Conferences for This Week!

Remember, if you  haven't signed up for a confernece, please come at one of the available times below, or e-mail me for another time. This is all we're doing this week, so if you miss your conference, it's like missing two classes! All conferences are in my office, HM  348, right next to our classroom. See you then!

Wednesday

11:00: Amanda
11:10: Matthew
11:20 Nathaniel
11:30 Stacy
11:40 Nathen
11:50 Penny

1:00 Lizbeth 
1:10-1:50 OPEN

2:00 Coleman
2:10-2:30 OPEN

Thursday

11:00: Kelsey
11:10-:20: OPEN
11:30 Benjamin
11:40 Halie
11:50 Kasandra

Friday

11:00 Joel
11:10 Annabell
11:20 Riley
11:30 Mitchell
11:40 Kayla
11:50 OPEN

1:00 Japeth
1:10-2:30 OPEN 

Conversation Paper #1: The Monsters Are Real!

I: In “The Real Question,” the alien known as Mxyzptlk says, “we are gods. You are just puppets. As long as there’s one of you, there’ll be a hundred of us.” By this he seems to mean that we can never tell all of our stories (there are too many of us), but we can tell one of their stories, since they can live in a million minds for a thousand years. In this way, the science fiction world of aliens, monsters, and superheroes can represent in an immediate, universal way the struggles of identity we all experience. We don’t have to tell our story...we can tell Superman’s story, since his alter ego is us—the awkward, coming-of-age outsider in a world we don’t understand. 

 Q: For your first conversation paper, I want you to introduce people to the conversation: why do superheroes, aliens, and monsters help tell the story of our identity as teenagers, adults, Americans, or “others.” We all feel like we’re on the outside at some point in our lives, as none of us are truly normal. We might be from another country, speak another language, have strange abilities and talents, or seem to have none of the right abilities and talents. An alien trying to make it in America is a great way to explore these very human difficulties, particularly when this alien has extraordinary (but secret) powers that might make others fear or distrust him. Similarly, even being a teenager is to be an “outsider,” since adults distrust you, fear you, suspect you, and tell you what to think. What ‘powers’ do teenagers have that adults forgot they even had...and how do you use these to become a ‘superhero,’ at least to those you love? 

 R: You must use at least TWO of the chapters from Superman: American Alien in your discussion. Remember, you’re introducing the idea that superheroes, aliens, and monsters can represent real-world identity to people who have probably never read a superhero comic. So what do you need to explain to them? What do they need to know and see? Use two of the stories to show us why Superman is relevant to a modern American teenager or adult. ALSO, I want you to use at least one of the following stories by Dale Bailey in Best American SF/F, “Teenagers from Outer Space” and/or “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” The goal is to make these works contribute to a conversation about ‘coming of age’ in our society through the metaphors of “others”—superheroes, etc.  

Length: At least 5 pages, double spaced (though you can do more)

Format: Be sure to quote passages from the comic and at least one of the stories according to MLA format or another you prefer (but be consistent). You must cite page numbers and include a Works Cited page

Due: Monday, February 26th by 5pm [no class that day]  

For Wednesday: Bailey, “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” (pp.286-303)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In the previous story, the town prefers to see Johnny “as a hero who’d saved humanity from the ascension of triumphant alien overlords” (55). How does this story also prefer to believe a convenient narrative of heroism/safety? Who is the hero? Who is the villain? What truths or taboos is the town hiding from?

Q2: Who is the narrator in the story? Even though he/she doesn’t introduce themselves as Nancy did, how can we tell who they are? Why do you think he tells the story from this perspective rather than giving the narrator a name and a character? How does it change the story?

Q3: The narrator claims that the anonymity of the werewolf gave them a certain power in their community. As he/she explains, “if we were both sovereign and slave to our terror, our teachers and parents were slaves alone. As long as no one knew who the teenage werewolf was, it could be any one of us” (296). Why does this give them power over their teachers and parents? How does this bond the teenagers together as a group?

Q4: The ending of the this story is surprising and a bit shocking: why do you think Bailey ends the story with all the adults being eaten/murdered? Is the point of the story to say “teenagers are evil and can’t be trusted”? Or does he have another intention? Why make every teenager a werewolf and every adult a victim?

