Pop Culture Presentation; Dracula: Chp. 8-16; Non-fiction Notes & Pop Culture Articles

Lab:

Please use the lab time to complete your pop culture presentations (or work on your portfolio):

Popular Culture Presentation Project

• Your topic should not be a FAD. 
• Your Prezi should include a title slide, a few slides detailing the most important history of the topic, and a short clip of music, video, or other text that identifies the impact of the subject on our culture. Keep your presentation slides visual--very little text should appear on your slides. The text you would normally read to us during your presentation should be practiced and delivered orally as if you learned or know the information (you can have notes if you need them...)
• Video/music material should be used to hook our attention or to introduce the topic. It may also be used to conclude, but this is a weaker choice. It should not be a replacement for your brief explanation about what the topic is and why it is important. Keep your clips very short if you use them--I'll ring a bell during your presentation for any video/clip that goes over 1 minute in length. We understand where to find more information about your topic if we want to research it because we've all heard about this new thing called the internet...
• Do not read to us from your slides--you should know your topic well enough to talk to us about what it is and why it is important without looking at your presentation slides. Presentation slides should be visual and for the benefit of your audience (see above). Know the material well enough through research before presenting it to us. Students who read to us in this fashion can only get grades of "C" for this project. Learn and know what you're talking about!
• Part of this assignment lies in researching your topic. Find out what it is and why it's important. This website: Popmatters may help for supporting information. Or you can use that new thing in academics called...the internet.
• Presentations will be due next class. Some lab time will be available (but not all of it...!)

Dracula: Chapters 8-16 (some assistance):

• Things get serious in chapter 8 when Mina finds Lucy, who has been sleepwalking, accosted by a mysterious figure in the graveyard. Mina finds 2 small pin-pricks on Lucy's throat and thinks it's from pinning her shawl. This chapter includes Mina noticing a giant bat flapping outside Lucy's window. The image is certainly a cliche nowadays. Also in this chapter, we learn about the boxes of earth as cargo from the Demeter and Renfield escapes to Carfax Abbey and is recaptured.
• In chapter 9 Mina and Jonathan are reunited and married. Doctor Van Helsing arrives to examine Lucy. It is important to consider Mina (as innocent female = married) and Lucy (as doomed or corrupted = single).
• Chapters 10-14 include the various transfusions the men (Seward, Van Helsing, Arthur & Quincey) give Lucy to sustain her. Thus, they are symbolically married. During these chapters, Van Helsing introduces garlic as a cure to ward off vampires, but this defense backfires, a wolf escapes from the London zoo, Lucy's mother dies from fright, a bat returns, and Lucy eventually succumbs to Dracula's influence and dies, becoming a beautiful corpse. Meanwhile, Mina & Jonathan run into Dracula--but he's younger now. Rumors of the "Bloofer" lady preying on children becomes an issue. "Bloofer" a bad slang corruption of "beautiful." This section describes Lucy's corruption and transformation into a monster. Her body quite literally becomes the battleground between the forces of good (the men) and evil (Dracula's feeding). 
• In chapter 15 & 16, Seward and Van Helsing open Lucy's tomb and finds it empty at first, then later Lucy's body is there, well preserved and radiant, as if alive. The two men convince Arthur and Quincey to help them finally put Lucy to rest by decapitating her and staking her through the heart. [Spoiler: In chapter 16, this will happen to Lucy--Arthur, her intended beloved, literally stakes her through the heart--really romantic...]. Chapter 16 ends the turning point or crisis of the novel. Now, it's all lead up to the climax and resolution of the novel. 

Aim to complete the novel by next week Tuesday. There will be a test on Dracula (and a discussion on the book)--feel free to take notes or annotate while you read. See previous posts for a full audio version of the book.

Classroom:

German-American poet: Charles Bukowski  poems (reading)

Non-fiction falls into a variety of types that we, as writers, can use (or will be expected to write, for example in required college composition courses) on any contemporary topic. These "articles" can open the opportunity to advance our careers as freelance writers. Articles for websites, blogs, magazines, textbooks, newspapers, newsletters and more are all different types of potential street cred for writers.

You've written the personal essay ("How it Feels to be Me," for example), the summary (journalism or news articles, police reports, law briefs, business reports, book reports, psychological evaluations, etc.), a variety of analysis and critique articles or papers for us over the years (film reviews, play reviews, test essays, etc.), and some synthesis or research papers (using a variety of sources to draw rhetorical support for your claim(s) about a topic.)

So let's get more specific. Every time we write we are doing a combination of things. Our purpose in writing may be entertainment, but in doing so, we usually do one or more of the following:

• Narration: telling a story; reporting or summarizing a sequence of events (plot), explaining something
• Description: using specific diction (imagery) to make information more clear or vivid.
• Exemplification: illustrating ideas with examples to make something abstract more concrete, representing a larger concept or event by a single incident or image (support).
• Definition: eliminating confusion or ambiguity by clarifying a term or idea; challenging conventional meanings or thoughts.
• Classification: dividing or outlining an idea into separate parts; organizing into categories; making distinctions; examining an issue from a variety of sides.
• Compare/Contrast: finding similarities and/or differences among things or ideas.
• Persuasion: convincing someone an opinion is correct; defending a position or idea.

TASK: Identify the type of essay for 5 of the 6 essays we read today in class. Hand in your answers (or complete if we don't finish in class and turn in for participation credit next time). 

"The Changing Face of America" by Haya El Nasser

"Dawn & Mary" by Brian Doyle

"True Colors" by Christine Granados

"More Equal Than Others" by Rebecca Solnit

"Britney Spears: The Pop Tart in Winter" by Adam Sternbergh & "On Celebrity" by Ellen Degeneres.

David Sterritt: "Face of an Angel"

HOMEWORK: Keep reading Dracula. Prepare your pop culture presentation for Friday. Complete the reading of the essays if we didn't complete them in class. Turn in your identification for participation credit.