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Archive for August, 2006

August 30, 2006

Lesson Plan:Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

August 30th 2006 Posted to Teaching Immigration Issues, UCSB Courses, Lesson Plans, English 104A, Latino / Latina American, Literature, Biography

borderlands-book.jpgAnzaldúa’s book is theoretical, political, poetical, and personal. Writing about external, communal, and individual borderlands from a position on, around, and between those borders, Anzaldúa subversively advocates a political mobilization around the “mestiza consciousness,” for only multiplicity—internal as well as external—can break down the “subject-object duality that keeps her [one] a prisoner” (80). Anzaldúa identifies herself as a Chicana lesbian feminist from the tejas-Mexican border, and she writes of the contradictions and coalitions she must negotiate between these multiple identities. Her gender and sexuality, for example, are at odds with patriarchal culture, but she inhabits these contradictory positions tactically. (Read the article)

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August 28, 2006

The Stories of Maxine Hong Kingston Interview

August 28th 2006 Posted to English 104A, Asian American, Film

The Stories of Maxine Hong Kingston - imageThis new PBS Video offering is appealing on a variety of levels. It offers a portrait of Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the two nonfictional works, The Woman Warrior and China Men, and Tripmaster Monkey (her first novel). The first half-hour of the tape focuses on the autobiographical influences in Hong Kingston’s writing, such as her poet-father, her early feminist anger, and so on. Bill Moyers introduces the author, stating that her books are currently “the most widely taught on any American campus, more than any other American author.” It is on this note that Hong Kingston begins to elaborate upon one of the main themes in her writing, the portrayal of the Chinese-American experience as a facet of the total American experience. She finds that the tendency to view Chinese culture as “exotic” denies “mystery” to others, and that the issues raised in her writings transcend the specifics of her heritage and apply to many ethnic groups. Thus, the program also speaks to the richness that the many groups in the American “melting pot” have brought to this country’s culture as each has found what Hong Kingston calls their “voice” - the music of African Americans, for example - or the playful, fun-loving “monkey spirit” that the Chinese have introduced to balance Puritan seriousness. (Read the article)

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Maria Full of Grace (Maria llena eres de gracia) (2004)

August 28th 2006 Posted to Teaching Immigration Issues, Lesson Plans, English 104A, Latino / Latina American, Film

maria-full-of-grace.jpgWinner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is one young woman’s journey from a small Colombian town to the streets of New York. A bright, spirited 17-year old, Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) lives with three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural Colombia and works stripping thorns from flowers in a rose plantation. The offer of a lucrative job involving travel—in fact, becoming a drug “mule”—changes the course of her life. Far from the uneventful trip she is promised, Maria is transported into the risky and ruthless world of international drug trafficking. Her mission becomes one of determination and survival and she finally emerges with the grace that will carry her forward into a new life. Directed by Joshua Marston. In Spanish, with English sub-titles. An HBO films / Fine Line Features release.

From: “Synopsis,” HBO Films / Fine Line Features. http://www.mariafullofgrace.com/index.html (Read the article)

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104A Course Syllabus

August 28th 2006 Posted to Syllabi, English 104A

This is a link to a course syllabus for English 104A, American Literature from 1900 to present. Designed by Professor Yunte Huang, this course is a survey of twentieth-century American literature with emphases on pluralism, bilingualism, migration, translation, media, and avant-gardism. It presents a picture of American literature rooted in the translocal and translingual, a literature that is not confined to national, cultural, or linguistic boundaries.

Yunte Huang’s 104A Syllabus

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August 27, 2006

Philip Kan Gotanda’s The Wash

August 27th 2006 Posted to UCSB Courses, English 50, Asian American, Film

the-wash.jpgPhilip Kan Gotanda’s play The Wash tells the story of a newly-separated Nisei couple, Nobu and Masi, and their individual and collective struggles with their traditional past. While Masi is able to move on and begins dating the widower Sadao, Nobu is forced to confront his traumatic memories of the internment camps. The Wash was first performed as a play in 1985. Gotanda then wrote the screenplay for the 1988 independent film version.

In teaching this text as part of a course on Asian American literature, it is useful to present both versions and ask the students to consider the differences and benefits of each version. The following discussion questions were designed to follow a two-part assignment in which students were asked to read the play and view the film. (Read the article)

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August 26, 2006

Between the Lines Documentary

August 26th 2006 Posted to UCSB Courses, English 50, Asian American, Film

between.jpgBetween the Lines is a 60-minute documentary film featuring interviews with over fifteen Asian-Pacific-American women Poets. This 2001 film by Yunah Hong is organized around topics such as Immigration, Language, Memory, Family, Spirituality, Reaching Out, and What it Means to Write. Each segment contains poetry readings as well as candid testimonials from the poets on subjects such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and aesthetics. The documentary combines archival images with artistic cinematography to lend a cohesive visual interpretation to each poet’s words. Poets featured in the film include (among others) Shirley Lim, Marilyn Chin, Cathy Song, Mitsuye Yamada, Myung Kim, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Meena Alexander, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Barbara-Michelle Tran, Patricia Ikeda, Lori Tsang, and Kimiko Hahn. The film was screened at the Chicago Asian American Film Festival, the Toronto International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Not Hollywood: A Feminist Film Festival, Vermont Women’s Film Festival, and Seoul Women’s Film Festival. It won the CINE Golden Eagle Award in Non-Broadcast. For more information on this film and its distribution, visit Women Make Movies. (Read the article)

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August 24, 2006

Writing 2 Syllabus

August 24th 2006 Posted to Syllabi, Writing 2

This is a sample Writing 2 Syllabus, designed and taught by Eric Martinsen. Writing 2 is the only course required of all undergraduates at UCSB. It not only provides students with a fundamental understanding of academic writing but also helps them with their reading and critical thinking skills. The course addresses the differences in reading, writing, and critical thinking among the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. This year, Writing 2 classes will be using a new textbook, Writing About the World, edited by Susan McLeod, John Jarvis and Shelley Spear. This book provides a wealth of primary source material while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of multiple perspectives as well as racial and cultural diversity. Eric Martinsen’s unit on “Indigenous Identity in Film” is an example of how issues of race can be integrated into a Writing 2 course.

Eric Martinson’s Writing 2 Syllabus

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August 23, 2006

Langston Hughes Web Resources

August 23rd 2006 Posted to English 104A, External Resources for Teachers, African American

Modern American Poetry Site
This site, edited by Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is a an online companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000). It includes a biography, criticism and several of Hughes’ poems and writings.

The Academy of American Poets
This site includes a biography, several of Hughes’ poems and related prose.

Yale New Haven Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit
This curriculum unit, compiled by G. Casey Cassidy, includes an extensive biography and a long bibliography (both for teachers and students), but includes only a few suggested in-class activities. It is geared towards grades 7-12.

Internet School Library Media Center
This is a teacher resource file for the Langston Hughes. It includes biographies, lesson plans and useful links.

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August 22, 2006

Lesson Plan: “Lullaby” by Leslie Marmon Silko

August 22nd 2006 Posted to Lesson Plans, English 104A, Native American, Literature

Background:

storyteller_2.jpg“Lullaby” is a short story from Silko’s 1981 novel Storyteller. As Linda Krumholtz writes,

“Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller is a collection of stories that is also a highly self-conscious consideration of the process of storytelling, an exploration into the ways the Laguna Pueblo society creates meaning and, subsequently, the ways cultures in general create meaning. Storyteller is a distinctively ‘readerly’ text: the many stories, poems, and photographs are gathered into an apparently random ‘scrapbook’ form, and it is left to the reader to construct connections between them. Storyteller is also a multicultural or cross-cultural text in which European-style short stories and traditional Laguna stories, ‘realistic’ fictional characters, traditional characters (such as Yellow Woman, Coyote, and Spiderwoman), and Silko’s family members are all brought together… (Read the article)

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Leslie Marmon Silko

August 22nd 2006 Posted to English 104A, Native American, Biography

“It’ssilkolesliemarmon.jpg stories that make this a community,” Leslie Marmon Silko has remarked about the Native American world of the Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, in which she grew up, and in five books—Laguna Women (1974), Ceremony (1977), Storyteller (1981), Almanac of the Dead (1991), and Yellow Woman (1993)—she has told and retold the tales that, she believes, make her people who they are. Of mixed Native American, Mexican, and Caucasian descent, Leslie Marmon attended Bureau of Indian Affairs schools at Laguna until entering high school, then studied at the University of New Mexico and later matriculated in law school before deciding to do graduate work in English and devote herself to a literary career. Divorced from John Silko, she has taught at Navajo Community College in Arizona and at the University of New Mexico, is the mother of two sons, and has been the recent recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her ceremonial impulse to tell stories that are both self-defining and celebratory of her community has issued in an art that employs many forms: poetry, short stories, legendary tales, a novel, and most recently, film scripts.

From: The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton & Co., 1985. 2327-8 (Read the article)

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