This week you are just responsible for making one post. Please ask a quesiton or answer someone's question or post a thought--do it by Monday at Midnight please.
Eireene, I'm not sure if the one post is intended for the community or for the personal blog, so I'm going to post it here. Let me know if you want me to do something different. Thanks! This week I’m thinking and worrying a lot about my project (not to mention the midterm). I’d like to do a research paper on the civil rights movement in the city, but I’m not sure how I’m going to incorporate visions of the city, or creativity, into this project. I guess, being a literature major, I could analyze writing from the period (primarily memoir but also poems and hopefully political publications), as well as analyze historical events. As far as my critical lens is concerned, the benefit of hindsight goes without saying. I’m also interested in the idea of forty-year history cycles, and in the idea that (according to Fiction Professor Karen Yamashita) in 1968, people were really starting to get sick of the Vietnam War. I’m interested in how mass movements accomplish change in our country. From the movements for Woman Suffrage, to the Free Speech Movement started in Berkeley, to the movements for ethnic studies courses at San Francisco State, to national movements to end the Vietnam War, our American birthright to peaceful protest has served as the catalyst for legislative and political reform time and time again. The Bay Area in the nineteen-sixties and seventies was a hotbed of dissent, characterized by the Black Panthers in Oakland, the Hells Angels (started by war veterans), and countless groups of hippies, druggies, rock and rollers, and conscientious objectors being politically radical all over the left coast. For my paper, I’ll focus on movements particular to San Francisco, namely that of Asian-Americans in Chinatown (source: William Poy Lee’s memoir “The Eighth Promise”), the movement for ethnic studies at SF State (source: Bettina Aptheker’s memoir “Intimate Politics”), the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, and hopefully I can identify at least one more movement (perhaps Snyder and others’ ecological movement?) centralized in San Francisco so I can avoid dipping into the contado. Another challenge will be weaving the class texts into the paper. They have served as the inspiration for my focus on the political landscapes and possibilities in San Francisco. Perhaps the poetry of Brautigan, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti can contribute lines to the illusion-versus-reality of San Francisco. Brechin and Snyder can donate thoughts on the environment, as I believe our toxic environment contributes to our lack of health and abundance of misery and exploitation (read: oppression) in America. I’m not sure about anything from the Reclaiming San Francisco text, as it hasn’t truly “spoken” to me as the others have. I took down some quotes during the Alcatraz video, so hopefully I can paraphrase and include those as well. Is all this, plus my two additional source texts, too much, or not enough, for this eight-to-ten page paper? Back to envisioning San Francisco, creatively: San Francisco may be America’s most beautiful and deadly symbol of the elusive American Dream. In America, we hope that a man may come from another country to a fair American port city, find work, pull himself up by his bootstraps, and one day be his own boss of home and business. Those looking through a Christian lens refer back to the Puritan and Pilgrim values which colonized this country, and Native Americans make look to beliefs which gave this land breath and thought before whitey came in and blew it all apart, but religious freedom is also somewhat promised here. Our Constitution and our might promise freedom to white middle and upper classes of men, but the dream continues to unravel the more you identify who are socially, economically, and politcally left out of this white man’s world. San Francisco is a particularly American example of an expensive, polluted, over-crowded, exploitative, and commercialized city, supposedly politically liberated but truthfully socially and economically discriminatory. Or is this too cynical of a thesis?
What does "imperial contado" mean? Is it like all the smaller cities around San Francisco provide resources and materials to SF to create SF's "urban power"(ie buildings, bridges, etc...)?
Imperial contado is all the land around a city, whether it is other cities or undeveloped land, from which a city draws resources and which it dominates militarily. For example, SF's contado ideologically is the Bay Area, but it also draws water from San Mateo and the Tuolumne River, got timber and gold from the Sierras, silver from Nevada, building materials from Seattle and Santa Cruz, etc. These places are all part of SF's contado because it draws resources from them.
A technical question for the third essay question:
If we do the first part of the question ("discuss how SF became a site of urban power and literary-cultural splendor as well as the costs and consequences of 'earthly ruin' involved in this build-up of 'imperial SF'"), the support would mostly be historical and factual rather than literary, right?
No thesis is too cynical...so where are you going with this.
This post here is lovely. I was going to ask you to post this sort of stuff next week, but it's great to have it here early--and sure, this counts just fine for your post this week.
Let's talk after the midterm about how to make the project manageable for a 8-10 page paper. The next step is to find out what these three or four movements that you mention have in common and being able to get specific about this one aspect that you're drawing out. That'll come out of your research but you should alredy be reading with an eye towards finding an angle that will allow you to focus on something smaller than just the movements in general.
(Don't worry, the focus willl come, and part of my job is to talk with you long enough to find that focus in what you are maybe as yet only subconsciously pulling out...)
For the third essay question, I could see you drawing in literary examples, like some of the poems and songs that have been discussed in lecture. Even Brechin mixes poems into his historical analysis.
(What I was trying to explain in section, perhaps, not very clearly, is that Brenchin is really engaged in a cultural analysis. He is looking at the ways in which metaphors--often ones that start out in poems or speeches or books--allow for and turn into historical facts.
So literature is certainly relevant. The surprising part abotu Brechin is that literature, finally, gets to have a role in cause-effect statements. (Those invovled with "how SF became...")
I think that you'd want to follow Brechin's example, or use Brechin directly, in making connections between the literary and historical facts.
A faithful and thorough reproduction of one of Brechin's arguments with perhaps a few added details from other readings would technically fulfill the needs of the essay question,
but I'd love to see you pick a poem that he didn't use and connect it with some historical facts.
That may be a lot to ask for in a midterm essay but I'll know that it was hard and grade accordingly.
