Author: Professor Sean Scanlan (Page 1 of 4)

NOTE: There will be a pop quiz on Monday. Please review the five types of ethics, the empathy handout, “Assimilation,” and “The Interpreter of Maladies.” If students read the stories with care and know the ethics and empathy handout, they should get 100% on this quiz. This quiz is not mean to punish or trick; it is meant to encourage everyone to keep up.

Agenda:

—Empathy handout

—Discuss “Assimilation”

—Discuss vocabulary:

Five-part reading tool (1-5)

6-symbol

7-metaphor

8-style

9-structure

10-focalizer: the person or entity who is seeing or visualizing the scene; this person or entity is not always the narrator–it is often a character.

11-focal distance (1. distance between focalizer and action, or 2. distance between the narrator and the focalizer)

12-horizon of expectations

                     The “continuous establishing and altering of horizons,” urges the literary critic Jans Robert Jauss in Theory of Aesthetic Reception (1982):

determines the relationship of the individual text to the succession of texts that forms the genre. The new text evokes for the reader (listener) the horizon of expectations and rules familiar from earlier texts, which are then varied, corrected, altered, or even just reproduced . . . the question of the subjectivity of the interpretation and of the taste of different readers or levels of readers can be asked meaningfully only when one has first clarified which trans-subjective horizon of understanding conditions the influence of the text. (23)

Homework for Monday, Nov 25: Read “The Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, and in your notes, write down how ethics and empathy work.

Agenda

1. 5 types of Ethics
2. Quiz 3
3. Discussion

Homework Due Wednesday:

Read and take notes on “Assimilation” by E.L. Doctorow.

My handout on conditional sentences:

The Conditional Sentence

Agenda:

–Freewrite

–Story/Narrative vocabulary

–Read and discuss “The Captive” and “The Lottery” in terms of the Five-Part Reading Tool

Homework due Monday, Nov 18: Read “Thank you, Ma’am” and “The Veldt.” Prepare for Quiz 3 which will cover conditional sentences and three short stories: “The Lottery,” “Thank you Ma’am,” and “The Veldt.”

Note: Sorry, but I have to cancel Tuesday’s office hours. If you have questions, please see me before class, after class, or email me.

Agenda:

—Finish up presentations

—Discuss what went well and not so well in terms of the PSA project

—Begin our third unit: Ethics and the Short Story

— Important definitions: short story, novella, novel, narrative, story, narrator

*5-Part-Reading-Tool-Scanlan-Updated

Getting started: One of the most important questions in this unit will be: what is a story and what is a narrative? How can we define it? What does Wikipedia say?

A short story is an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)

Let’s read this very short story by Jose Luis Borges:

The Captive

by Jose Luis Borges [published 1960]

The story is told in Junín or in Tapalquén. A boy disappeared after an Indian attack. People said the Indians had kidnapped him. His parents searched for him in vain. Then, long years later, a soldier who came from the interior told them about an Indian with blue eyes who might well be their son. At length they found him (the chronicle has lost the circumstances and I will not invent what I do not know) and thought they recognized him. The man, buffeted by the wilderness and by barbaric life, no longer knew how to understand the words of his mother tongue, but indifferent and docile, he let himself be led home. There he stopped, perhaps because the others stopped. He looked at the door as if he did not know what it was for. Then suddenly he lowered his head, let out a shout, ran across the entrance way and the two long patios, and plunged into the kitchen. Without hesitating, he sank his arm into the blackened chimney and pulled out the little horn-handled knife he had hidden there as a boy. His eyes shone with joy and his parents wept because they had found their son.

Perhaps this recollection was followed by others, but the Indian could not live within walls, and one day he went in search of his wilderness. I wonder what he felt in that dizzying moment when past and present became one. I wonder whether the lost son was reborn and died in that instant of ecstasy; and whether he ever managed to recognize, if only as an infant or a dog does, his parents and his home.

 

Source: Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley. Penguin, 1998, p 300.

Homework due Wednesday, Nov 13: Read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson [find this story in the “Readings” menu tab] and in your notes, write down the relevant five parts of this story: character, setting, plot, narration/narrator, style/structure/symbols/metaphors

Hello Class,

Today is mini-presentation day. Please arrive on time and pay attention to your classmates.

Homework due Monday, Nov 11: if you have not finished your PSA project, then you must email me today (Wednesday, Nov 6). If you have posted all of the parts to the PSA project, then you do not have any homework due Monday.

