HUST celebrates

A few HUSTies in Christmas splendor...(thank you, Tippecanoe).

Drafting the Declaration

During the screening of John Adams last night, we discussed the drafting process for the Declaration of Independence. With so many different versions, a helpful way to make sense of these changes is to read a hypertext copy from Duke University in which areas of difference are highlighted (taking you to an explanation of the additions, alterations, or deletions).

The Catholic Church & Art

Stumbled on an interesting BBC article about the Pope's interest in trying to renew interest in Vatican art.

Letters of a Peruvian Woman - Discussion Questions

I've posted your discussion questions up on the wiki, but you can also see the revised versions here:

• In what ways is eighteenth-century French culture gilded? (think: "Furniture which I thought to be made of gold, is gold only on the surface, its true substance is wood; in the same way, what they call politeness thinly covers their shortcomings with an outward show of virtue" (59).
  
• How does the voice of the Peruvian woman work as a critique? (think: of French culture? of women's roles in French society?)
  
• How does the novel's epistolary structure become integral to the development of ideas about language, communication, and writing?
  
• How can we understand Zilia's exploration of the differences between the written and spoken word?
  
• What is the signficance of the novel's references to sun and light? (think...gold, knowledge, divine fire, etc.; go to Meghan's blog for an answer to this)
• What do the roles that Zilia inhabits tell us about her relationship to her environment (Paris, French countryside, salon, Peru, etc.)
  

Richard III

HUST is headed to Chicago!

For a quick overview, summary, etc., check out Wikipedia's link on Richard III or the Chicago Shakespeare Company's own information on the play. For a general Shakespeare resource page, go here.

Richard III is one of several histories that Shakespeare wrote about England's past (specifically, the War of the Roses). There is even a Richard III society (our very own Professor Hicks was a member!) dedicated the study of the events and figures of this historic period.

More Milton...

I stumbled on this very helpful, user-friendly site the other day. What I like is that you can explore all different aspects of Paradise Lost--from Milton's religious influences to the history of the prints that were added to the 1688 version. And given our conversation yesterday in class, its title is very apropos: Darkness Visible.

Milton Mania!

In his Preface to Paradise Lost, David Scott Kastan reminds us that Milton's epic was "the first English poem to receive full scholarly annotation" only 28 years after it was first published in 1667 (viii). With such early and extensive attention in print, it is not at all suprising that Milton has received due attention online as well. You can read a digital version of the poem, complete with reader-friendly interactive annotations in Dartmouth's Milton Reading Room. Original images of nearly every page of the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) are available on John Geraghty's impressive facsimile collection. More dynamic yet, Paradise Lost Audiotexts provides four distinct ways of interacting with Milton's text: 1. text-only (modernized) 2. Annotation (displaying notes parallel to the text) 3. Comparison mode (displays the 1674 page next to the modern page) and 4. Your notes (allowing you to take notes next to the page as you read). Perhaps the most exciting bit about this site, though, is the ability to listen to Books 1, 2, and 9 with the audiotext feature. Finally, even The New York Times and the New York Public Library can't resist a little Milton mania: check out this exhibit of related art and artifacts.

Anne Bradstreet Reading Guide

READING QUESTIONS

• What do you know about the biographer, Charlotte Gordon, and how does this affect your reading of the book? In other words, what of Gordon's own experiences/points of view do you think she brings to her telling of Bradstreet's life?
• Who does Gordon identify as influences in Bradstreet's development?
• In her preface, Gordon suggests that Bradstreet would have imagined herself "the most modern of moderns" (xiii). What does she mean by that?
• In what ways do Bradstreet's spirituality and intellectual life intersect?
• What vision of England do you get through the perspective of Anne Bradstreet's life? How is it distinct from other points of view we have explored so far?
• How does Bradstreet's role as a mother figure in important ways to her experience in New England?
• What connections can you draw between this book and other texts we've read so far? Cabeza de Vaca, "Of Cannibals," "Of Plantations," to name a few....

MORE FUN WITH EARLY AMERICA...

Gordon includes an image of a seventeenth-century map as a way of orienting you to the Massachusettes Bay in the 1630s (a later edition is included above). The map was originally printed in 1634 as a part of William Wood's travel narrative, New England's Prospect. Wood traveled to the New World between 1629-1633 and offered one of the earliest accounts of colonial America.

