Agenda+-+Day+Four

Introductory Comments, Logistics, Etc.

Activity One: The Opinion Essay (Due next week - Feb. 19)
 * Titles from past seminars:
 * War and Hypocrisy
 * War, an Inevitable Evil?
 * Long Distance Killing
 * Global War on Terror
 * Recovery of Memory
 * Viral War
 * Displacing the Effects of War
 * Football is a Sport That Gives Us Meaning
 * Rosie is a Myth
 * National Identity in Times of War
 * Toxic Patriotism
 * Summer Vacation for a Palestinian Family
 * Warped Humanity
 * War and Evolution
 * The Ideal Soldier
 * Divide and Conquer in Venezuela
 * When War is Really the Last Option
 * Deep Folly, the Mutilation of Hector
 * Maslow and the Ideologues
 * Keeping the Soldier's Humanity, How?
 * Justifying Murder in Star Wars
 * New Mexico, Sacrificed to the War Machine


 * Brief review questions
 * What is an opinion?
 * What is an essay?

Activity Two: A Context for Appreciating the war ditties that accompany each class:
 * Sorts of songs
 * Anthem - a  rousing or uplifting song identified with a particular group, body, or cause.
 * Dirge - a lament for the dead
 * Ballad - a song that tells a story, often "objective" or so posing, allowing the listener to draw judgements and conclusions
 * Propaganda song - a song that spins facts and mixes them with fabrications to further a particular agenda
 * Solidarity song - a song that exists solely to excite pleasure within the group (example sports "fight" songs)
 * Often the social context of songs provides the deeper meanings

Example from past weeks Ottorbourne, Zombie, Sinclair's Defeat

Foggy Dew: media type="file" key="Wolfe Tones - The Foggy Dew .mp3" width="240" height="20"

vs a song that addresses the same conflict.

The Patriot Game: media type="file" key="10.The Patriot Game.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Break:

Activity Three: Narratives from Chris Hedges Book:
// “Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.” // (Sylvia Plath)


 * Hedges book is filled with stories, narratives. As a reporter, he was always on the lookout for stories. Some stories he would sent on in the the New York Times, his paper for publication as a war reporter. The purpose of these war coorespondences was to give readers a true and immediate picture of what was going on in the war zone. But as Hedges pointed out, the reporters and paper also often had the agenda of supporting the war effort. In this book, the stories do not have this agenda. In this book the stories are included to dramatize or clarify a point that Hedges is making. They also impart a compelling emotional depth to the points that Hedges is making about war.


 * Choose a story that stands out in your memory of the reading
 * find and re-read it
 * take notes amounting to about 150 words addressing:
 * The point the story is inserted to dramatize or clarify
 * your view on how effective the story is
 * your reaction to the story
 * In the group discussion, use what you have written as a starting place
 * In the re-assembled seminar group, we will discuss narratives, their power and utility.