7 comments:
Eireene, I'm not sure if the one post is intended for the community or for the personal blog, so I'm going to post it here. Let me know if you want me to do something different. Thanks!
This week I’m thinking and worrying a lot about my project (not to mention the midterm). I’d like to do a research paper on the civil rights movement in the city, but I’m not sure how I’m going to incorporate visions of the city, or creativity, into this project. I guess, being a literature major, I could analyze writing from the period (primarily memoir but also poems and hopefully political publications), as well as analyze historical events. As far as my critical lens is concerned, the benefit of hindsight goes without saying. I’m also interested in the idea of forty-year history cycles, and in the idea that (according to Fiction Professor Karen Yamashita) in 1968, people were really starting to get sick of the Vietnam War.
I’m interested in how mass movements accomplish change in our country. From the movements for Woman Suffrage, to the Free Speech Movement started in Berkeley, to the movements for ethnic studies courses at San Francisco State, to national movements to end the Vietnam War, our American birthright to peaceful protest has served as the catalyst for legislative and political reform time and time again. The Bay Area in the nineteen-sixties and seventies was a hotbed of dissent, characterized by the Black Panthers in Oakland, the Hells Angels (started by war veterans), and countless groups of hippies, druggies, rock and rollers, and conscientious objectors being politically radical all over the left coast. For my paper, I’ll focus on movements particular to San Francisco, namely that of Asian-Americans in Chinatown (source: William Poy Lee’s memoir “The Eighth Promise”), the movement for ethnic studies at SF State (source: Bettina Aptheker’s memoir “Intimate Politics”), the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, and hopefully I can identify at least one more movement (perhaps Snyder and others’ ecological movement?) centralized in San Francisco so I can avoid dipping into the contado.
Another challenge will be weaving the class texts into the paper. They have served as the inspiration for my focus on the political landscapes and possibilities in San Francisco. Perhaps the poetry of Brautigan, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti can contribute lines to the illusion-versus-reality of San Francisco. Brechin and Snyder can donate thoughts on the environment, as I believe our toxic environment contributes to our lack of health and abundance of misery and exploitation (read: oppression) in America. I’m not sure about anything from the Reclaiming San Francisco text, as it hasn’t truly “spoken” to me as the others have. I took down some quotes during the Alcatraz video, so hopefully I can paraphrase and include those as well. Is all this, plus my two additional source texts, too much, or not enough, for this eight-to-ten page paper?
Back to envisioning San Francisco, creatively: San Francisco may be America’s most beautiful and deadly symbol of the elusive American Dream. In America, we hope that a man may come from another country to a fair American port city, find work, pull himself up by his bootstraps, and one day be his own boss of home and business. Those looking through a Christian lens refer back to the Puritan and Pilgrim values which colonized this country, and Native Americans make look to beliefs which gave this land breath and thought before whitey came in and blew it all apart, but religious freedom is also somewhat promised here. Our Constitution and our might promise freedom to white middle and upper classes of men, but the dream continues to unravel the more you identify who are socially, economically, and politcally left out of this white man’s world. San Francisco is a particularly American example of an expensive, polluted, over-crowded, exploitative, and commercialized city, supposedly politically liberated but truthfully socially and economically discriminatory. Or is this too cynical of a thesis?
What does "imperial contado" mean? Is it like all the smaller cities around San Francisco provide resources and materials to SF to create SF's "urban power"(ie buildings, bridges, etc...)?
Imperial contado is all the land around a city, whether it is other cities or undeveloped land, from which a city draws resources and which it dominates militarily. For example, SF's contado ideologically is the Bay Area, but it also draws water from San Mateo and the Tuolumne River, got timber and gold from the Sierras, silver from Nevada, building materials from Seattle and Santa Cruz, etc. These places are all part of SF's contado because it draws resources from them.
A technical question for the third essay question:
If we do the first part of the question ("discuss how SF became a site of urban power and literary-cultural splendor as well as the costs and consequences of 'earthly ruin' involved in this build-up of 'imperial SF'"), the support would mostly be historical and factual rather than literary, right?
Hi Kate,
No thesis is too cynical...so where are you going with this.
This post here is lovely. I was going to ask you to post this sort of stuff next week, but it's great to have it here early--and sure, this counts just fine for your post this week.
Let's talk after the midterm about how to make the project manageable for a 8-10 page paper. The next step is to find out what these three or four movements that you mention have in common and being able to get specific about this one aspect that you're drawing out. That'll come out of your research but you should alredy be reading with an eye towards finding an angle that will allow you to focus on something smaller than just the movements in general.
(Don't worry, the focus willl come, and part of my job is to talk with you long enough to find that focus in what you are maybe as yet only subconsciously pulling out...)
About Sadie's question:
For the third essay question, I could see you drawing in literary examples, like some of the poems and songs that have been discussed in lecture. Even Brechin mixes poems into his historical analysis.
(What I was trying to explain in section, perhaps, not very clearly, is that Brenchin is really engaged in a cultural analysis. He is looking at the ways in which metaphors--often ones that start out in poems or speeches or books--allow for and turn into historical facts.
So literature is certainly relevant. The surprising part abotu Brechin is that literature, finally, gets to have a role in cause-effect statements. (Those invovled with "how SF became...")
I think that you'd want to follow Brechin's example, or use Brechin directly, in making connections between the literary and historical facts.
A faithful and thorough reproduction of one of Brechin's arguments with perhaps a few added details from other readings would technically fulfill the needs of the essay question,
but I'd love to see you pick a poem that he didn't use and connect it with some historical facts.
That may be a lot to ask for in a midterm essay but I'll know that it was hard and grade accordingly.
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