For Monday: Bailey, “Teenagers from Outer Space” (pp.27-55)

 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How might this story be a version of Superman if instead of one alien, a hundred aliens descended on Smallville? How can we tell that both Bailey and Landis (Superman: American Alien) are sharing the same conversation about the acceptance “others” in the heart of America?

Q2: The entire story is told from Nancy Miller’s viewpoint, and by her own admission, “much of what follows is reconstructed from second-hand reports, with all the bias and self-interest inherent in such accounts” (29). Do we trust her version of events? Is there anyplace where it seems she adds her own bias or opinions into the mix? Or does she help us see the limitations of others’ biases and values?

Q3: Writing about Johnny (who is proclaimed as a hero after the aliens leave town), Nancy says, “Maybe he thought he was innocent, courageous, whatever...People do it all the time. People want to be blameless. People want to be brave” (47-48). Who is the hero of this story? If this is a traditional aliens vs. humans story, who “saved the world”? For the reader, who is most brave and selfless? And why might the people telling the story later not see this?

Q4: How might this story be a metaphor for women growing up in American society, especially in the 1950’s? What might Bailey mean that every woman has to choose between “freedom” and “slavery,” or “aliens” and “duty”? Why might he also explain why Joan makes the decision she does?

For Friday: Landis, Superman: American Alien, “Eagle,” “Angel,” and “Valkyrie”

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In “Angel,” Pete is arguing with Clark about the future of Superman and what role he intends to play in society. He finally tells him, “Superman will never be able to retire.” What is it that Pete sees that Clark doesn’t here? Why is Superman bigger than one hero or one alien or one costume? (and related to this, why should he start talking to the other people who are  “like him” in the world)?

Q2: In “Eagle,” Clark reflects that “It feels good to help people. No, I’m not afraid…what’s there to be afraid of?” What hasn’t he figured out yet about being a super hero, and how do the next three stories show him why there’s a lot to be afraid about? Also, why is a superhero more than simply saving lives and feeling good about yourself?

Q3: “Valkyrie” is the only comic that doesn’t have the name of a bird. What is a Valkyrie, and why is this significant to the comic? Why end the bird metaphors with this title? What changes in this comic that we don’t see completely (or as developed) in the others?

Q4: Each one of these comics is about taking a large step into adulthood from the illusions (and delusions, sometimes) of childhood. If we stop reading this as a superhero comic and consider that it symbolizes what we all go through in this process, which comic relates the most to our journey? What can Superman teach us about our own identity as we become a new, more responsible person capable of saving the world day in, and day out?

For Monday: Superman: American Alien, “Parrot” and “Owl” (and the two mini-comics between them)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: “Parrot” seems to allude to the fact that parrots can imitate human speech and ‘pretend’ to be something they’re not. While Clark Kent is literally pretending to be Bruce Wayne (Batman) in this comic, what other identities is he “parroting”? What does his one-night fling with Minerva teach him about finding his “true” self (or does he)?

Q2: The style of these two chapters is dramatically different from one another and from the pervious comics, as “Parrot” is bright and humorous, while Owl is angular, fuzzy, and tense. Why might Superman in particular be so adaptable to all these different stories and approaches? It might be harder, for example, to tell a Batman or Wonder Woman story this way.

Q3: In “Owl,” Clark Kent meets Superman’s arch-rival, Lex Luthor, and has a one-on-one interview with him (though of course Luthor doesn’t know who he really is). During this interview, Luthor tells him “People aren’t important. Not as a whole...That’s why you see people throughout history rising above the masses. Those are the changers. Those are the doers. You are not important. You’re not. I am.” How are we supposed to read this speech? Is it true? Is he helping Clark to understand/embrace his own identity? Could these words ever be expressed by a superhero? Or are they fundamentally a sociopath’s point of view?

Q4: In the short comic after “Parrot,” which is entitled “The Real Question,” the alien known as Mxyzpltlk breaks down the “fourth wall” and talks directly to the reader. Why are comics able to do this more effectively than a traditional novel? And what does he mean by the sentence, “We are gods. You are just puppets”?

For Wednesday: Landis, Superman: American Alien (“Dove” and “Hawk”)

NOTE: Read the first two stories/chapters of the book, "Dove" and "Hawk" for Wednesday's class. If you're confused about where to stop, you can stop reading where you see the full page of Clark on a boat with a with a bunch of women and champagne glasses.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Discuss how the art in one of the chapters helps to tell the story, and is also appropriate for that story. Why would this story be much different if we just had the words? Discuss at least one specific panel or page in your response.

