American Carnival

Here’s what we decided:

Nothing’s due next week but Chapters 6 and 7 should begin writing in earnest, using the drafts of the previous chapters to guide the progress of the novel. As 6 and 7 take shape, it’s fine for 1-5 to go back and tweak what they’ve written. The final version of each chapter is due on 12/7 and your team should feel free to continue working on it over the next few weeks.

History Lab #6 (Film) will be due the week of Thanksgiving, on Tues 11/23.

It will now be worth 10 points instead of 5. Each of the prior History Labs will now get an additional 3 points added on, making them worth 8 each.

By the way: here are some additional resources for History Lab #6 -

A partial list of film terms, with visual examples of what they mean (DePauw University)
“How to Read a Film” (Rutgers University)
“Writing About Film” (Dartmouth Writing Program)

Your Barnum Chapter becomes your final project, worth 15 points of the final grade. I will give both partners the same grade for that final project, unless you feel the workload has been very unequal, in which case, please write me a letter explaining why you would be uncomfortable with both partners getting the same grade and I will consider what you have to say.

There will still be a (short) end-of-term reflection paper, which was to have been part of the final project; I’ll give out guidelines for that after the Thanksgiving break.

I will update the calendar to reflect that the Barnum book will be the focus of our second-to-last class, which means we will end with a look at Woodstock (and other -Stocks and -Paloozas) as a feature of American popular culture in the late 20th century.

This week and next week we’re reading Sara Gruen’s novel, Water for Elephants.

• We’re mining it for ideas on how to construct a successful historical novel
• We’re looking at it for what we can learn about circuses in the 1930s
• We’re critiquing her research and her writing, weighing how aesthetically successful & historically authentic the novel is

Along the way, you’re working on History Lab #5 using this novel, possibly taking up one of the suggested questions for analysis, or developing your own question on a historical aspect of the book.

Finally, we’re making progress on our own novel–especially on the early chapters, perhaps putting our “idle” writers to work as researchers for the “active” writers & reversing those roles when the early chapters are done. We’ve created a character who’s a foil to P. T. Barnum, a fire-juggler and beloved comic performer, a veteran of the Crimean War from St. Petersburg named Dimitri Tarsov, stage name “Tosser.”