Upcoming Assignments:


In-Class Wednesday, 10/7:

Exercise One—

Round 1: Choose any ONE of the words below. Freewrite about whatever comes to mind in relation to that word. You can write in any style, but you might have the best luck with a sort of prose-poem (think about the prose passages in Joy Harjo’s collection that interleave with the poems—they still read with a lot of poetics, but they’re prose-y). Think lyrical, but don’t stress too much if that’s not coming together for you. Just get down thoughts in relation to your chosen word. 5 minutes.

“Shelf

Truck

Rough

Blue

Tropical”
“Shiver

Beige

Sprint

Grief

Tone”
“Accent

Kiwi

Sharp

Meander

Fir



”

Round 2: Look again at the word list. Choose a second word that is UNRELATED to the first. (Don’t try to make them go together.) Write another, separate passage on this new word—aim for either a prose-poem or an actual (short) poem. 5 minutes.

Round 3: NOW read your two separate passages. Find a common thread—an image, an emotion, an idea, a vocabulary word, anything that runs through both passages somehow. Write a new passage—in prose this time; lyrical is fine, just lean prose-y—on whatever thread has emerged. 8 minutes.

Example: http://www.jonitevis.com/Jar.html

Exercise Two:

Prep: Read Joy Harjo’s “Grace” to yourself (out loud if possible; mute yourself). Now let’s listen to the poet read it herself. What surprises you about her performance?

Round One: Write a short poem—just 2-4 lines or so. You can write “about” anything, but if you need a theme to get started—let’s say a poem about home (yours, someone else’s, whatever; the speaker can be ambiguous). Note: You will be sharing these with others! I’ll ask you to paste these into the chat window shortly.

Round Two: Freewrite briefly—what emotions does your poem evoke for you? How do you imagine someone reading your poem (with what feeling, what voice)?

Round Three: Paste your poem into the chat window.
*Select one poem; ask people to read silently—what feeling do YOU get here? How would you read this out loud? Volunteers? Discussion?





In-Class Wednesday, 9/30:

  • Body Scan:

    • Make sure your journal is nearby, for the end of this exercise. Turn off your cameras for a moment.

    • Take a few deep “belly” breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

    • Close your eyes. Now just take a few minutes to pay attention to your body from top to bottom—start with your head, your face, your neck, your shoulders . . . Pause at each location and just sort of check in—where are you relaxed and comfortable? What’s feeling tight? What’s aching? What’s heavy? What’s loose? Don’t try to change anything; just note what’s going on with your body. (2 minutes)

    • When you’re ready, open your eyes. Take a couple of minutes to jot down your observations in your journals.







  • Go outside if you’re able, near a tree or if possible, a larger group of trees. Take your journal, a pen/pencil, and a blanket or something so you can sit down to write.

    • If you can’t leave your room, here’s a virtual option (choose any of Scenes 1 or 3-5 and spend 5 minutes or so exploring the forest, then leave an image of the forest on your computer to look at throughout the next 2 exercises:

    • Writing Exercise 1:

      • Take a few minutes to closely observe the trees (and/or tree system) around you. When you’re ready, write down observations in as much detail as possible. What do you see, touch, smell, hear? Notice as many details as possible—the color and texture of the bark, any knots or interesting growths, the shape and patterns of the branches, the shape and colors and patterns of the leaves. Do you see any moss? Lichen? What else? Just pay attention, and write down what you observe with as much vivid detail as you can. Feel free to write long-form, or make bulleted notes, sketch things, whatever. Set a timer; take about 15-20 minutes to write, and try to really get sucked in to the task.


      *Note: If you have another class to attend and need to pick up the other exercises later, just take a few minutes now to repeat the body scan exercise from earlier:

      • Take a few deep “belly” breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

      • Close your eyes. Now just take a few minutes to pay attention to your body from top to bottom—start with your head, your face, your neck, your shoulders . . . Pause at each location and just sort of check in—where are you relaxed and comfortable? What’s feeling tight? What’s aching? What’s heavy? What’s loose? Don’t try to change anything; just note what’s going on with your body. (2 minutes)

      • When you’re ready, open your eyes. Take a couple of minutes to jot down your observations in your journals.including the journaling part. Has anything changed? What do you make of what has or hasn’t changed, in the context of your location/writing activities in these 2 exercises?



