CRASH - P2 and P7 start from beginning - P6 begins at scene on White Board

CRASH

As you view the 2004 movie, “Crash”, written and directed by Paul Haggis

Beware about scene 10 stalls and you have to fast forward with white remote to next scene.

Aim: What does it mean to be American? 

Take notes on this soon-to-be Classic movie scholars are to discern themes, questions and facts about current problems and issues concerning most Americans today. 

1. Who has achieved their American Dream? 

2. Who's corrupted theirs [American Dream]? 

3. What does title - CRASH - symbolize or represent? 

4. Who is the protagonist? 

HW: For those who still must Conference with me to Defend Portfolios:

 - Partially fill out the pink sheet with Defense Questions -

Others be prepared to discuss some of your themes and what title symbolizes.

DEFENDING PORTFOLIOS - START Monday, May 23 - June 3 - 44 have signed up -

Remaining contestants waiting to meet with me:

Please briefly fill out this PINK sheet BEFORE conferences

Defense of Portfolio: (May 26 - June 8) -         One-on-one conferences

Why have you chosen these particular pieces for this project?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What have you learned while working through _____________________________ [essay, research paper, debate]?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What was your favorite novel/text and why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Your least favorite or most dreaded and why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What specific skills do you believe are ones you still must work on improving? Why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are some of your strengths?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

How do you plan on improving them?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is your best way of learning?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Which Reading Strategy works best for you? Will you use it and others in coming years?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are some things about my teaching that you found confusing, unhelpful or useless?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Recommendations for Summer Reading and Writing

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

With the addition of the LGTs and blog which did you find most helpful?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Was there too much redundancy or were the re-enforcements helpful, confusing, distracting?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thurs 5-26-11 DURING CLASS
P3


P6
Muyiwa, Sukamol, Samantha, Natalia [Debbie] time allowing

P8 Jennifer, Priyanka, Gloria, Sabrina, Sutapa, Amy, Kayla [overflow on Wed. June 1]

Wed - June 1, 2011
P7  Alexus, Regina, Mandy, Hana



______       ______         ______
After school
Open for those showing make-up work, begging for points, or otherwise trying one last-ditch chance to be semi-responsible. Please, to expedite matters, arrive prepared with Printouts of mygradebook- CATEGORIES, with highlighted items to be discussed and all scored work.

_______________________________________________


P3 Paola and possibly Rokeya




______       ______         ______

L&L

Delorian, Shakif, Elfrin, Debbie ????


COMPLETED5-23-11 - awaiting edits
Asha, Renee, Robert, Ernesto and Crystal S., Jamie, Kristine, Brenda, Jadzia, Riyesh,

COMPLETED5-24-11 - awaiting edits
Mohammed H., Mohammad F., Emily, Maya, Aziza, Sheniece, Svitlana

Abby, Ricky
Sanum, Shyrin, Ana,

______       ______         ______

After school

Open for those showing assignments I have scored incorrectly/missed, make-up work, begging for points, or otherwise trying one last-ditch chance to be semi-responsible since there's more Summer School and there never should've been any unless it entailed an 8-week program. To expedite matters, please arrive prepared with Printouts of mygradebook- CATEGORIES, with highlighted items to be discussed and all scored work. 






No conferences on Thursdays during L&L, Friday after school, Tues, May 31 [all day], so the remaining 45 to Defend Portfolios, plan accordingly. Additionally after P2 on Thursday, June 2, no conferences, as I'll be on the Storm King Art Field Trip - whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

“It is said, The early bird catches the worm. Those arriving later, eat dirt, gag and rapidly wither away. Such tragic endings for those who procrastinate, sleep late and fail to relate.  ~ 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie - 0316013692 -

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 0316013692, by Sherman Alexie











So far 50 scholars sign up for wanting me to buy this very LAST novel for your Junior year.
Several others were out Friday, so I will order about 55 copies unless MORE e-mail me before Sunday noon with the Subject: Please order 1 "Part-Time Indian" for _________________your name


For those you do not wish to keep this hilarious semi-Graphic Novel, this may be given to Rising Juniors as it's on their Summer Reading List this year.

Be aware, those locating this novel on their own, we won't officially be starting this book till Wednesday, June 1 -June 10, so there's still 10 days to finish IRBs and even begin another for extra credit complete with:

1. Windows or Post-Its or Annotations

2. Goodreads write-ups = even more points

http://bigwords.com/

http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=book&WRD=Q%20&%20A

http://www.borders.com/online/store/Home


“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

NO MORE LATE WORK - May 27, 2011

Be aware, after June 1, no more late work will be accepted.
Additionally, those with discrepancies with grades must all be discussed and cleared up by May 27.

Be advised, the Cultural Celebration takes place immediately after school next Friday, so DO NOT EXPECT to see me at all after L&L 5-27-11

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

RAPF ESSAY FOCUS QUESTIONS P3 & P8

Looking again at the essay, "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtime as Novel and Film", by Joanna E. Rapf, answer these following questions for Tuesday's discussion
 

1. What is Raft's Thesis?

2. According to author, how does this theme or thesis relate to recent field trips to Tenement Museum, Harlem or other aspects concerning Ms. Moore's History classes?

3. What other texts recently read, correlate to Raft's ideas of "transformation"? Or other themes?

4. According to Raft, whom is the Voice of Reason (VoR) within the novel?

5. Describe three of the fundamental differences between novel and the movie. 

6. At one point, Raft alludes to another person we've studied recently. Explain who this person is and how his/her philosophies differ or coincide with the movie and novel.

