Core Readings and Student Choice
The WHY: As a class, we must choose two of four required Bard Seminar texts to read this semester.
Instructions:
Count off 1-2-3-4 around the room.
Move chairs to sit together as a team (everyone needs their notebook and writing utensil)
As a team, choose ONE of the four texts described in the following pages.
As a team, write a script for a 1-2 minute (150 - 300 words) commercial that persuades the audience to choose your text. Each team member must have a version of this script hand-written in their notebook.
[DAY 2] Perform your commercial (think of it as a skit or mini-play). Everyone on your team must be an active participant.
We vote as a class (open or closed vote).
The top two teams win extra credit points for one assignment during their chosen text’s unit.
The HOW:
Think about the overall idea of your chosen text.
Think about the overall goal of Bard Writing and Thinking (what you learned during the first week of school).
Look at persuasion as a transfer of feeling from you to the audience. For example, if you were writing a car commercial and the angle is being able to take your Toyota out there to the countryside, then you are selling a feeling of freedom and adventure.
Write to what freedom and adventure feel like (I find it helpful to think of it as a 5 min Focused Free Write).
BY...
Rough drafting words, tones, thoughts, etc.… anything that feels like those feelings.
Then think about the point-of-view (POV) of the voiceover: who is talking and where are they talking to you from? Is it a cowboy on the ranch looking into the fire? Or is it a mom living out a dream to see the world with her family?
Then take that voice, take those rough draft thoughts, and start writing from their POV all in service of that feeling. Write what is inside them and how they are feeling about what Toyota can do for them. (as opposed to writing what Toyota would say about how they are feeling... BIG difference here and a lot of commercials take the latter approach and it always comes out flat.
DO. NOT. EDIT. while writing out all the rough stuff.
It will be unpolished and “ugly writing.” That is OK. Just keep writing.
You typically need 3x more words than the “required amount” to be able to edit well.
Edit from there, all while servicing the feeling. Craft your story.
Student Choice Readings
We have to come to an agreement on which readings we will choose as a group, rather than as individual students.
Student Choice #1
Title: Bible, Genesis
Description:
Genesis (6th-5th century BCE) tells the Judeo-Christian story of creation, G-d, and G-d’s foundational relationships with human beings. Traditionally, the biblical patriarch Moses was given credit for composing Genesis. Today, biblical scholars tend to agree that the work is a careful synthesis of multiple writers’ stories, religious instruction, and genealogies. Students may be familiar with the work, but approaching it from an academic perspective can be jarring. I have found that having a frank conversation about the text’s cultural status at the beginning of the unit can help make everyone more comfortable and conversations more productive.
Excerpt:
[1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
[1:2] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
[1:3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
[1:4] And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
[1:5] God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[1:6] And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."
[1:7] So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.
[1:8] God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
[1:9] And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.
[1:10] God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
[1:11] Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so.
[1:12] The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.
[1:13] And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
[1:14] And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,
[1:15] and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so.
Student Choice #2
Title: The Odyssey
Description:
During the age when The Odyssey took form, near the end of the eighth century b.c., the Greeks were voyaging into the world once again after a period of dark decline. They were setting up colonies and resuming the trade that had been interrupted by whatever cataclysmic forces—invasions, rebellions, pestilence, natural disasters—brought down the Bronze Age civilizations of Minoa and Mycenae. Yet the spirit of the second Homeric epic is wary. The Odyssey tells of a weary man’s fight for survival in the face of threatening Others who can never share his view of the world or take his interests to heart. Odysseus’s return to his island, however, is not the end of his woes. He finds that 108 young men from the local vicinity have invaded his house to put pressure on his wife Penelope to marry one of them. A stalemate exists, and it is only resolved by a bow contest at the end of the poem, which then leads to a slaughter of all the suitors by Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Peace on the island is eventually restored through the intervention of Athena, goddess of wisdom, victory and war. The quest of Odysseus to get back to his island and eject the suitors is built on the power of his love for home and family. This notion of love conquering fear and hatred is a common theme in Greek quest mythology.
Excerpt:
At dawn the swineherd and Odysseus
made breakfast, lit the fire, and sent the herdsmen
out with the pigs that they had rounded up.
The dogs, that as a rule would bark at strangers,
were quiet when they saw Telemachus;
they panted at him. When Odysseus
saw how they acted, and heard footsteps coming,
he said,
“Eumaeus, someone must be coming—
a friend or somebody you know—the dogs
are friendly, with no barking. I can hear
footsteps.”
He hardly finished, when his son,
his own dear son, was there inside the gate.
Amazed, the swineherd jumped up, letting fall
the cups in which he had been mixing wine;
it spilled. He ran towards his master, kissed
his face and shining eyes and both his hands,
and wept.
Student Choice #3
Title: The Bhagavad-Gita
Description:
The Bhagavad Gita (“Song of God” or “Song of the Lord”) is among the most important religious texts of Hinduism and easily the best known. It has been quoted by writers, poets, scientists, theologians, and philosophers – among others – for centuries and is often the introductory text to Hinduism for a Western audience.