    • Writing Exercise 2 (should be completed outside or “virtually outside”):

      • Repeat the body scan exercise.

      • Freewrite on anything you want—it can be something academic, but also you might want to write about something personal that’s important to you right now. Whatever you like. Take about 15 minutes.

      • Repeat the body scan exercise, including the journaling part. Has anything changed? What do you make of what has or hasn’t changed, in the context of your location/writing activities in these 2 exercises?



For Monday, 9/28:

  • Complete this Qualtrics pre-survey

  • Spend another hour or so reading through the material from last week (the articles under “On reading, writing, and empathy” and the various articles, etc., on race and identity, under the Friday, 9/25 assignment). I’m sure there was more than you had time to read, so take time and read a few more things that you had to skip before.

  • Come on Monday ready to read The Hidden Life of Trees.



For Friday, 9/25:

  • Finish reading The Vanishing Half.

  • Continue noting your observations in your field notebooks. Those directions again:

    • Observe yourself and record your reading experience with the novel. There are no “correct” ways to be reading; we just want to capture what we are doing as much as we’re able. So you might note things like, what do you find yourself thinking as you read? What are you doing? (i.e., getting lost in the reading; getting distracted by other thoughts; looking at your phone, whatever) What are you noticing in the book? What are you feeling as you read? Which characters are you connecting with? What’s keeping you from connecting with certain characters? What are you not understanding? What is unsettling for you? What do you do to make sense of the intense or traumatic material? What thoughts and feelings linger after you’ve put the book away?

  • Read through (as in, take an hour at most; don’t feel like you have to read every bit of these) the articles under “On reading, writing, and empathy.” Most of these were previously posted; you may have read some of them before, but we haven’t discussed them in class yet. A few are new as of Wed., 9/23.

  • Optional: If you want to, feel free to scan and upload your writing exercises from either last week or this week. I’d be curious to read them, but completion is on the honor system; you have credit either way.

  • Come to class ready to discuss! See you then.



In class on Wednesday, 9/23:



Heads up: Sharing the actual writing exercises will be optional—I’ll give you a folder to drop them to IF you want to.



Round 1:

Choose a character from one of our books so far. You can choose anyone from I Am Nujood or The Vanishing Half. You can choose a major character or a minor character; the minor characters are sometimes interesting because you haven’t been given as much detail already. So people like Adele Vignes (the twins’ mother) or Lonnie Goudeau or Sam Winston or Blake Sanders can offer a chance to write more “new” material. But taking on the main characters can give you a chance to explore parts of them you’re not understanding.

Try to make the character fully developed and believable. (I.e., we certainly don’t have to love Sam, but we don’t have to hate him, either—what kinds of things “explain” Sam, make him make sense as a person?

Choose a “time” in the character’s life. You might want to write about them before the book ever begins, or after they’ve left the story, or give us a different perspective on a scene we’ve already read.

Write a journal entry or inner monologue from this character’s perspective. What do imagine them thinking about? Worrying over? Being afraid of? Wanting? Plotting for? What do you think they might have done the day you’re writing for them? Take 15 minutes.



Round 2:

Make rough notes:

What else would you need to know about your character to keep writing? What biographical or character information, etc.? How would you go about gathering/constructing this information for a fictional character?

(~5 minutes)



Round 3:

Discuss:

How have you been experiencing the “empathy” element of reading so far this week?

How does it seem different to experience empathy in writing v. reading?



In class on Wednesday, 9/16:

Round 1:

You’ll have 45 seconds to study an image provided on your screen.

Immediately afterward, you should begin writing a description of the scene, in as much detail as possible. You should aim to make your verbal description as vivid as possible, accurately rendering your memory of the scene. You will have 7 minutes to write.

You will have 2 minutes to draw a quick sketch of the original scene.

We’ll study the original scene together and discuss differences/overlaps.




