_______________________________________________


Rapf, Joanna E. "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtime as Novel and Film." Literature/Film Quarterly 26.1 (1998): 16-22. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 214. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2011.


Father kept himself under control by writing in his journal. This was a system too, the system of language and conceptualization. It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.--E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime1

E. L. Doctorow's novel, Ragtime,is certainly about "making witness." Its serpentine structure, drifting from one subject and one point-of-view to another, with its allusive narrator who seems by the end to be a little boy reflecting on the past of his youth, is about the creation and re-creation of history, a discipline, Doctorow seems to suggest, that is itself about making order out of disorder, about "control." While he is in the Arctic, Father "kept himself under control by writing in his journal." This process of ordering, of fixing, is crucial in Doctorow's work. Ragtime is all about things going out of control as the nineteenth century marches into the twentieth: race riots (Coalhouse), the automobile (Ford), Communist agitation and women's rights (Emma Goldman), labor strikes, and world war. The tranquility of the opening chapter--with Father's house, patriotism as "a reliable sentiment in the early 1900s," vaudeville, and "no Negroes" and "no immigrants," when Winslow Homer was still painting, capturing the fleeting image of a certain kind of light--is all shattered in the few short years chronicled by the novel. By the end of Part II, "Father wondered at this moment if their lives might no longer be under their control" (240), and by the end of Part IV, Winslow Homer is dead, along with Father, Grandfather, and Younger Brother. Emma Goldman has been deported, Evelyn Nesbit has lost her looks, and the era of Ragtime had run out, with the heavy breath of the machine, "as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano" (369). And indeed, this is Doctorow's vision of history, being composed and re-composed, so that the human sense of order might be liberating and creative rather than oppressive, restrictive, and stifling of spirit. He has said:

Since history can be composed, you see, then you want to have as many people active in the composition as possible. A kind of democracy of perception ... a multiplicity of witnesses. If you don't constantly recompose and re-interpret history, then it begins to tighten its grip on your throat as myth and you find yourself in some kind of totalitarian society, either secular or religious.("A Multiplicity of Witness"184)

The whole subtext of Ragtime is about telling, making witness and narrating history. The little boy, as a grown man looking back, seems to narrate the novel we read. Anthony B. Dawson has called him "the privileged consciousness of the novel" (208). He tells its history, but within that novel, Father keeps a journal to tell his history, and so does Younger Brother:

Our knowledge of this clandestine history comes to us by Younger Brother's own hand. He kept a diary from the day of his arrival in Harlem to the day of his death in Mexico a little more than a year later.(282)

And Grandfather narrates stories of transformation, people who become animals or trees, just as Ragtime itself is a narration of transformation, about people who become something they were not at the beginning of the book. The immigrant silhouette artist, Tateh, becomes a moviemaker; the meek Younger Brother becomes a lover and a revolutionary; the musician, Coalhouse Walker, Jr., becomes an angry symbol of the struggle for dignity and human rights. The patchwork of these stories suggests, as the boy narrates, that "forms of life were volatile and that everything in the world could as easily become something else" (132-33). He found, he says, "proof in his own experience of the instability of both things and people." The recurring figure in the novel of the magician/escape artist Harry Houdini is a running metaphor of this experience, a man who does not even use his own name--"He was a Jew. His real name was Erich Weiss" (39)--and whose only source of order in a volatile world is his mother. Even in death she continues to order his life: "Every feat enacted Houdini's desire for his dead mother. He was buried and reborn, buried and reborn" (234): the theme of reincarnation so crucial to J. P. Morgan's failed quest in the novel. The pattern always is one of an attempt to fix the volatility of life, to order, to "re-compose."

Two other metaphors in the book that seem to usurp nineteenth-century orderings and renew them in twentieth-century forms are baseball and the movies. Father's instinct at the time of losing control, when "it was clear the crisis was driving the spirit from their lives," is to take his son to a baseball game. A baseball game presents excitement within an order, a structure, that repeats itself again and again. Doctorow writes:

            Father sank into his chair. As the afternoon wore on he entertained the illusion that what he saw             was not baseball but an elaborate representation of his own problems accounted, for his secret          understanding, in the coded clarity of numbers that could be seen from a distance.(266, bold             mine)

Baseball encompasses a "re-presentation," the problems of his life "accounted," with its metaphor of the ordering of numbers, the tidy summation of a ledger making sense of disorder while creating an understanding. When Father asks the boy what he likes about the game, the boy replies, "The same thing happens over and over," just as he had said in an earlier chapter that he liked to listen to the same record over and over again on the Victrola "as if to test the endurance of a duplicated event," and that he liked to look at himself in the mirror "not from vanity but because he discovered the mirror as a means of self-duplication" (133-34). The fragility of this ordering, its illusory nature, is reiterated by Doctorow at the end of the baseball chapter when the outcast player, Charles Victor Faust, actually gets a chance to pitch one inning for the Giants, but then is sent on his way. Out of the ordering of baseball, he ends up in an insane asylum and dies.

But as long as we can maintain an illusion, and thereby our sanity, "understanding" is possible. Doctorow's second metaphor for this understanding is the movies. When the little boy in Chapter 15 is worrying about the volatility of things we have what seems like two sentences put together that have no clear connection with each other:

If he raised the window in his room it might shut itself at the moment he thought the room was getting cold. He liked to go to the moving picture shows downtown at the New Rochelle Theatre on Main Street.(133)

In a style typical of Doctorow, he leaves the reader to make the crucial connection between the two sentences, which are skillfully linked together like a form cut in a movie. There is the visual image of the frame, the window frame and the movie frame, and the mental image of a problem--discontinuity--and its solution--finding continuity at the movies.