Early Modern Art blog

One of the blogs I follow regularly, Renaissance Lit, recently posted a link to this blog, Notes on Early Modern Art. It's a great resource, and worth checking out.

Your discussion questions & themes

Mary Ellen: Does the play confirm or deny assumptions about racial and religious difference in the early modern period?

Meghan: Given his status as a "foreigner," where does Othello belong?

Brigette: How do ideas about women's roles (where the household/family is the primary social unit dictating rules of behavior) affect your point of view of Othello's concerns over the loss of his reputation/honor?

Sarah: What anxieties about order and masculinity/mutability do we see at work in the play?

Megan: How do the passions influence the outcome of the play? What imbalances lead to extreme behaviors?

Hannahbeth: How legitimate and/or true do we consider appropriations, adaptations, or translations of the play?


Emerging Themes:

• control/containment
• projecting anxieties (on the "other")
• the problem of the binary
• rank & rule
• boundaries
• inner/outer and spiritual/physical

Also...the wiki is primed and ready for your handout posting.

Othello (1965): Laurence Olivier & Maggie Smith

We'll be discussing film adaptations and performances of Othello in class on Tuesday. Please take a look at this 10-minute clip of the play's final scene (Act 5, scene 2) from a 1965 performance with Laurence Olivier as Othello in blackface and Maggie Smith as Desdemona (a.k.a. Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter). How does it compare to the 1995 version with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh that you saw in class (& will hopefully watch at one of your HUST club events soon)?

Othello Resources

Resources:

• As you make your way through Othello, feel free to consult a few online summaries from the British Library , Cummings Study Guides, or even Spark Notes.
• Check out Terry A. Gray's outstanding web resource, Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet.

Reading Questions:

• What "languages of difference" do the other characters use when describing or interacting with Othello? How does Othello respond? How does he represent himself?
  
• The play opens in Venice, Italy. Given what you know about Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries, why might this be a significant choice?
  
• What are your impressions of Desdemona? Does she strike you as independent or "feminist"? In what ways is she caught in the oppressive cycle of her cultural moment?
  

There's still time...

...to see Twelfth Night through Notre Dame's Shakespeare Festival. The show runs until Aug. 30.

Welcome to the new & improved HUST blog

First of all--welcome to your senior year! I've caught glimpses of your blog posts about summer adventures and am eager to hear more about them.

You'll have the chance to bring your bloggin' into the 17th and 18th centuries this semester, both in Colloquium and in Cultural History. Raully Donahue will be joining the ranks of HUST bloggers and sharing this forum, posting his own thoughts/reflections/announcements from the historian's POV. The idea is that we can increase the overlap between the literature and history sides of the Restoration and Enlightenment. Of course, you're encouraged to do the same on your blogs.

See you in class.

Colloquium III

For those who are curious or who'd like to get a head start ordering/finding/reading books, I've begun posting information about our fall Colloquium III course on the wiki. Feel free to go check it out, and let me know if you have any questions.

Summer Film Series @ ND: 8/13-8/15

I just received a brochure in the mail the other day reminding me of the 2009 Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. The mainstage production will be Twelfth Night, which runs the last two weeks of August. Also worth mentioning, though, is the film series they are running at the same time. If you'd like an excuse to watch some good films that will, among other things, prep you for Colloquium III (they all treat some aspect of 16th- and 17th-century England), go check out Twelfth Night (with Ben Kingsley and Helena Bonham Carter), Stage Beauty (with Claire Danes and Billy Crudup) or Shakespeare in Love (with Joseph Fiennes...think Luther....and Gwyneth Paltrow).

Career options - free online seminar

Starting and Building a Career in the Nonprofit World

Tuesday, April 21, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time

http://philanthropy.com/live/2009/04/career/chat.php3

College students preparing to graduate this spring are facing extraordinary uncertainty about their career prospects. Not only is the job market tight, but they also confront increased competition from experienced nonprofit workers who have been laid off and businesspeople who want to change careers.

So what can new graduates do to land their first professional job? How can they stand out in a crowd of more experienced applicants? What should a college senior be doing now to prepare for a future career in the nonprofit world? And how can people who have been working for a few years for charities and foundations make the most of their opportunities?

Join us on Tuesday, April 21, as we explore these questions and others.