Q2: What does Clark mean in “Dove” when he tells his father, “When you break something, you’re not just breaking the thing, you’re like...hurting everyone who made it the way it was”? Why might this also say something about Clark’s relationship to his powers and his mysterious identity as an “alien”?

Q3: In class on Monday we discussed how modern heroes, and especially super heroes, are often more “gray” than “white,” and how they often resemble the “dragons” in fantasy stories. How does “Hawk” discuss the thin line between being a hero and a villain for Clark? According to this story, what makes him a hero rather than a “monster”?

Q4: In-between the two chapters, there is a two-page illustration called “The Castaways.” How does it connect the two stories without “telling” us outright? Why can  single picture do this even more powerfully than a paragraph or an entire story?

For Wednesday: Van Eekhout, “On the Fringes of the Fractal” (pp.194-205)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: According to the story, Stat is “determined by a complicated algorithm that factored in wealth, race, genealogy, fat-to-muscle ratio, dentition, and dozens of other variables from femur length to facial symmetry to skull contours. It was determined by the attractiveness of one’s house. The suitability of one’s car” (195). Why is this satirical, and what specifically might it be satirizing in our own world?

Q2: A fractal, as the story explains, “is a pattern that repeats itself. Magnifty it, and you’ll see the same pattern as if you’d reduced it” (200). While the world they live in is clearly a fractal of interconnecting neighborhoods and divisions, what does the title mean—“On the Fringes of the Fractal?” Why might being on the fringe of something help you see reality more clearly—and when do our characters do this?

Q3: Why is the “future” of this story dominated by generic names and places? Why is everything a Peevs Drugs and a Peevs 24-Hour Whatevers—or in the next town, a Wiggins Drugs and a Wiggins 24-Hour Whatevers? Also, why do they seem unaware that another town—with the same stuff, but different names—exists just down the road from their own?

Q4”: When they ultimately find the city, they find not a thriving metropolis but a wasteland—“a sad place, a lost place, a haunted place” (202). Why, then, do they like it so much and never want to leave? What would this city represent to someone who had spent their entire life in Peevs or Wiggins-land?

For Monday: Wolven, “Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?” (pp.267-285)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: If the narrator of this story is introducing us to his world, how does he want us to see it? What kind of world does he think he lives in? What clues tell us the narrator (and the author’s) true feelings about “the future”?

Q2: When trying to figure out why Caspar has been targeted by mediaterrorism, his friend explains, “Computers don’t need explanations...Computers just do what they do” (270). What might this suggest is the greatest threat in an increasingly automated, technological civilization? (and why should we be afraid ourselves?)

Q3: What do you think was the point of the mediaterrorism campaign against Caspar? Was it trying to make him more aware of the world outside his creature comforts? Was he really responsible, in some way, for the terrors inflicted in the FRF? Or is there another explanation for targeting him?

Q4: At a few points in the story, Caspar learns to appreciate the silence of trees. As he remarks, “Only here I can be at peace, amid the indifferent, ignorant trees. They don’t recognize me, trees. They don’t care” (279). Besides not showing him images of violence, why do trees become an important symbol in this story? Note that the story ends with a vision of metaphorical trees of data.

Short Paper #1 Assignment: due in-class on Friday. Feb. 2nd

Short Paper #1: Society 2.0

“Recognition software doesn’t violate privacy. Recognition software expands privacy. When every machine recognizes every user, the lived environment becomes personal and unique…That’s what it says in the promotional materials my company sends to potential investors. I didn’t write it. I don’t believe it.” (Wolven 276).

For your first short paper, I want you to get your feet wet with the “pale blue dot” approach to science fiction. That is, to make us see our own society from a different perspective, the way an outsider would see it, but we no longer can. To do this, I want you to explain a modern innovation (something introduced into society no more than ten-fifteen years ago) to someone from 1918. It can be anything—Instagram, Facebook, Texting, Siri, Drones, Tinder, etc. The trick is to explain why it was invented, what problem it was supposed to solve or cure, and why people embraced it.