It is in the transformation of Tateh (Hebrew for Father, so by name he represents a kind of reincarnation into the twentieth century of the first, nineteenth-century father of the book, who literally blows up and sinks with the Lusitania) from immigrant silhouette artist to successful immigrant moviemaker. Chapter 18 begins with this description: "Thus did the artist point his life along the lines of flow of American energy," and goes on to report that "The value of the duplicable event was everywhere perceived" (153), not just in the movies, but in factories and soda fountains. But it is the movies that offer the possibility of understanding, like Father's accounting illusion of baseball. The reincarnated Tateh, as Baron Ashkenazy, frames life with his rectangular glass, giving it shape and form. "In the movie films, he said, we only look at what is there already. Life shines on the shadow screen, as from the darkness of one's mind," a sentence that brings together the physical screen and also what Bruce Kawin has called the "mindscreen" involved in the perception of movies. The new Baron Ashkenazy goes on,

People want to know what is happening to them. For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting and, forgive me, embracing one another. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. There is such a need to understand.(297)

Both in terms of its style and content, Ragtime looks to the twentieth-century art form of the movies for understanding, for its structuring of history. Doctorow once said that The Book of Daniel "was constructed like Laugh-In" (qtd. in McCaffery 41). This is because in an age where visual media have replaced print as primary agents of mass communication, Doctorow recognizes that we no longer read with the same expectations of continuity that characterize nineteenth century essays and fiction. "I don't know how anyone can write today without accommodating eighty or ninety years of film technology" (qtd. in McCaffery 40). Consequently, the effects of that technology are manifest not just referentially but also structurally in his work. From film, he says, "we've learned that we don't have to explain things." The audience or the reader can fill in gaps and will accept jumps in time and space. "My writing," he tells us, "is powered by discontinuity, switches in scene, tense, voice, the mystery of who's talking. ... Anyone who's ever watched a news broadcast on television knows all about discontinuity" (qtd. in McCaffery 41).

It is commonplace to call Ragtime a "cinematic" novel. Its style is itself an attempt to find a "literary equivalent for the cinematic process," while its content suggests that "only the motion picture offers an artistic solution for historical volatility." For example, the jumps in time, place, and subject between chapters are often tied together by visual images, as they would be if one were editing a movie. Chapter 12 ends with Tateh and his daughter on an electric railway, "humming along dirt roads" on their way to Boston. Chapter 13 begins, "Tracks! Tracks! It seemed to the visionaries who wrote for the popular magazines that the future lay at the end of parallel rails" (109), a description that returns us to New York and Houdini, and for the time being we have dropped the subject of Tateh and his daughter. The technique goes back to Locke and his "association of ideas." It's a form of stream-of-consciousness montage where it is not necessary to explain connections to the reader. And not only are chapters linked this way, but so are sentences within Doctorow's extended paragraphs. In Chapter 1, when Evelyn Nesbit is introduced, we actually get very little visual description of her. The long first paragraph of the novel ends this way:

            Evelyn fainted. She had been a well-known artist's model at the age of fifteen. Her under-clothes             were white. Her husband habitually whipped her. She happened once to meet Emma Goldman, the             revolutionary. Goldman lashed her with her tongue. Apparently there were Negroes. There were             immigrants. And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman k            knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.(5-6)

Much of the book is encapsulated in these cryptic, imaginatively connected sentences. They seem to work this way: being an artist's model suggests undressing, hence the underclothes; her husband, we will find out, does not approve of her being a model, so this idea brings him into the picture, along with whipping her, both for punishment and sexual gratification; the connection with Goldman is made through the image of whipping, for Goldman "lashed her with her tongue"; lashings bring to mind the images of blacks being lashed, which in turn suggest minorities, those outside the main stream, and hence "immigrants"; the final sentence pulls us out of these shots which have started with intimate close-ups of underclothes and gradually broadened their scope from the particular, Nesbit, then Goldman, to larger groups, Negroes, then immigrants, dollying back to a kind of establishing shot that reminds us of the small time period of the novel, only about ten years out of the one hundred of the twentieth century.

These short, factual sentences, working by means of association of ideas, pull together many of the strands of the novel: upper class life, middle class life, immigrant life, blacks, revolutionaries, and, most significantly, crimes, which we will see in various forms throughout the book. It focuses essentially on three family groups: Father/Mother and their family (middle class), Tateh and his daughter (immigrant life), and Coalhouse Walker, Jr., Sarah, and their child (black life), all of whom, during the course of the roughly ten-year span, interact with upper class life. In conclusion, as John Parks has noted, these strands are remarkably tied together as the three families become one with the marriage of Tateh and Mother who have adopted the child of Coalhouse and Sarah (63).

Doctorow's verbal style maintains a distance from his fictions. Indeed, the novel at times seems to be spoken rather than written.2For example, chapters will begin with questions, as if the narrator suddenly realizes that the reader may have been wondering if some characters in the story have simply been forgotten. Chapter 12: "And what of Tateh and his little girl?" Chapter 32: "And what of Younger Brother?" Doctorow's technique here is similar to Lord Byron's, who uses this rhetorical device for transition between digressions in works such as Childe Harold--"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, / The being who upheld it through the past?" (Canto IV, 1477-1478)--or Don Juan. The ironic, conversational narrator who pretends to lose control of his story, who apologizes for digression when in fact digression is the heart of his "story," is central to both Byron and Doctorow as social satirists. Both write pseudo-history, putting their fictional characters into a world populated by "real" historical people such as Catherine the Great (Byron) or Booker T. Washington (Doctorow), and play with our notions of truth and fiction. This delightful ironic voice depends on the narrator having a distance from the material being narrated. Charles Eidsvik writes, "It may be that Doctorow's commitment to social satire demands the inscrutable, impersonal detached voice, the almost mythic artist" (309).