Circa 3000 BCE, cousins went to war over who would inherit a kingdom. Because the dispute was within a large, ancient family, the opposing armies comprised relatives, teachers, leaders, and friends. Arjuna was a master archer and renowned warrior—he was the one who would lead his side to war. His childhood friend Lord Krishna agreed to be Arjuna's charioteer. As Arjuna charged into battle, he became greatly dismayed, seeing so many people he loved on both sides of the valley. In an act of compassion, Lord Krishna froze time. There, in the chariot on the battlefield, with the armies before and behind them, the instruction of the Bhagavad Gita takes place, in the form of an open discussion between Arjuna and the great god Krishna.
Excerpt:
Said Arjuna:
I do not wish to kill my relatives, spiritual leaders, and friends, even though they stand ready to kill me. I desire neither victory, nor pleasure, nor kingdom. For what is the use of a kingdom, or enjoyment, or even life when all those for whom we desire kingdom, enjoyment, and pleasure are here in this battle, ready to give up their lives?
Lord Krishna replied:
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There was never a time you or I did not exist, nor shall we ever cease to exist in the future. The Spirit is neither born nor does it die; it is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. After the death of the body, the Spirit is reborn in a new body until Self-Realization is attained. Death is certain for the one who is born, and birth is certain for the one who dies. Therefore, you should not lament over the inevitable but pray for Self-Realization that you may be at peace.
Simply do your duty to the best of your ability without becoming discouraged by the thought of the outcome, which may be success or failure, loss or victory. You have control over your actions, but no control or claim over the result. Fear of failure, from being emotionally attached to the fruit of work, is the greatest impediment to success because it disturbs the equanimity of the mind. A farmer is responsible for working his land, yet has no control over the harvest. But if he does not work his land, he cannot expect a harvest! By doing your duty, you will not incur Karmic bondage.
Seek this knowledge, this discipline, Arjuna. There are many paths to Me, to enlightenment and freedom . . .
Student Choice #3
Title: If Not, Winter
Description:
Sappho is no ordinary poet. For the better part of three millennia, she has been the subject of furious controversies—about her work, her family life, and, above all, her sexuality. In antiquity, literary critics praised her “sublime” style, even as comic playwrights ridiculed her allegedly loose morals. Legend has it that the early Church burned her works. Even today, experts can’t agree on whether the poems were performed in private or in public, by soloists or by choruses, or, indeed, whether they were meant to celebrate or to subvert the conventions of love and marriage.
Excerpt:
He seems to me an equal of the gods— whoever gets to sit across from you and listen to the sound of your sweet speech so close to him,
to your beguiling laughter: O it makes my panicked heart go fluttering in my chest, for the moment I catch sight of you there’s no speech left in me,
but tongue gags—: all at once a faint fever courses down beneath the skin, eyes no longer capable of sight, a thrum- ming in the ears,
and sweat drips down my body, and the shakes lay siege to me all over, and I’m greener than grass, I’m just a little short of dying, I seem to me;
but all must be endured, since even a pauper . . .
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
You came, I yearned for you, and you cooled my senses that burned with desire
love shook my senses like wind crashing on mountain oaks
Maidenhood, my maidenhood, where have you gone leaving me behind?
Never again will I come to you, never again
Once again Love, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing, seizes me.
Student Choice #4
Title: Inferno
Description:
The Divine Comedy is a long poem recounting the author’s journey among the damned in hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. Later, he is reunited with his beloved, Beatrice, who guides him up to purgatory, and then to Paradise, where, in a moment of ecstasy, Dante glimpses God. In naming his lifework Comedy, Dante employs an understanding of the word that means a narrative with a happy ending, unrelated to humor. Although it recounts an actual physical journey, The Divine Comedy is also an allegory of the soul’s progress through sin (hell), penitence (purgatory), and redemption (paradise), the last being the joyful ending promised in the title. Of the three sections, however, it is the lot of the souls in the Inferno that has had, by far, the greatest resonance with readers and artists. Peopled with figures from mythology, the Bible, and Dante’s own time, hell's descending circles (each one reserved for different sins) constitute some of the most vivid and emotionally charged scenes in world literature.
Excerpt:
Lost in a dark wood and threatened by three beasts, Dante is rescued by Virgil, who proposes a journey to the other world.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wilderness,
for I had wandered from the straight and true.
How hard a thing it is to tell about,
that wilderness so savage, dense, and harsh,
even to think of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter, death is hardly more-
but to reveal the good that came to me,
I shall relate the other things I saw.
How I had entered, I can't bring to mind,
I was so full of sleep just at that point
when I first left the way of truth behind.
But when I reached the foot of a high hill,
right where the valley opened to its end-
the valley that had pierced my heart with fear-
I raised my eyes and saw its shoulders robed
with the rays of that wandering light of Heaven°
that leads all men aright on every road.
That quieted a bit the dread that stirred
trembling within the waters of my heart
all through that night of misery I endured.
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