Lesson plan for week 9: general thoughts and notes

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 133TL, Prof. Huang
7 March 2012

Major topics:

1. Thought for the day:

   "Placing biological life at the center of its calculations, the modern State therefore does nothing other than bring to light the secret tie uniting power and bare life." -Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 6.

2. Administrative issues:
   • My office hours on Thurs., 8 Mar, will be from 12:30 to 1:30 instead of the regular time.
3. How to prepare for a junior-level English final? A few suggestions …
   • Make sure that you can associate names of authors with what they've written. It's likely that this, by itself, will pick you up a point here and there.
   • For each text on the syllabus, be sure that you can summarize its story (if it is a narrative text) and/or its argument (if it is an argumentative text). Being able to recognize characteristics of a poet's "voice" and textual style will likely be helpful, as well.
   • Be aware that anything listed on the syllabus is fair game for the final.
   • Be able to associate names of major characters with the author/title of various works. Understand how the characters in a given work relate to each other.
   • Read back over your lecture notes and look for recurring themes. Be able to associate individual works with these themes.
   • Make sure that you understand vocabulary introduced to discuss new concepts.
   • Review the quotes that have come up in lecture, and understand how they relate to particular works and the broader narratives of course concerns.
4. Questions for discussion:
   1. The "Instructions to All Persons" section of Inada's Legends From Camp (5-6; reader 77-8) re-uses language from the declaration "Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry." In what ways does Inada alter the source text? What is included in his repetition, and what is excluded? In what ways is the overall effect of the language changed?
   2. Speaking about the Japanese occupation of Korea, Theresa Cha claims that "[t]o the others, these accounts are about (one more) distant land, like (any other) distant land, without any discernible features in the narrative, (all the same) distant like any other" (33; reader 94). Is it true that our world is so saturated with stories of horror and atrocity that they all fade into background noise? If this is the case, what is the point of the testimony that Cha offers?
   3. Think about the general trajectories that we have traced regarding colonization this quarter. In what ways does discussing the Japanese colonization of Korea fit in with these patterns? In what ways does it disrupt them?