For Eidsvik there are three techniques, all media related (although, of course, Byron was using these techniques for his social satire long before movies and television) that structure Doctorow's fiction: 1) an ironic use of real, historical, public figures; 2) a carnivalesque attitude toward these figures by putting together people who, in reality, would not be joined; and 3) wildly digressive shifts in plot. It is, then, the tension between the seriousness of Doctorow's materials and vision, and the playfulness of his structures that make him "an important voice in contemporary fiction" (309).

Because the structure of Ragtimeis so cinematic and because, in many ways, it is about volatile forms and the function of cinema to order those forms and create "history," it would seem at first to be a promising subject for adaptation to the screen. And indeed, the adaptation by Michael Weller and Milos Forman is successful in a number of respects. Gerhard Bach and Leonard and Barbara Quart are too hard on it. The Quarts suggest that the film lacks a governing vision and purpose (72). They see the cross-cutting of the film as "conventional," and like Bach, they argue that it fails to pick up Doctorow's playful spirit of discontinuity, volatility, even surreality. In other words, that crucial tension between the medium and the message, to quote McCluhan, is missing in the film adaptation.

Although this may be true, it is not for the reasons that the Quarts and Bach suggest. The film does make a real effort to evoke the feeling of discontinuity so crucial to the novel. Especially in what might be considered the film's first act, its introduction, we find scenes or sequences edited together in an abrupt manner. For example, after Sarah's baby has been found and Mother and Father are arguing what to do about him (which is changed from the novel where Father is away when the baby is found), we have a pause, during which time Mother says, "Excuse us, for a moment, won't you," and she and Father exit the room to talk, but the camera does not follow them and we are left "to fill in the gap" about their conversation. Instead, there is a CUT on the sound of the door closing to Henry Thaw, in what seems to be a complete non-sequitur, exclaiming to his lawyers that he wants the nude statue of his wife, Evelyn, taken down off Madison Square Garden. And this short scene also ends on incomplete action as Thaw threatens his lawyers by saying, "'cause if you don't, ..." and we abruptly CUT to an exterior street scene with a horse and wagon moving right to left, the same direction Thaw was looking and pointing.

Then there are a number of playful transitions, such as the freeze frame of the black-and-white face of Harry Houdini's mother from a newsreel dissolving into color live action of the same face, or the head that abruptly rises from the bottom of the frame, marking a transition from Coalhouse Walker, Jr. at Mother and Father's house saying. "Tell her I'll be back," to Harry K. Thaw's trial. However, as the characters in the film begin to come together there is less and less of this disjunctive editing.

The film's narrative eliminates many of the patterns in Doctorow's quilt--Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini and his mother. Freud and Jung, Morgan and Ford--and concentrates with dramatic intensity on the Coalhouse Walker, Jr. story. But by exploiting our knowledge of film history, Forman and Weller attempt something like Doctorow's mixing of fact and fiction by casting Jimmy Cagney as Rheinlander Waldo (a character invented for the movie--in the novel he's District Attorney Whitman), Cagney's longtime buddy, off-screen and on, Pat O'Brien as the lawyer, Delmas, dancing legend Donald O'Connor as Nesbit's dancing instructor, and literary legend Norman Mailer as Stanford White. Such reflexivity does allow the film to do "what the novel does in some ways."3These cross-textual references also reflect what Eidsvik describes as the first two of Doctorow's media techniques, while the disjunctive editing is an example of the third. But what is still missing in the film is 1) the sense of ironic distance created by Doctorow's narrative voice and 2) the idea about the importance of creating history, of giving form to the disjunctive, chaotic experiences of life.

Narrating history, making witness, composing and re-composing are certainly suggested by the newsreel sequences in the film of Ragtime.Not only do these sequences allow Forman and Weller to bring in characters and the panorama of historical events from the novel that they do not specifically treat in the film--Houdini, Freud, Ford, Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt--but they suggest the "making of history," not through writing but through filming, which of course has become increasingly important as the century in which Ragtime begins has passed through Emma Goldman's "ninety-four years to go." The changing form and increasing importance of this kind of "making witness" is subtly suggested in a contrast between the two Harry Houdini newsreel scenes that are given to us in the film. This is a framing device that is used in the novel, and the film makes skillful, albeit subtle, use of it. One of the concluding visions of the novel is an image that composes itself in Houdini's mind as he is hanging upside down from a twelfth-floor window before escaping from a strait jacket. "The image was of a small boy looking at himself in the shiny brass headlamp of an automobile," an echo of the image that concludes the first chapter of the novel where Houdini sees the boy "gazing at the distorted macrocephalic image of himself in the shiny brass fitting of the headlight," a form of self-duplication for which the little boy in the novel is constantly questing. The camera, of course, can give us just this sort of enlarged image, and both the novel and film suggest that in the twentieth century the movies may be the way we deal with the volatility, and create our sense of history. Consequently, many of the characters of Ragtime are presented to us in Forman's film by means of newsreels. The Houdini feat of escaping from a strait jacket while hanging from a skyscraper we see in the second newsreel sequence in the film. Then, as if no time has passed, we see the scene again at the end of Ragtime,but this time it seems to be part of the actual diegesis of the film, because it is in color, and it gives us two important pieces of information: 1) WAR IS DECLARED, so we have moved from 1906 to 1914, and 2) we see one of the spectators taking a picture of Houdini with a camera. This is a subtly brilliant touch, a gentle, ironic moment that perfectly reflects Doctorow's vision about the recording of history. But it passes so fast it is almost unnoticeable.

