Hi class,

A note regarding your homework for next week:

1. There’s no class on Monday, but the electronic copy of Essay 1 is due online by 4 pm.  Please note that late papers will either suffer grade penalties or will not be read at all.
2. For class on Wednesday, we are beginning a new unit, comparing and contrasting two stories from different time periods and traditions, addressing similar topics.  Please read “The Management of Grief,” formulating questions, to guide your reading, based on the first few paragraphs of the story. We have done this a couple times now in class, and cannot afford to keep spending time going over what we have already covered.  Come prepared to share these questions with the class on Wednesday. (30-45 mins)
3. You should also have your physical copy of Essay 1 ready to turn in at the beginning of class on Wednesday.  This copy should be identical to the one you turn in on Monday.  In other words, please finish the essay on schedule, so that you can devote Monday and Tuesday night to reading and responding to “The Management of Grief” (a 10 page story, for the record).
4. Group 2 is scheduled to post about “The Management of Grief” on Wednesday.  Using your chosen questions, write a Connect, Create, or Clue blog that comments on the interplay between any two Elements in the story.  This can be a passage that offers a clue to understanding how the plot shapes your understanding of the characters; or a passage that reminds you of another story where the style shapes your experience of the plot; or maybe a passage that inspires you to write the same moment from another character’s point of view (say, Judith Templeton).  As usual, blog entries are due by 5 pm Tuesday and comments by 10 am Wednesday.

This is a long weekend, but if you have been already writing the essay and preparing for it, it should not be onerous.  We are reaching the 6 week mark in this class, and my hope is that our classes will continue to be productive and lively.

I have noticed a drop in preparation, which has affected how much ground we’re able to cover.  (Today, for example, we weren’t able to talk about the interplay between elements – because we took so long talking about questions raised by the introduction, and because our discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s non-fiction essay was much more prolonged than it needed to be).  Your decisions have consequences, good and bad, for the whole class!  Please keep this in mind.

I look forward to reading the essays and to discussing Mukherjee’s story on Wednesday’s class.