Welcome Back!

Welcome, Class of 2021!

Well met by moonlight...or distance learning rather. 

Please use this blog, our Google Classroom, and the various websites (you can find them on the pages in the header...) to help you find and keep track of your assignments this year. 

Welcome to Writing Across Cultures, your senior capstone course! 

The fundamental idea of this course is to use our research, reading, and discussion or responses to a variety of important topics to inspire our artistic and academic impulses. Secondly, it is a course that urges the artist to depict him or herself in relation to or as the other. We will be examining power structures and hegemonies, cultural groups, and cultural artifacts and ideas in relation to each other. We will use this topic to reach a more universal and engaged POV about our own selves, our own cultures, and the world audience itself.

This course is a literature course, a course in ideas, as well as a practice from which to write and capture authentic voices. It includes subcategories of social science, psychology, philosophy and political science, as well as gender studies, African-American studies, and other "cultural material." Some of you may be interested in majoring in anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, women's studies, Latinx studies, or Asian studies to name only a few. You can find more information about majoring in cultural studies here.

All students will be creating a writing portfolio. You will be allowed in many cases to make your own path as you build a writing portfolio for this course. The idea is that you should feel free to create the Art you like to create. You know how to write plays, make films, write essays and short stories, create poems, write blogs, create podcasts, work with technology, perform, and many other writing tasks. Your portfolio will be filled with the kind of writing you prefer. The portfolio will be collected at the end of each marking period and reviewed by me and your peers. I'll provide more information on the portfolio later in the course. Our course also includes a writer's workshop--although, your primary workshop courses are Advanced Poetry & Fiction with Ms. Gamzon. 

Today, we'll learn a little about culture and ourselves, then get moving on a couple of short assignments. Please read and review the material given to you about the American Dream on our Google Classroom for Friday. Also, Wednesday, please make sure you complete the genre curriculum map questionnaire--it will only take you a couple minutes to complete. 

HOMEWORK: Complete the questionnaire for Wednesday; watch the videos on the American Dream/read the articles on the American Dream. Write a draft for the American Dream contest. See Google Classroom for details!