The second missing ingredient in Ragtime the film, ironic distance, is harder to reproduce on screen just because a novel has at least three tenses--past, present, and future--that allow for hindsight, foresight, and distance from "the present," while a film seems to unroll in a continuous present, and without a voice-over narrator it is very hard to create the distance necessary for ironic commentary on the unfolding action. Comedy, in particular black comedy, can be successful in doing this--Dr. Strangelove, for example, or a film like Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr., which like Ragtime comments on its own form and parodies human melodrama by naming its characters Father, the Boy, the Girl, and so on, so that these are "types" rather than individuals. Ragtime's characters, with the exception of those who have a historical or literary basis, are also identified as types, and both the film and the novel are structured as comedies, that is, their forms are circular and they end with a sense of renewal or the ongoing process of life. But for the irony to come through on screen, the action itself within the comic frame or structure has to be caricatured--the exaggerations of Strangelove, the gags of Sherlock, Jr. The diegetic action of Ragtime the film, however, with the exception of the casting and film techniques mentioned above, is presented in a fairly straight-forward, dramatic manner, concentrating its intensity on the powerful story of injustice embodied in the person and experience of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., with whom we are allowed to sympathize. The camera does not keep us at a distance, like the narrator of the novel. For example, near the end of the book we are simply told, "Coalhouse never once went to the window to look at it [the Model T Ford]. He sat at Pierpont Morgan's desk in the West Room and composed his will" (342). In the film, on the other hand, we move in to a close-up of Walker as he sits at the desk, hands on the handle of a detonator, and prays: "Lord, I'd hoped I'd have the courage to know what I should do now." He cries, and we cry with him. This is a powerfully emotional moment, unlike anything in the novel, and there is no satire here, no ironic voice. We are, however, saved the pain of his death. His shooting takes place in silence from the perspective of a high angle long shot, and as he falls on the steps on the Library, the camera holds in that shot; we do not come in any closer. Steam rises in front of the frame and we hear the ragtime music that segues into the closing shots of Father, Fire Chief Conklin, and, as we saw at the beginning of the film, Evelyn dancing in a swirling red skirt. The music and the repetition of this dancing sequence suggest that life goes on, like Harry K. Thaw marching "annually at Newport in the Armistice Day parade," the closing line of the novel.

Unlike the Burt Kennedy film of Welcome to Hard Times, this adaptation of a Doctorow novel keeps the dominant metaphors: the ragtime music that carries us through the film and the duplicating images, in particular, the motion picture. Both novels deal with a present telling about the past, and so both are about the importance of telling, of recording, of making history. Like the windmill in Hard Times[Welcome to Hard Times], the dancing figure of Evelyn, going round and round, suggests the cyclical nature of history, that it represents a moral process not progress. But that dancing figure of Evelyn gives a playful look at the camera as the film comes to a close, suggesting an awareness of the artificiality of all constructions of experience. Forman's film is filled with little moments like this, maybe not enough to embody fully a successful translation of novel to screen, but enough to share in that "democracy of perception." It becomes yet another voice in the "multiplicity of witnesses" that keep history from becoming myth.

Notes

1. See Dawson 209 and Parks 61.

2. See Gerhard Bach, "Novel as History and Film as Fiction," in Friedl and Schulz 167.

3. See Michael Shiels, "Look! It's James Cagney," Friedl and Schulz 155.

Works Cited

Dawson, Anthony B. "Ragtimeand the Movies: The Aura of the Duplicable." MosaicXVI, 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1983), 205-14.

Doctorow, E. L., Ragtime.New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Eidsvik, Charles. "Playful Perceptions: E. L. Doctorow's Use of Media Structures and Conventions in Ragtime." Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch Im Auftrage der Görres-Gesellschaeft30 (1989), 301-309.

McCaffery, Larry. "A Spirit of Transgression." E. L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations.Ed. Richard Trenner. Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1983.

"A Multiplicity of Witness: E. L. Doctorow at Heidelberg." E. L. Doctorow: A Democracy of Perception.Ed. Herwig Friedl and Dieter Schulz. Essen: Blau Eule, 1988.

Parks, John G. E. L. Doctorow.New York: Frederick Ungar Books, Continuum, 1991.

Quart, Leonard and Barbara Quart. "RagtimeWithout a Melody." Literature/Film Quarterly10.2 (1982), 71-74.

Trenner, Richard, ed. E. L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations.Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1983.
Source Citation Rapf, Joanna E. "Volatile Forms: The Transgressive Energy of Ragtimeas Novel and Film." Literature/Film Quarterly 26.1 (1998): 16-22. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 214. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Apr. 2011.Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?

Copyright and Terms of Use:

http://www.gale.com/epcopyright

“...because a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” ~ UNCF slogan since 1970s
 

HARLEM AND TENEMENT PHOTO ESSAY UPLOADS ON TUMBLR ACCOUNT

http://learnlaughlovelife.tumblr.com/

To login:
Go to http://www.tumblr.com/

Very top right corner click login

Email is nomadcarson@gmail.com

Pass is Stupid123

Follow instructions - through icons at the top of dashboard to upload videos, photos, text and other links of interest.

Don't forget to "tag" everything that is YOURS - Name and P__

These are due Friday May 27.

Have Fun!