Humpback1.jpg





Round 2:

You’ll have 45 seconds to study an image provided on your screen.

EscapeRoom.jpg

Immediately afterward, you should take 2 minutes to sketch a quick rendering of the scene.

You will then have 5 minutes to write a vivid and detailed description, in prose, accurately rendering your memory of the scene.

We’ll study the original scene together and discuss differences/overlaps.

<discuss additional readings>


Round 3:

If time—

Think of a memory you’d like to play with—nothing traumatic! And be careful with things that are important. Maybe something sweet or innocuous—a small moment worth remembering from the past week. Try to remember details and capture those in a prose description. Sketch if it’s helpful.

Then, make notes of who/what else you could consult to fact-check your memories.












For Friday:

  • Finish reading I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.

  • Continue documenting your reading experiences in your field notebooks.

    • Same prompt as last time: Observe yourself and record your reading experience with the memoir. There are no “correct” ways to be reading; we just want to capture what we are doing as much as we’re able. So you might note things like, what do you find yourself thinking as you read? What are you doing? (i.e., getting lost in the reading; getting distracted by other thoughts; looking at your phone, whatever) What are you noticing in the book? What are you feeling as you read? What thoughts and feelings linger after you’ve put the book away?

  • Come ready to discuss and begin sharing ideas toward a future writing research proposal.





On memory (and memoir):



For Monday, 9/7:

  1. Take about 10-30 minutes to review your Play Doh models. Review the major structures of the brain and neuron and name one key function for each structure. You can write this out if it’s helpful, or just speak out loud, but test yourself and see where you’re still getting confused. I’m itemizing below the structures we built in the models, but I’m not putting in all the other areas we’ve discussed (e.g., Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, etc.), so feel free to add those as well in your notes, again as you find it helpful. The point in trying to make these terms familiar/automatic is to help us in future class discussions and to help you get a natural control of the vocabulary and functionality for when you write your papers next week.

    • Brain:

      • brain stem

      • medulla

      • pons

      • midbrain

      • thalami (thalamusx2)

      • cerebellum

      • hypothalamus (includes pituitary)

      • hippocampus

      • amygdala

      • corpus callosum

      • cerebrum (a.k.a., cerebral cortex)

        • frontal lobe

        • temporal lobe

        • occipital lobe

        • parietal lobe

    • Neuron (start from 1:08):

      • dendrites

      • cell body

      • nucleus

      • axon

      • myelin sheath

      • axon terminals

      • synapse

  2. In your field notebooks, take 10-30 minutes to reflect on all the readings we’ve done so far. What do you understand NOW about literacy and cognition that you didn’t a couple of weeks ago? How are the sources you’ve read supporting and diverging from one another? How are you putting the readings together as a puzzle, in other words, with your own driving interests helping you focus on one particular puzzle?

  3. Read through The Midnight Disease, Chapter 6 (“Why We Write”). Spend about 20-30 minutes with it; you’ll be able to go back and re-read later, but it will help us to get the emotional side of literacy a bit more “on the table".”

  4. Look through the “Additional Sources” now posted to our website. Open all of them and get a sense of what they are (i.e., read the titles, the journal names, the dates, the abstracts), then choose a couple to read in more depth (at least one of these “deeper” reads should also be one of the more technical publications—i.e., don’t just read the news articles and call it a day). Spend about an hour on these readings. The goal is to start seeing (a) how researchers design and publish the primary work that lets us have more meta/synthetic works like Proust and the Squid and The Midnight Disease and (b) other related topics that might interest you or spark further interests that you’d like to chase down later in the term.

  5. Return to your field notebooks for just 5-10 minutes of quick-sketch notes. How has looking at those additional sources started to shift or intensify your thinking on literacy and cognition? What 2-4 additional questions most interest you right now?





For Friday, 9/4:

  1. Read Proust and the Squid, Part II. Recommended strategy:

    • Skim Ch. 4.

    • Read Ch. 5 pretty carefully.

    • Read Ch. 6 as carefully as you have time left for.

    • DO read the intros & conclusions in all chapters, and study the diagrams a bit.