However, as you write, consider your AUDIENCE: this is a person who doesn’t know anything about modern technology. They didn’t have radios, television, computers, or anything other than rudimentary telephones and typewriters. So how can you explain to them why this is “good” when they might think it’s horrible? You might also consider whether you think it’s good, too! Assume that someone attending ECU in 1918 might be horrified that people “swipe” to meet people rather than go up and talk to them. How can you defend this? Why is this “better” or “improved” than dating in 1918?

REMEMBER, too, that the three stories in this conversation, “Openness,” “Caspar D. Luckinbill,” and “On the Fringes of the Fractal” don’t exactly celebrate the future. They’re explaining it to us, the outsiders, but always want us to see what’s wrong with these societal innovations.

REQUIREMENTS

• About 3-4 pages, double spaced
• Only choose ONE innovation (don’t move from one to another)
• Think about your 1918 audience: what would they understand and not understand? What would confuse them? Disturb them?
• Be sure we know how you feel about this innovation by the time we finish your paper. Are you excited to show this to your ECU ancestors…or ashamed?
• DUE IN-CLASS ON FRIDAY, FEB 2^nd (we’ll discuss them in class!)

A Few Changes and Wednesday's Class

"Revise the syllabus, we will..."

Just a reminder--the course calendar has changed slightly. Here are the changes I discussed in class for the next two weeks (the only weeks affected):

Wed, 24  Writing Workshop (no story due)
Fri, 26    No Class (I have to cancel due to a prior obligation)

Mon 29  BASFF, Story TBA
Wed 31  BASFF, Story TBA
Fri 2      Writing Workshop / Short Paper #1 due (bring to class!)

I will give you the Short Paper #1 assignment on Wednesday and we'll discuss some ideas about writing papers for Comp 2. I'll also let you know what stories to read for Monday's class. Remember that I pushed back the due date of the paper from Monday to Friday, so don't get worried when you look at your syllabus!

See you on Wednesday!

For Monday: Weinsten, “Openness” (pp.141-151)

NOTE: Answer TWO of the following questions with a short response, at least a few sentences. Be specific, and try to respond to the story, not just what you think I want to hear. There are no ‘right’ answers, just honest responses. These questions will form the basis of our in-class discussion on Monday. Questions are due IN CLASS on Monday, and turning them in afterward counts as a missed response.

Q1: What are the “layers” that the narrator constantly refers to in this story? How does it relate to our own processes of displaying our identities on-line today? Do you think we could ever get this this point (and would you want to)?

Q2: Once the narrator becomes involved with Katie, he remarks, “There was something beautiful about sharing things in the old way—the two of us walking by the shore, the smell of the pine sap, the summer air cooling in the afternoon—and for the first time in years, I wished I had a sketchpad with me” (145). Why do the layers prevent this kind of interaction with other people and the world? Do we have the same problem with our own “layers”?

Q3: What does the author mean when he writes, “We were the first generation to grow up with layers, a group of kids who’d produced thousands of tutorials on blocking unwanted users but not a single one on empathy” (148)? Why might we consider this one of the main ideas of the story—and what the narrator, himself, learns through this relationship?

Q4: How could we argue that this story, for all its science fiction technology, is actually about a completely different kind of “layers” that we all have? In other words, how is this story about the difficulty of having meaningful relationships in general, even aside from technology? 

Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to the Course! So what is Freshman Composition 2, "Writing in the Outer Limits"? In my writing classes, I like to ask students to enter different 'conversations' out society finds important, since the world is shaped by what we talk about--and how we say it. In popular culture, the conversation is dominated by a single form of entertainment--Science Fiction and Fantasy. From Star Trek to Game of Thrones, these genres are used as a frame to discuss the realities of our 21st century world. Behind the masks of wizards, aliens, Jedis, and Hobbits, we can find ourselves and our own problems staring back at us...though it's often easier to tackle these problems in fiction, where the dangers seem less real and threatening.

The great science fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, once wrote that "all fiction is metaphor," and this is certainly true for both genres, as they allow us to predict the future and understand the past--all without a time machine. For this class, we'll read several books that initiate us into the various conversations of SF/F, and respond in a series of informal and researched papers that help us answer the question, "who are we, and what is our role in the universe?"

Be sure to buy the three books for class as soon as possible, since we'll start reading--and writing--next week. Please contact me at jgrasso@ecok.edu with any questions or concerns. See you in class!