“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

FREEDOM RIDERS ON PBS' AMERICAN EXPERIENCE TONIGHT AT 9 - Extra Credit

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/2011/

I know most of you are under the gun finishing Portfolios and other projects, but this may be helpful with Civil Rights coming soon to a History class near you.

Images From Day 7

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

Reminders and Updated PORTFOLIO DEADLINES May 18, 2011

Junior English - American Literature Portfolio Requirements

Carson

MHSHS

2010-2011

The final portfolio is a selection of a scholar’s work and the scholar’s own evaluation of that work, organized to show evidence of academic growth and progress. The portfolio is a culminating project which is aimed at demonstrating the various genres of writing that students have learned throughout the year. They will have the opportunity to reflect on their growth as a writer and thinker as scholars select various pieces of writing; journal entries, final essays, reflections, responses, creative writing, poetry and research projects. Both selecting the work to include in the portfolio and reflecting on evidence of learning should help the student become more conscious of how (s)he learns, getting them more involved in goal-setting.

A portfolio of writing/digital aspects counts as 100 points of your English final exam. The Final portfolio is due Wednesday May 18^th.  Failure to submit the portfolio on or before this deadline will result in a failing final exam grade, loss of 5% of overall Junior Grade. All students will be required to defend their portfolio in a one-on-one conversation, which will be worth 100 points. You will have a scheduled time to defend your portfolio during the weeks of May 23^rd -June 3^rd.(these earlier due dates are to alleviate the stress that goes with Regents Week - beginning June 14, 2011). 

The pieces in your portfolio must all be writings you have worked on in English Sept. 2010- May, 2011. All pieces should show some revising and editing since last read, and all drafts of chosen work should be included. Each piece that appears in your portfolio should appear in final, polished, publishable form, with no errors.

Visual Components of the Portfolio:

Your portfolio should be submitted in a presentable manner, in a three ring binder notebook, with the following requirements: 

• A presentable, appealing cover page with the name of your portfolio, your full name, teacher’s name, school’s name, and date of submission.
• All final work MUST be typed MLA format, with the exception of hand written drafts or creative work.
• A table of contents in which you introduce the titles or names of all the work that the portfolio contains
• Each of the required six (6) contents
• General introduction
• Introduction to each included piece of writing

Page Guidelines:                  25-50 Pages, exclusive of drafts

_______________________________________

Academic Contents- Each portfolio must contain, but is not limited to the following:

I.      Informational Reporting, Analysis, and Evaluation

Examples:

                  Research reports/Thesis/Support essay

                  Feature Article

                  Expository Essay

                  Editorial, Letter to the Editor

                  Current Events

                  Persuasive Essay

                  Explanatory Essay based on historical events

    II.                  Humanities Project

You must include a final, clean and revised copy of your current events research project.  CD/DVD/Flash or PP Print-outs with BIBLIOGRAPHIES, all aspects completed according rubrics (Photo Essay, Videos of Slave Narrative Projects, Debates or other presentations)

    III.                 Literary Response and Analysis

     Examples:

            Response to literary texts, themes, and techniques

            Literary interpretation

            Critique or explanation of literature

            Book, Film, or drama review

            Analytical or interpretive essay

            Personal analysis of text

            Text response

IV.  Literary Expression (Creative, Imaginative, Expressive Writing)

Examples:

            Short Fiction

            Play, Dramatic Script

            Personal Narrative

            First person writing exercises

            Creative Non-Fiction

            Descriptive Writing

     V.             Poetry                     (5-poems)                  

     VI. Overall Self-Reflection

            A three-paged paper for all scholars MLA
 double spaced, 12 point TNR or other comparable font introduction to your portfolio that describes your overall development this year as a writer, thinker, debater/speaker, and learner in English class. You must include a discussion of the following:

            1. Yourself as a scholar (overall)

            2. Yourself as an English scholar comparing last 2-3 years to this year.

            3. An evaluation of how well you have improved this year in the skills of listening, reading,

writing, and speaking. Give specific examples to demonstrate improvements.

            4. Your goals for improvement over the next year in terms of these skills.

            5. Your strengths and weaknesses as an English scholar

            6. Your candid reaction to the quality of your work during this course.

Page Guidelines:                  25-50 Pages, exclusive of drafts

Examples of above:

I.      Immigration, Gay Rights, Abortion Debate (Reflections), Nature/Nurture Research Essay, Mock Trials (Huck Finn Projects); Religious Paradoxes [Kanye West, Madonna and Edward Taylor]”Jesus Walks” – “Like a Prayer” and Slave Research Paper (Ms. Moore)  (7)

II.    Slave Narrative Project, Hibakusha Reflections (P7 and select few others), Slave Research Paper (Ms. Moore), Immigration, Gay Rights, Abortion Debate (Reflections), Nature/Nurture Research Essay, Harlem Renaissance Field Trip (Photo – Interview Essays – April/May), Tenement Museums Field Trips (Photo- Interview Essays) as well as Spanish Harlem (May/June).

                                                                           (10)

III.  “The Ballad of Thoreau”, “Colbert Report”, “The Daily Show”, “Nature: Determine It”, “American Dream”, “Crucible-Movie vs. Play”, Religious Paradoxes [Kanye West, Madonna and Edward Taylor]”, “Tonsils”, by Bill Cosby; “Phillis Wheatley Persecution Response”; Slave Songs Reflections, Mary Prince Debates (all BUT P8), "Dead Poets Society", "Roots", (March), "Ragtime", "Fences", "Angela's Ashes", "The Souls of Black Folks", Response to Emma Goldman Speech, Reflection to Ragtime Movie vs. novel, "The Color of Water", "Their Eyes Were Watching God", "The Great Gatsby",  (May)

                                                                          (24+)


IV.  Slave Narrative Project, Harlem-Tenement Blog-Photo Essays

                                                                                  (3)

V.    Poems from Slave, Transcendental, Gilded Age Units, Hucklebery Found Poems, Improv, or Jazz Poetry.

                                                                            (7+)

As you can see there are several things that cross-connect. Pick your absolute BEST work for each section.

