Week 18

Wrapping up your thesis journal! Please use your time today to make sure that you are up to date with your thesis entries. Let me know if you have any questions.

We'll begin meeting weekly to start a dialogue about possible topics for your synthesis argument.

Week 17

Your research is almost done! When you've wrapped up the PS3 journals (three primary source entries and two secondary source entries), you will have built an impressive foundation for your thesis paper. Let me know if you need help finding secondary sources or completing any missing work.

Next step...
Conferencing during tutor to brainstorm how you might synthesize your three works.

Week 16

Choose one symbol that you have read about in PS3 (an object, a character, a place, a gesture, etc.) and write a sentence or two about what you think it stands for. 

Sample from Sartre's No Exit:

Sartre uses the bell that does not always work to illustrate the existentialist concept
that we are “condemned to be free.” The unreliable bell stands for the idea that seeking
help outside of ourselves is both unpredictable and ineffective, suggesting that we must
seek within when we need help.

Week 15

Please take out your copy of PS3/long-form fiction. Look over what you have read so far and mark at least two passages that you could journal about.

Week 14

Character comparisons: Please choose a major character from PS1, PS2, and PS3. Make a short list of how these characters are similar and how they are different. Think about names, backgrounds, traits, conflicts, "fates" (i.e., how they wind up at the end), etc.

Week 13

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous. Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

--Don DeLillo, from the 1988 interview with Ann Arensberg

How have your novels spoken to you? Do they...

-expose society's flaws
-critique humanity's weaknesses
-explore and uncover mysteries of the human heart
-challenge preconceived notions or assumptions
-bring out the extraordinary from the ordinary
-suggest what's worth fighting for, etc.

Use one of the above phrases as a sentence starter and write about your author/topic.

For example: The books I read challenge assumptions about...

Week 12

Please look over your thesis journal. What tags show up most frequently? Find at least three (try to include both literary devices and big ideas). In the front cover of your PS3 book (or on a post-it note that you can place there), write down these labels and assign each one a symbol (e.g., if I had nature imagery for a label, then I might use a drawing of a tree or just the letters "NI" when marking such imagery). Look for these devices/ideas while you read PS3!