NOTE: All work for the PSA project is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday 11/6. Late points will be deducted beginning at 2:30 pm. Each day that an assignment is late, 10% will be deducted (see my syllabus for more information on late work).

Hello Students!

This is the final week of our PSA Project!

Each student will present on Wednesday. I would like you to present the following information: Key Question; Final PSA; What I learned; Reference reflection; Aha moment.

To make this presentation easier, I recommend using ChattyT! That is my nickname for ChatGPT. Here are some instructions on how to speed up the process. Remember, you will be graded on what you learned. If you read from your notecard, you will not receive many points.

I would like you to condense my PSA project into a 3-4 minute spoken presentation. I will need your summary to do the following: It needs to be detailed and specific. And it needs to pinpoint four things:

#1–my Key Question

#2–my final PSA

#3–what I learned

#4–and finally, provide information on the three best references from my project and relate how they are useful to readers.

Here is my full PSA project:

—Full project goes here—

You will get a response, that, when read, may come to about 3:42 seconds (mine did).

Lastly: Aha moment. After these prompts, after the summary response from ChatGPT, what did you learn? Go one more level. Do not use AI for this last part. Here is my Aha moment:

#5: My Aha moment occurred after I read over ChattyT’s three references and the summaries of them. I learned something obvious, but it was not obvious earlier. I realized two things: first, my references were really key to making this project better, and I still didn’t take the lesson to heart…I should have added quotes from Gupta and Yong especially into the body of my PSA. Second, I should have highlighted living heroes that students (my audience) may not have heard about. Uggh, I should have deleted Aphrodite and Circe and made the PSA modern and relatable…I should have talked about Anna May Wong.

What makes a good presentation?

How do I perform a good short presentation?

Hi Class,

Agenda,

1–Conditional Sentence (for Call to action)

Example: If you are a sound engineer and want to use AI to create a soundscape for a short film, then you will benefit by adhering to the four bullet points above. Key point: don’t steal voices!

Example: Adhere to the four bullet points in this AI safety poster if you want to succeed in the sound engineering field. And remember: don’t steal voices!

2–Peer Review

3–In-class work on revising and presentation (what have you learned)

Homework Due Monday, Nov 4:

Post the following:

The five pieces of the Final PSA:

 1. Title

2. Key Question

3. Body Text—make sure to highlight your additions/changes from initial draft using a different color. See Prof. Scanlan’s example

4. Call to Action

5. Reading list of 3-5 APA Style cornerstone citations particular to your own PSA

If you have time, draft the following:

• Reflection essay of 400-600 words that addresses these questions:

• What did you learn?

• What was the easiest and the hardest part of this project?

• What would you do if you had another week?

• How have your views on Generative AI changed during this project?

• Post complete APA References

Hi Class,

Agenda,

1–Class discussion of final two weeks of PSA project

2–Review instructions

3–In-class work on revising and presentation (what have you learned)

Easy to Hard:

Title

Key Question

Refine your PSA

• • Call to action

Iterate your prompt to get a better PSA from AI

Work on the comparison essay (see my example)

References–Do you have a solid cornerstone article to draw facts from: “According to Smith and Jones (2013), never trust scientific facts derived from ChatGPT. I would go even further…

Final Reflection essay: see my example

Homework Due Wednesday, October 30:

Post the following:

1–If you have not done so already, please post your Week 3 Reflection Essay (see instructions)

How do I register for the New York Times Digital Online Access?

https://libanswers.citytech.cuny.edu/how/faq/378878

Hi Class,

Agenda,

1–A strategy for composing your PSA: find and use one awesome article as the cornerstone

2–One-on-one conferences

Homework Due Monday, October 28:

Post the following:

1–Your own PSA

2–AI rewrite of your PSA for a different audience

3–AI rewrite of your PSA for a different audience

4–300 word reflection essay based on the differences and similarities of the three PSAs.

5–Make sure to add essential articles to your reference list as you find awesome articles. Please proofread and edit your work

Hi Class,

Agenda,

1–Freewrite–how is it going?

2–Discuss Jill Lapore’s article

Academic summary:

1–Author’s thesis (name and title)

2—Author’s more specific thesis

3—Author’s style, structure, and examples

4—Author’s conclusion

3–Discuss PSA projects. Where are you and what do you need to do?

4–Next steps for PSA project: writing the first draft (do you have a title and question?)

5–In-Class work

Homework: Post your Title and PSA draft to your project page by class time on Wednesday, October 23. See my example for layout suggestions.