Related Articles

• Rethinking Nonprofit Jobs (11/13/2008)
• A Handbook on How to Start a Nonprofit Career (9/4/2008)

Digi-topia?

Here's a thought: Does the internet and the many online spaces/forums it provides (I'm thinking especially of SecondLife) offer utopic domains....digi-topias?? Is the internet a true commonwealth? Perhaps more of a capitalist/commonwealth hybrid (especially given how much money changes hands...or digi-hands...online)?

Food for thought for tomorrow's discussion on Thomas More.

Images of the Carnivalesque

One possible thread we might follow in our discussion of Bakhtin's notion of medieval folk humor (the carnivalesque) is how Erasmus's The Praise of Folly (according to Bakhtin, a literary example of "high " intellectual, collective laughter) compares to any visual representations of folly or carnival during the period. Something that came to mind is Pieter Bruegel the elder's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559, see above) in which Bruegel paints over one hundred scenes of common proverbs on one canvas. The result is a kind of symbolic chaos. Wikipedia offers an overview of the various proverbs-come-alive, with details explaining each scene. Bruegel's The Wedding Dance (1566, the one in our HUST classroom on the back wall by the windows) might also help us think about the relationship between carnival, satire, the Reformation and early Renaissance humanist thought. How do you think Bakhtin would interpret the paintings? Erasmus?

Performing Folly

I was struck in this recent reading of Erasmus's The Praise of Folly by the emphasis on theatricality. Shakespeare's famous line from As You Like It "all the world's a stage," seems fitting here with all of the many references to life as a show...something we "put on" for the sake of our audience (one another). It is especially complicated by the fact that Folly is herself a performer of sorts: an actor on a stage (almost pulpit-like in Holbein's image in your Norton). This emphasizes (ready for this?) the many rings of identity and selfhood. So, is Erasmus suggesting that Folly is but a performance, or is it that having Folly act her part emphasizes the distance between appearance and reality? Also, what would the implications of "life as performance" be for someone like Erasmus: humanist, priest/scholar, traveler, trans-European national (Dutch, yet spoke Latin and lived all over Europe during his adult life)? And, lastly, if Folly is an actor, does that increase the level of Erasmus's satire, or make it, well...true in its fiction? A satire of a satire of a satire? Whoa...my head is spinning.

Literary Portraits

As you complete your reading this week, don't forget to check out the Castiglione Resource page on the wiki. On it, I've linked to the very useful work-in-progress begun by the Castiglione "wiki note-takers". You'll also see a few questions I posted regarding the theme of Renaissance portraiture:

• What is the purpose of the portrait?
  
• Can you ever really capture the "true" essence of a person?
  
• What techniques to painters use? writers?
  
• Why might "portraiture" be an appropriate theme for thinking about the connections between Renaissance cultural thought, painting, and literature?

Dante in the news

Just when you thought Dante was the stuff of the fourteenth century, The New York Times publishes an article to remind you of just how wrong you are. Ralph Blumenthal uses Dante's formulation of Hell to explain (in some ways) why Bernie Madoff's recent sentence was so harsh--one he suggests is "more than some killers." The article also quotes Robert Pinsky, who offers his perspective on why fraud lands you in the ninth, frozen level of Hell--three-headed Satan and all.

Luther Film Viewing

As we approach the end of March, we also approach "Luther week". Along with our reading, we'll be watching the film Luther outside of class (replacement for canceled April session). Please log on to the wiki, and list what time slots work for you on the Luther Viewing page.

Extra Credit Blog Opportunity

FOURTH ANNUAL DIVERSE STUDENTS' LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
March 18-20, 2009
Saint Mary's College. Notre Dame, Indiana

Closing Keynote Speaker: Dr. Julianne Malveaux
Opening Keynote Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Fluri

This conference is structured to allow participants opportunities to:

(1) Identify the challenges and underlying prejudices that exist in various social institutions.
(2) Develop educational and interactive skills to transform the challenges of diversity into opportunities.
(3) Become empowered leaders actively promoting the advantages of diversity.

DSLC brings together professionals, faculty, community members and students from different universities. Workshop topics include issues of class, politics of difference, peace and conflict, immigration, global inequality, sexual orientation, peace and conflict, cultural and religious diversity. To check out a list of possible workshops or to sign up, go to this website. ** The deadline for registration is Friday, March 13th.

