Snow Job

03Mar09

I know that some of you were unable to make it to class on Monday due to the snow. If you missed class, please check out the class notes for the day on the wiki, as we wound up having a wonderful discussion that moved from Foucault’s conception of spectacle as it relates to discipline and punishment towards the tension between conformity and resistance in Kafka’s novel.

For Wednesday, you should have finished The Trial. Before class tomorrow, I’m likely to post a critical essay or two here on the blog. You won’t be responsible for using those essays in your paper, but we will discuss them in class and they might help you better grapple with Kafka’s novel.

As always, please feel free to respond here in the comment section.

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Tags: assignment, discipline, foucault, kafka, punishment, spectacle, trial

Assignment for Monday (Updated)

18Feb09

Reading:
Franz Kafka, The Trial (up to page 167 – up to “Block, the Merchant, Dismissal of the Lawyer”)

Writing:
Choose one of the following words:

alienation
conformity
obscurity
absurdity
logic

Choose a short quotation from Monday’s reading assignment that illustrates some aspect of your chosen word. Write a paragraph that explains how your passage helps illustrate your chosen word.

If you have any questions about this assignment, please leave a comment on this post.

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Wordling _The Trial_

18Feb09

Kafka’s text Wordle:
Project Gutenberg text version

Critical Article Wordle:
Scott Finet, “Franz Kafka’s Trial as Symbol in Judicial Opinions“

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Tags: kafka, trial, wordle

Entering The Trial

14Feb09

Next Wednesday, we’ll begin to discuss Franz Kafka’s The Trial. By Wednesday, you should have read the Publisher’s Note (xii-xiv) and up to page 88 of the novel.

I will begin to add links to resources on Kafka and this novel on our course wiki. Please feel free to join me in building up the list.

Update: Here is a direct link to the Kafka page on our wiki.

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Nietzsche Reading for Wednesday

09Feb09

For Wednesday, please read sections 9-14 in the second essay of Frederick Nietzsche‘s On the Genealogy of Morals.

You can download a PDF of those sections here.

And for those of you who missed the short writing assignment due today, I had asked you to pick a concept in Foucault’s chapter on the Panopticon and to write a paragraph that either described your understanding of what Foucault was saying or described a way in which you’ve seen that concept at play in your own life experiences.

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Foucault Readings

28Jan09

Hello, class.
Here are links to our Foucault readings for next week.  Both are from a book by Michel Foucault called Discipline and Punish.

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Update: Links fixed. Sorry about the earlier problems.

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Tags: authority, body, foucault, law, prison

Welcome

28Jan09

Hello, Class!  Until I get our regular course site working, I’ll be using this blog for our course.

Please register for your own blog on WordPress.com

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