Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in this week. If you turned something in by 9AM on Monday, you should have comments back from me; if you turned something in later, it is probably still in the stack. My goal as always is to return comments to you before the weekend for any assignment submitted by 8AM on Friday. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
Writing - Revising. For those of you on the regular Storybook schedule, you will be adding your second story to your Storybook for Week 8. The pattern of the last four weeks - writing, then revising - will repeat for the next six weeks of the semester. In Week 8, Week 10, and Week 12, you will be adding new stories to your Storybook. In Week 9, Week 11, and Week 13, you will be revising, along with some final revision assignments to complete your project in Week 14 and Week 15. Those of you on the alternate schedule will also be writing and revising, but in different weeks. I know that for many of you having to do all this revising is something unfamiliar, since in many university courses there is not a lot of emphasis on revising. By including revision - lots of revision - as part of the writing process, I hope everybody will wind up with something they can be really proud of by the end of the semester!
Spring Break. (repeat announcement) Some people have written to ask me about Spring Break, so I thought I would explain how that works. Next week, which is Week 9, you will have your usual Tuesday-Thursday assignments due just like always on March 12-13-14. Then, the Week 9 end-of-the-week assignments (Storybook, Internet, blog responding) will not be due until the weekend AFTER Spring Break, with the usual grace period on the Monday morning after Spring break, March 25. I'll have more to say about that next week; meanwhile, if you have any questions let me know!
Friday Events on Campus. There will be performances of the opera Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi at the Reynolds Performing Arts Center (Parrington Oval) on Friday at 8PM and again on Saturday at 8PM, with a Sunday matinee showing at 3PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
Nina Paley: Sita Sings the Blues. In the Indian Epics class, we will be starting a new epic, the Mahabharata, next week. Before leaving the Ramayana behind, I wanted to share this feature-length animated film version of the Ramayana by Nina Paley: Sita Sings the Blues. People in Indian Epics might enjoy seeing this Sita-oriented take on the epic story, and those of you in Myth-Folklore could use this wonderful film as a way to get to know one of the world's great epics. You can see a trailer for the film at YouTube (below), and you can even view the movie for free since Nina Paley has made the film available online to everyone. As she explains at the website: From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.