A highlight of this year’s DSLC promises to be our keynote speaker Dr. Julianne Malveaux President of Bennett College for Women. Recognized for her progressive and insightful observations, she is also an economist, author and commentator, and has been described by Dr. Cornel West as “the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country.” Dr. Malveaux’s contributions to the public dialogue on issues such as race, culture, gender, and their economic impacts, are shaping public opinion in 21st century America.

For more information, please contact Multicultural Services and Student Programs at Saint Mary's College at (574) 284-4721 or at lolinort@saintmarys.edu

Digital Mind Mapping

As a follow up to our conversation about mind mapping and Short Paper 1, I wanted to post the recent article, "11 Free Mind Mapping Applications & Web Services". For those of you who prefer working and thinking with the aid of a computer (and for whom the very thought of drawing ideas on a piece of paper sends a shiver down your spine), these digital mind mapping programs will offer you the same service without the reliance on the material realm. Another great online resource is XMind. You can download the software for free onto your computer and design some pretty amazing conceptual maps using traditional mapping techniques, outlines, lists, notes, and "fish" diagrams. Now, go forth and map!

New & Improved Course Schedule

I've recently created a "new and improved" way to keep track of course readings and requirements: the course schedule link. With it, I've combined our reading schedule with your various written assignments, wiki notes, and discussion leading dates. In other words, this will be a one-stop-shop for almost everything related to class. Please let me know if you have other suggestions--in fact, this page came as a result of Caitilin's request in class--so keep them coming!

Bloggers Challenge!

For your next blog post, I challenge you to compose your own Petrarchan sonnet, following (as many as is humanly possible) of the conventions we discussed in class. These include:

• Octave / Sestet
• rhyme scheme
• iambic pentameter
• themes of love, love lost, love unfulfilled
  
• enjambment (your sentences can spill over several lines)

For reference, return to the Poetry resource page on the wiki. After you're done or even while you work, record your experiences in trying to mirror Petrarch's poetry. Where do you run into difficulty? What was surprisingly easy/fun?

Poetry Page

Go check out the new resource page, Poetry: Sonnets & Lyric, on the wiki. You'll find helpful links as well as a summary and comparison between the different kinds of sonnets we'll study this term.

For your reading, you might find the following questions helpful:

• Why do you think Petrarch chose this particular literary form to express his thoughts?
• Do you notice any similarities/differences between the lyric Petrarch and the "secret" Petrarch from the dialogue we read last time?
  

Changing your username on the wiki

1. Under profile, change your email address to a non-SMC email (this "frees" your SMC email for another profile).
2. Create a new profile on Wetpaint (i.e. start over).
3. Use a first-name only or non-SMC login name *with* your SMC email.
4. Request to be added to the site as a writer, or I will do so automatically.

Reading Resources

Don't forget to check out the resources posted for each group of readings this term. I'll update the site frequently, especially as we approach the current week's author.

Aquinas Lecture

The Aquinas lecture will take place next Wednesday evening, January 28th at 7:00 in the Student Center Lounge. Fr. John Jenkins will be speaking, and the title of the talk is "Faith, Inquiry, and Community." The talk will focus on the legacy of Aquinas as it relates to the challenges of 21st-century Catholic colleges, a topic that holds distinct relevance for students and faculty of Saint Mary's College. Please consider attending and blogging about your reactions to the talk.

Wiki Plan

Since class was cut a little short today, I wanted to remind you of a few important details. For Tuesday's class, please:
1. Start designing your eFolio page
2. Enter your group's notes on Cantos 18-25 (today's reading) on the Dante Notes page
3. Fill in the 3 slots you would like to choose for the wiki class notes

If you have any questions about how to use the wiki, you can consult my wiki resources page or the wiki "how to" sheet I handed out in class.

Along with our discussion of the conclusion of The Inferno on Tuesday, we'll go over the second "technological" component of this class--your blog! Enjoy your weekends, and careful what you eat while you read about the ninth circle...

Ciao!

Welcome!

Welcome to the HUST Colloquium blog for the literature of the Renaissance and Reformation. On it, I will post announcements, discussion questions for reading, suggestions for assignments, and other resources relevant to your work this semester. Additionally, there will be a list of "bloggers" (all of you!) on the lefthand side of the screen where you can access one another's blogs once they've been created. Details about all of this will follow, but feel free to familiarize yourself with blogger (Google's blogging site) and the links offered here.