catching up to my own syllabus

Jeff: Are documentary films capable of objectivity?
Yusef: He has missed several classes and has no proposal at this point.
Tanya: How is birth control addressed by religion (specifically Catholic traditions), the law, and science? Is there any place where these three meet?
Jen: How does a person's personality limit or assist progress?
Allison: When does a body become "cuttable"? (her own term)
Betsy: What are the ethics and considerations of self harm?
Mary: How does silence acquire its own discourse?
Nick: What is the cult of personality and how does it relate to celebrity worship and, possibly, celebrity martyrdom?
Steve: Is religious music more or less "marketable"?
Ally: What are the values of homeopathic medicine? Why do we "trust" medicine?
Jake: Does chaos beget order?
Mike: What is the origin of the "virgin cure" and how does it fit into models of human reasoning?
Brittney Porter: What are practices of mourning and how do mourning practices reveal a culture's consideration of the afterlife?
Lily: Is Milwaukee fundamentally racist?
Brittany Tyus: Is questioning religion necessary to religion? (considering that questioning religion is "modeled" by religious leaders and stories)
Theodore: What does C.S. Lewis' trilemma tell the contemporary Christian thinker?
Meghan: How does fashion uphold religious thought?

We are working towards making these inquiry questions "statements."

So far, we have read Li Tsung-Yuan's "Is there a God" to address that a question need not be answered. We have modeled lists from "The List of Ziusudra" and "The Pillowbook" to see that language can generate thinking, admit biases, and offer a new way of saying what seemed unsayable.

We have worked in small groups with "diary entries" (drafts of the proposal) to see where personal connections could be made (we used Mary Shelley's diaries as models) and we have peer edited proposals so that students who were in class that day received a letter from a peer looking at peer connections and suggestions for development.

We have looked at Piss Christ to discuss the fact and faith of art and how we can see "art" as similar to "religion" since they are both caught up in symbolism, schools of thoughts, and other parallels. We also deconstructed flood myths to see cultures that shared the same belief, how things change overtime to accommodate time, culture, and needs. They've had the extra credit option of reformatting their own myths.

We are now off the syllabus quite a bit. We are still discussing Michel Butor's "Egypt" today to discuss how writing can appeal to pathos and how to keep "observations" and a priori and a posteriori knowledge. We will, this week, read Anne Carson's "Mythoplokos" and they will do an experiment with definitions based on the model so they can start to see how caught up language is in the process of inquiry.

Today, they are discussing "Egypt," receiving Clarification 1 (and a model from last semester), and refining thesis statements. We are going backwards a bit to re-address GOALS and MOVEMENT of the course (also to address being off the syllabus). Clarification 1 is due 3/1.

Wednesday, they will receive Carson's "Mythoplokos" and the assignment corresponding to it and we will go over how to use the OED (hysteria will be the example of a word whose meaning matters and questions "fact and faith"), and how to reserve library books through interlibrary loan. I imagine we will need some time to discuss surveys and work they are doing to get other people's opinions regarding inquiry subjects.