Monday: Time to work ahead. You do not have any assignments due on Monday, which makes it the PERFECT chance to work ahead on the Week 2 assignments. Believe me: if you put off the assignments in this class until the day that they are due, you are going to be under a lot of stress. If you can work at your own pace just a day or two ahead of the deadlines, you will find the class much easier to manage!
Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning - the Week 1 Storybook assignments from Myth-Folklore and World Lit., plus early Week 2 and Week 3 assignments from all three classes. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8 a.m. or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will then start reading the assignments in the order they were turned in. For those of you who are working ahead: please do NOT go on to the next Storybook assignment until you get my comments back on the earlier assignment you turned in. Instead, use your time to work ahead on other assignments; I will get the Storybook assignments returned as quickly as I can.
Myth-Folklore: Gilgamesh OR Egypt. Those of you who are in the Myth-Folklore class will have a choice of readings each week. In Week 2, the choice is between Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will do only one set of readings, and take the background quiz and reading quiz based on your choice of Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will end up with some blank items in the Gradebook; please don't worry about that. Your goal is to get 30 points per week, and if you do the quizzes for just one of the reading selections, you will end up with the points you need.
August 30: Birthday of Mary Shelley. August 30, marks the birthday in 1797 of the famous English writer, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who is best known for her novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. I'm sure you are all familiar with Frankenstein and his monster; Prometheus, meanwhile, was the Greek Titan who created human beings out of clay (he is also famous for having stolen fire to give it as a gift to humanity). You can read more about Mary Shelley in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this portrait of Shelley painted in 1840 by Richard Rothwell:
