http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/ English 399W: Dreams en Copyright 2009 Mon, 28 May 2007 15:00:09 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw The Unconsoled?) You're all there, in two neat rows, and the graduation ceremony is about to take place. I distinctly remember Sylvia smiling this big beaming smile and Caroline looking at the stage with a very serious and concentrating expression. There is a black charcoal grill at the end of our second row, and I have the sense that the goals are already heating up. I also know that even though we're indoors, the end of the row, where the grill is, is outside. We'll pour out of our two rows straight into our party! There's one glitch. In the program, there is a listing of all the honors students who've won prizes of various sorts. At the top is a name I've never heard. I think to myself, "Did I go through two entire semesters without realizing this student was in the course? Is this possible?" I conclude that I must have and wonder what this says about me, as a teacher and a person. (I'm reading this book, What the Best College Teachers Do, and I felt it peering over my shoulder at that point.) I managed to shake off the feeling of perplexity and anxiety, and we started to file out of our rows. That's where the dreams end. ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/i_had_a_dream_about_your_gradu.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/i_had_a_dream_about_your_gradu.html Mon, 28 May 2007 15:00:09 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw CONGRATULATIONS! I said I'd post the Powerpoint slide show here, but it turns out the file is too big. If anybody wants it though, you can bring in a jump drive and I can give it to you. See you on the 25th and / or the 30th. ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/to_sleep_perchance_to_dream.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/to_sleep_perchance_to_dream.html Conference Fri, 18 May 2007 16:10:04 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Dream of Venus is still there! If you can't get there by 5, be sure you have one or two people's cell phone numbers, so you can find us. Use the comments section to let us know what you'll bring--food, drinks, cups, plates, etc. Also, if anybody has good directions to the park, it would be great if you posted those. In the meantime, here's to a smooth and productive finals week! ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/may_30_flushing_meadow_park_5.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/may_30_flushing_meadow_park_5.html Fri, 18 May 2007 16:07:14 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Hi everybody. Use the comments section to suggest ideas for our end-of-the-year party. You deserve some celebrating! Where? When? How? Share your ideas and then we'll talk about them in class. Doreen brings up the point that Friday, May 25 is Labor Day weekend. I agree with her that this won't work for our party. She suggests the Tuesday, May 22. Another possibility is May 30 (a Wednesday), the day before graduation. This might make the most sense. What do people think? Good date? Any ideas about where? Someone's apartment? A park? Somewhere in Manhattan? A bar? A restaurant? http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/celebration_its_over_or_will_b.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/celebration_its_over_or_will_b.html Conference Thu, 03 May 2007 16:43:02 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Hi everybody. Please use the comments section to tell us what food you might bring to the reception. Not everybody needs to do this, but it would be great if several of you could bring something. (Maria, that spanikopita sounds good!) http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/food_for_the_reception.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/05/food_for_the_reception.html Conference Thu, 03 May 2007 16:41:44 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw To Sleep, Perchance to Dream The Art and Theory of Dreaming A Conference Presented by the 2006-07 Cohort of Honors Students in English Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:30 - 2 Campbell Dome Click below to see preliminary role assignments for the conference. These may still shift. You may trade roles with another student, or request a change (though I can't guarantee we can make the change). Moderators should think about coming up with two-minute introductions (about a double-spaced page) to the panels. These will need to get people interested, provide some kind of context for the presentations, and introduce the speakers. They'll need to be crisp and efficient, but also substantive. Roundtable speakers will need to prepare focused three-minute presentations and choose images that will scroll behind them as they speak. The presentations should address the central question of the roundtable very directly and explicitly. Panelists will prepare five-minute presentations based on their research (and now web) projects. These presentations will also need to be focused and efficient. They should establish motive, articulate an argument or central claim very clearly, and offer one or two pieces of interesting evidence to illustrate the argument. ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_roles.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_roles.html Conference Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:07:11 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw A Conference Presented by the 2006-07 Cohort of Honors Students in English Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:30 - 2 Campbell Dome ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/to_sleep_perchance_to_dream_th.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/to_sleep_perchance_to_dream_th.html Conference Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:03:07 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Possible Time Spans 10-2 11-2 11:30-2 12-3 Last year's conference was a brisk 2 1/2 hours. There are pros and cons to this. It meant that about 9 people got to really present their work. Another 3 served as panel chairs, making introductions, etc. Another six then served on a roundtable, about film adaptations of literary works. Those who presented only really had about five minutes. But, the overall effect was impressive, and they had a pretty good audience throughout--and people weren't fidgeting or getting bored. Of course, this was also because the multimedia elements of the conference were handled so well. See the extened entry for a proposal for format. You all can weigh in with your own ideas and suggestions.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_format.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_format.html Conference Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:01:31 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Hi everybody. Let's use this forum to nominate, discuss, (and maybe even vote on) titles for our conference on May 16. I'll nominate two: The Art & Science of Dreaming (too dull?) Royal Roads to the Unconscious?: The Art & Science of Dreaming Use the comments section to nominate as many titles as you like--and then to discuss the merits of the nominations. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_title.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/conference_title.html Conference Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:59:15 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/Writing/dreams/ Here's a site with an HTML color chart, with codes. ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/boones_tutorial_for_your_web_p.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/boones_tutorial_for_your_web_p.html Web Project Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:20:02 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw For some reason I'm in LA, with many of my closest friends, looking at a vacation house development. This one is designed to appeal to people who wouldn't normally buy a house in a development. All the houses are small cabins, the place is supposed to be a 100% eco-friendly, sustainable environment. It's on a hillside some place that looks like Laurel Canyon. The houses are made of wood and stone-- or seem to be. I'm with a bunch of people, including the developers, who have just about convinced us all to buy. My partner, Dave, finds a pile of unrecycled waste, including a bunch of broken furnaces (in LA?). He starts picking through them and isn't pleased by what he sees. The sun starts to set, and next thing I know, he's disappeared into the woods and there are helicoptors overhead. Starsky and Hutch arrive. They're hunting for Dave, because he's a fugitive. Next thing I know my friends Danny and Julia disappear too. It seems that someone has forced Danny to kidnap Julia. Starsky and Hutch are looking for them too. It's night when the hunt really gets going. It spans the whole of LA--the hills, the streets, etc. It takes place in bushes and in alleys. It lasts a long time, but eventually, Starsky and Hutch start to realize that Dave is the good guy and the developers are evil. He had uncovered their plot to sell houses made of cardboard, outfitted to be eco-friendly stone and wood strcutures, to a bunch of unsuspecting would be environmentalists. Eventually, Starsky and Hutch find Dave in the underbrush in the woods. Starsky carries him down the hill. They find Julia and Danny in the parking lot of donut shop. The developers go to jail. But Julia can't quite forgive Danny. In fact, none of us can really figur out why he kidnapped her. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/cardboard_houses.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/cardboard_houses.html Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:39:26 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw The Unconcoled?). He read a fantastic poem about an elephant. Then, a woman with blonde hair, who looked like a stereotypical librarian--pastel cardigan, glasses, tidy haircut, pearls--got up and read a riveting poem called "Good Thoughts." The conceit of the poem, which was mainly interior monologue, was that it was absurd to assign value to thoughts. It documented the range of her thoughts over the course of a day or so, but was then punctuated by reflection on the absurdity of deeming some of them good and some bad (meaning either immoral or unproductive or somehow damaging). When I woke, I found myself fascinated by the question of evaluating thoughts. We have some control over what we think, but certainly much less than total control. Surely, some of what we think leads to positive outcomes and some to negative. But the cause and effect relationships are hazy, indirect, and unpredictable most of the time. Self-help gurus suggest that positive thinking will change our lives, and I believe in cognitive therapy enough to believe that this is largely true. As I type, I'm also struck by the fact that Freud's work was about stripping value judgments off the contents of what he called the unconscious, one particular form of thought. I'm thinking I might use the poet in my dream's idea about "good thoughts" as the kernel of some writing, which is what interests me most about the dream. I think I may use it in both a nonfiction essay and in a fiction project I'm hatching. I'm always on the lookout for material to cull from dreams, and I may have found one!]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/good_thoughts.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/good_thoughts.html Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:40:44 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Your Job Create a web-based version of the research project you completed for your Honors Essays. Web versions should be 1,500 words (or fewer) in length and enhanced by both images, links, and a list of suggested readings. Drafts are due in class next week; please bring copies of images, links, and suggested readings with you. Boone Gorges is designing the templates for our course web site, and he'll come to class to walk you through the technical details involved. We're using Movable Type for this, so it should be pretty straightfoward. Advice 1. Think carefully about audience; revise your essay so that it will appeal to a broad range of smart, curious readers. (The challenge will be achieving this without dumbing down your ideas or research.) 2. Use headings and sub-headings to organize your material. 3. Choose images that will draw readers in AND make sense in terms of themes and content. Place these images strategically. 4. If you want, you can make a downloadable version of your original essay available. Writing for the Web Take a look at some of the links below, all of which contain advice for writing for the web. Notice that they give a variety of advice, much of it consistent, some of it contradictory. Think critically about this advice. We will draw on it when we workshop your drafts in class next week. Notice the information they all provide about readers on the web, "chunking" content, and the importance of summary material and sub-heads. Writing for the Web (Dartmouth University) Writing for the Web (Penn State) Writing for the Web by Daniel Will-Harris Writing for the Web: Guidelines for MIT Libraries]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/guidelines_for_web_project.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/guidelines_for_web_project.html Web Project Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:07:59 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw I'm up in the rafters of our new house, which is under renovation, and I feel myself fall through. I wake up with a powerful jolt. I'm awake in time to feel my body fall back onto the bed. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/jolt.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/04/jolt.html Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:26:04 +0000 Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw Jason Tougaw The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Directed by Luis Buñuel Click here for a pretty good overview of Buñuel's life and work. Information about our trip to MoMA: Wednesday, March 28, 2:15 pm Meet at 5 West 54th Street, Education Center The main entrance for The Museum of Modern Art is located at 11 West Fifty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues. By subway From the east side of Manhattan 6 train to 51st Street, transfer to the E or V train; one stop to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue From the west side of Manhattan E or V train to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, or B, D, or F train to 47–50 Street Rockefeller Center By bus From the east side of Manhattan M1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to 53rd Street From the west side of Manhattan M50 cross-town to 50th Street. Proceed to 53rd Street. ]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/03/_wednesday_march_28_215.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/2007/03/_wednesday_march_28_215.html Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:48:16 +0000