though, if you look for it.
And while you’re watching the credits obsessively, looking for every last detail, this post might help you find a few tasty tidbits.
Charlie Jane Anders opines on the reasons why the movie felt flatter than the book. For Anders, it’s the difficulty of expressing the mindset of the Cold War years. An interesting read.
Jive Tarken, on the other hand, says both the strengths and weaknesses of the film are due to its closeness to the original book. Also a good read.
And if you want to read a nice rant about how the new ending ruined everything, John Patricelli has just what you’re looking for. (And if you play a druid in World of Warcraft, you really should be reading John anyway.)
Not everyone is happy with the changes to the movie. Here’s one concerned reader/viewer sharing his thoughts:
And if you’ve been bitten by the grown-up-comic bug, Graeme McMillan has some suggestions about what other comics you should check out.
Really, truly, finally… Hooray, kids! The Saturday Morning Watchmen are here!
Here’s a link to an article we’ll discuss in class today:
http://io9.com/5148753/uclick-for-iphone-will-make-comic-books-obsolete
The UClick people (and the IO9 writer) seem to think that this is a good thing. What do you think?
