Lesson Plan for Week 8: General Thoughts and Notes

Wherever you are, even in California, nothing is more demoralizing than being there and nowhere else. One of the pleasures of travel is to dive into places where others are compelled to live and come out unscathed, full of the malicious pleasure of abandoning them to their fate. Even their local happiness seems tuned to a secret resignation. It never compares, at least, with the freedom to leave. This is when you sense that it is not enough to be alive; you have to go through life. It isn't enough to have seen a town; you have to have gone through it. With an idea, it isn't sufficient to have thought it; you have to have gone beyond.

—Jean Baudrilliard, Cool Memories II: 1987-1990, p. 43

• Those reading Gone Girl should email Professor Newfield so that he can keep track of those who are reading it.
  • Just for the sake of clarity: though Professor Newfield described the Gone Girl meeting as a section, those attending it should still attend their regular section next week.
• Distribution of fiction-grading rubric. Questions? Discussion?
• Return and discussion of quiz 2. Some observations:
  • Not reading carefully hurt some people on question 2.
  • Getting full credit on the short-answer question required that you recognize the key phrase in the question, which was causes of noir, as referring to the specific items that Professor Newfield has repeatedly referred to throughout his February lectures. The list that he has developed so far in lecture is:
    1. War come home
    2. Loss repressed, unprocessed
    3. Gangster democracy (lordship/bondage)
    4. Legacies of slavery
    5. Monopoly capital
    6. Psychosis

    Talking about the excerpt from the article by identifying two of these and explaining how they were at play in the article excerpt on the screen earned you two points, plus up to one more point for how perceptive and fair you were to the issues identified by the article itself. If you did not identify two items off this list, but instead talked about other things, then you probably only got 1½ to 2 points, even if you were largely correct, unless you were very very impressive in some way.

• You should watch Ghost Dog before lecture on Tuesday 4 March, if you have not already done so.

• Take about seven minutes to summarize, as accurately as possible, the main points of lecture on Tuesday 25 February, making reference to the examples that were used to illustrate them.