Defense of Portfolio: (May 23 - June 3)               -         One-on-one conferences

Why have you chosen these particular pieces for this project?

What have you learned while working through ___________ [essay, research paper, debate]?

What was your favorite novel/text and why?

Your least favorite or most dreaded and why?

What specific skills do you believe are ones you still must work on improving? Why?

What are some of your strengths?

How do you plan on improving them?

What is your best way of learning?

Which Reading Strategy works best for you? Will you use it and others in coming years?

What are some things about my teaching that you found confusing, unhelpful or useless?

Recommendations for Summer Reading and Writing

With the addition of the LGTs and blog which did you find most helpful?

Was there too much redundancy or were the re-enforcements helpful, confusing, distracting?

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,"~ UNCF slogan since 1970s

Voabulary Video Scholarship Contest - Deadline May 28, 2011ca

For those interested in expressing themselves, while teaching others the 500 most popular SAT words AND earn a few thousand dollars!!!

Click on the above link:
http://VocabVideos.com/Contests

OR

 Call Laura Horn at 646-216-9187

or e-her at laurah@alisteducation.com


“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

Experience Life – Scholars' Photo Essays 2011

Your job, continue the "Experience Life – Scholars' Photo Essays 2011" blog with your own unique video interviews, recorded data and photos, all with detailed write-ups like those sampled on the class blog below:

TO GET STARTED:

1. Click on the title above
     or search Experience Life – Scholars' Photo Essays 2011

2. user name shawncarson
                    or        nomadcarson@yahoo.com

3. password = Stupid123

4. follow instructions posting videos, photos with critiques and reflections, audio recordings of interviews and other pertinent data related to our Harlem Renaissance Unit April 5-June 3.

5. Don't forget Street and Graffiti Arts as well as your own expressions of SELF.

6. Be sure your NAME accompanies EVERYTHING you post, in order to earn those 200 points for these two projects

7. For those who missed either field trip, visit these places on your own - interview a couple people concerning GENTRIFICATION, "Ragtime", Civil Rights, Women's Rights and many of the other themes covered within this unit.
All text must be proof read and all photos and items of the quality and caliber of rising Uni scholars.

Have fun!

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

26 More Visit Tenement Museum - 5-11-11

The last 27 scholars joined me for another informative visit with "Victoria Confino" at 97 Orchard Street in the LES. Raj and Chan were the "local" guides who prepped scholars before and after tours, teaching us about "Little German" Town and "What it means to be American" as well as fascinating debates over Immigration, here, in New Zealand and the world over.

Amazing questions and responses were given during these trips and equally awesome photos were taken - sneaky b**tids!-

Way to go!

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,"   ~ United Negro College Fund (National slogan)


"A picture is worth 1,000 words."

Amazing QUESTIONS and PHOTOS during Tenement "Piecing It Together" Tour for 18 more scholars

Congratulations to amazing photos, great questions that truly illustrated some attention to details, information being disseminated and prep-work during this "Piecing it Together" Tour.

While this trip was slightly different than the "Confino" Tours on Monday, May 2, 2011, you now have completely different information to share with group members.

http://www.historybuff.com/library/refshirtwaist.html
Thanks to Krystal Peralta, partnered with Jamie, Alexus and John, another link and amazing photos of her experiences today:


PICTURE 1: "Rags for the Riches"
       
                                                                                                                      PICTURE 2


PICTURE 1: I chose this as one of my favorite pictures, because I took it as he [Adam Steinberg] explained the hard work and effort put into making these garments. Young immigrant teenage girls would work at the factories making clothing to sell. They did it for a living to help support and feed their families. Most children worked in factories starting at the age of eight or even younger. It benefited factory owners, and it also benefited workers in some ways more than in others.


PICTURE 2: I noticed that in one of the small rooms there was a dresser with books on it. So when i took this picture i thought about the fortunate children who had learned to read and write before they started working at this time. 

While Jahziel, Abby's [Harlem pix], Delorian, this group here got the jump with today's photos already. Way to go!

Jamie's 5-4-11 shots

"A look into the lives of early immigrants"

This is how a typical tenement building looked like when immigrants first started arriving in the U.S. I like this picture because it shows how run down both the floor and walls were. This is no optical illusion either it really is that small. With compact living conditions it didn't make it quite sanitary for the occupants. 

"Up close and personal"

This is a picture of a "Do Not Touch" sign on the window sill inside of the tenement. The reason why I like this picture is because it proves that The Tenement Museum allows you to step into the world of the early immigrants while making sure you respect how they're trying to preserve history. Unlike any Museum I've ever been to before they only had one display that was behind glass, the rest was out in the open making it seem very believable. 

I love how the museum blends in with it's surroundings. Besides it's shop across the street and a few flyers they don't really need to have a lot of flashy lights to get people to come here. What is even better than that is that it shows you can't judge a book from it's cover. It may seem like a newly modified apartment from the outside, but it's really a preserved part of New York history. 

                     

Team JARK or KAR-J                      5-4-11




Amy        Sutapa             Seamus            Eliza             Naurin*             Elfrin            Harold

Solansh     Joshep       Delorian      Abby      Ernesto            Khalid

Krystal Peralta*           Muyiwa              John         Jamie*      Alexus*
  *(met at museum)

I'll have the Tumlr.com account set up before Sat., so be sure to compile notes, picking your favorite three photos, writing captions:
What is it?