  2. Read The Midnight Disease, as noted below. Recommended strategy:

    • Skim the Introduction.

    • Skim Chs. 1-4 as desired.

    • Read Ch. 5—

      • Skim pgs. 149-161.

      • Focus on reading from “Reading and Writing” on p. 162-182.

  3. Bring your brain modeling materials again, for synapses and follow-up on the major structures.



For Wednesday, 9/2:

  • Watch this video—mostly from 3:02-5:36 (to see the dynamic model of the reading brain, and another way to label the reading circuit—also to see Stanislas Dehaene, who is one of today’s foremost researchers in literacy and cognition)

  • Watch “Directional Terms in Neuroscience”

  • Also, just start by knowing that

  • Explore these resources to help you start to get more of a feel for the brain:

  • Review Part I of Proust and the Squid, based on Monday’s class discussion. In your field notebooks, just list every part of the brain you see Wolf mention—the name and function, if you can identify both, and the page number where you found this in the book. (For example: the angular gyrus, the “association area of the association areas,” pp. 30, 183.) Note any places where you’re confused or find information missing.
    *Optional for now: Sketch a “blank” brain (right and left hemispheres) and label the parts for yourself, to help you start to build a mental map.

  • Bring your brain modeling materials—basically, 8 colors of Play Doh + toothpicks, along with some paper and something to write with.



For Monday, 8/31:

  • Read Proust and the Squid, Part I (Chs. 1-3) + Ch. 7 in Part III
    *Again, this is a lot of reading. It’s pretty read-able, but some of you will be able to read it more thoroughly than others. Aim to spend at least 90 minutes on it, more if you have time. It’s good stuff! But as a minimum, aim to (a) read the intros/conclusions of each chapter, and choose (b) 1-3 points of interest to you in each chapter.

  • Read these much shorter pieces:

  • Add at least 1 discussion question on which you’d like to hear others’ thoughts to this Google Doc.

  • Be prepared to discuss:

    • What is literacy?

    • Why so many of us prioritize it so much, for ourselves, our children, others?

    • Whatever else you and your classmates found interesting, per the Google Doc linked above.



For Friday, 8/28:

  • Submit:

    • Brief memoir

      • No particular rules—we want to capture your current sense of your self and your story of how you became the “you” of today.

      • Things that might help you:

        • Aim for just about 500-1000 words.

        • If you want to include more but are “writing away,” try listing things in bullets rather than writing them out long-form.

        • Your audience is primarily just you. You will submit these, and I will read them (they will NOT be shared among the class), but you’re mostly writing for yourself.

        • You will revisit these memoir exercises later in the term.

        • Keep in mind that a “memoir” is different than a “biography”—a biography typically starts around your birth and follows the important parts of your life in a linear way; a memoir tells a story about your life, usually focusing on one particular theme and therefore drawing on related threads throughout that story. One person may thus easily write multiple memoirs, though “competing” autobiographies would be odd. So just think about something you’d like to capture about yourself and write about how that thing has surfaced/developed through some key memories.

  • Read (or read through!):

    • excerpts from Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
      *This is a LONG excerpt. I recommend setting a time limit for yourself (probably an hour) and (a) reading the intros to each of the 2 chapters—the first is on oral thinking; the second is on literate thinking—then skimming the chapters for main points. Choose a couple of points from each chapter that you find interesting. You can also refer to the slide

  • Listen to “Who Am I?” from RadioLab

  • Watch “After watching this, your brain will not be the same,” Lara Boyd

  • Watch "How language shapes the way we think,” Lera Boroditsky

  • Be ready to discuss:

    • Key differences between oral and literate thinking, per Ong (you’re welcome to refer to the summary slide from Wednesday’s class (slide 15), but also to go beyond those summary points, as you have time)

    • Key ways in LANGUAGE shapes our minds/perceptions (per Boroditsky)

    • Bringing it together: what overlaps are you seeing in terms of identity, literacy, and cognition so far? What are the 2-3 biggest questions YOU have currently about literacy and cognition?

  • Recommended NOT required: