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.

Sure enough, as Derek mentioned today in class, Erik Larson’s book Devil in the White City is being made into a movie, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Holmes. Some links about it:

A movie-blog post about the news (RopeOfSilicon.com)
Deadline New York news release (which mentions that Tom Cruise had optioned the book in 2003)
and a fantasy-casting post from Chicago Now speculating on who else would be good in the main roles

All this talk of Hollywood and films reminds me that your last History Lab #6 is how to critically read a film – due Tues 11/16 Tues 11/23. You have done some of this kind of detailed visual analysis in Professor Yang’s class also, and now you get to put those skills to use doing a critical “deep reading” of a film scene and reflect on how a film might be useful as a historical source. Which film is up to you, but it should (of course) relate to the theme of the course. I’ve put a list of suggestions on the Labs page, and have requested the one that our university owns to be put on reserve, but you will likely have better luck with getting the films from your own sources (Blockbuster, Netflix, public library loan) which means you need to plan ahead and allow time to view the film. Probably view it several times, actually. You can watch the film in groups, if you so choose, but if more than one person uses the same film you’ll need to choose different scenes to use in your paper.