Why have you chosen this one to represent your trip?

Add any more details [mini reflection] to best convey 




“A picture is worth 1,000 words.” ~ 




“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” ~ Lloyd Alexander

Remaining Groups Depart from MHSHS Patio facing Fire Department 2:25 Wed. May 4 and Tues. May 10 TENEMENT MUSEUM TOURS - 1 Train to D Train to F or M Trains to Delancy Street (Museum on 108 Orchard Street)

Those attending these last two Tenement Museum Tours please come prepared:

1. A small pocket notepad; prepared 10-15 interview questions with space for responses





2. pick one group member to bring a camera - cell phone with recording device
      While photos are NOT allowed within actual building, chronicling the outside of these historical buildings is essential. Additionally, interviewing and "shooting" tour guides and other places is the best way to document your trip.








3. Re-read tenement sections within Ragtime [Chapts. 3 and 6] as well as sections on immigrants and "Othering"

4. View video about Riis' photos of Tenements -

http://www.history.com/videos/the-harlem-renaissance-an-artistic-explosion#the-harlem-renaissance-an-artistic-explosion?vid=HIS_MRSS_Hulu

The Harlem Renaissance (2:53 mins)    -   followed by:

Jacob Riis (2:07 mins)  - Tenement Buildings

The Statue of Liberty Unknown (3:40 mins).


5. Bring recording device, so you can tape interview WHILE taking a few written notes [back-up].

6. Take creative shots

7. Write reflections and CAPTIONS for photos soon after taking them. This way when uploading them to the blog, you'll remember what and WHY you shot what you have. 

8. Address conditions, what you've learned, how these immigrants affected American laws and society.

9. Discuss somethings that were shocking, unbelievable or even scary.

10. Be creative with reflections - tell the story without sounding stiff, loose, relaxed write-ups similar to Sundjata Chronicles from Freshman year. 

Other tips:

-Stay attentive
-Eye contact
-Be appreciative
-Even if you think the answer will be, "No", ASK anyway.
-Listen carefully
     Often you'll hear things that sound more shocking or bizarre - ASK FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS








Former grade school teacher and 3-year Tenement guide, Ruth Biton, holds a drawing of the area, circa 1900.

All pictures by Mike, Hana, Emily and Mandy
____________________________


Reminder to all those who missed the Harlem trip: Be sure to get a map and head out there when you have time.


 “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” ~ 

GREAT CONFINO TOUR AT TENEMENT BUILDING 5-2-11 + Final 6 Weeks as JUNIORS

While 37 scholars were signed up to go on today's Tenement "Living" Museum Tour, only 20 remembered to go?

Congratulations to those 20 who joined Ms. Ruth Biton and "Victoria Confino" http://www.museumtix.com/venue/venueinfo.aspx?vid=781&tab=E&evw=2&pvt=let

from 1916

Great questions and notes from:

Jahziel James*****

Rinchen Dolma**

Allison Li

Roxanne Coleman*

Ashley Lopez**

Emily Chen

Sukamol Chonpatawat

Ricky Dundi

Shakif Awsaf

Yomiuri Ortiz**

Debbie Veras****

Valentin Castillo****

Rosemarie Reyes

Mandy Zhao**

Hana Lee****

Mike Linn**

Stephanie Garcia**

Whom am I forgetting?

Scoring Trips

Showing up 50 

Interviewing/Questioning-Responding appropriately = 25

Photos = 25

Max = 100, however, it is always possible to score more, the more participation offered.

Updates:

Bring ONLY IRB for next three Fridays, as they will be the focus of Friday Quizzes = 15 minutes reading, 15 minutes discussing correlations between Ragtime and "Iron Jawed Angels", notes from both field trips and those from History and Lit classes to whichever IRB chosen.

Take these last 16 days to finalize Portfolios

No real writing assignments as long as all scholars are doing the reading.

That last Coulombe-Finn Essay was NOT planned, it was only assigned when scholars failed to do their bare minimum reading 15 pages/day during the course of 18-30 days. 

You dictate the course of the class. Read, rent the movie, work in Study Groups during Advisory, stop by L&L or SOS to any of the 8 Humanities teachers, any of the four GCs, and GET 'ER DONE!

Ragtime must be completed by Friday, May 6 [the latest Tuesday, May 9], so that scholars have ample time to read IRB.

IRBs must be completed no later than Friday, May 19, in order to fully integrate themes of Corruption, Betrayal, Hierarchy, Transformation, Manipulations of "Dreams" and/or The American Dream, Escape, Women's Liberation, Race Relations, Multiple Perspectives, Altering History, Loss of Self, Identity, Loss of Faith, Overcoming Adversities, Goals, Othering and "Passing" [for White]. 

Final Projects for Harlem Unit Week of May 27th

Blog Updates, brief written reflections,

Monopoly Game

Poetry Salon--dress up like the Ragtime Era

May 18 - Portfolios Due

Conferences happen May 20 - June 3

Possible Movies that correlate:  

Memento, the 2000, Christopher Nolan  

The Changeling Clint Eastwood's 2008 movie about 

Inception, recent film by Christopher Nolan

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Charlie Kaufman, 2004)

_____________________________________________

Must buy, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie by May 31, in order to read it by June 10.

Improv Week June 13-15 (combining Langston Hughes, Jazz and excerpt from Tina Fey's Memoir, Bossypants for a lighter fun last week!

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste," United Negro College Fund Slogan