I barely know where to begin with explaining what has been going on with my unit planning. I guess I'll just see where my mind takes me (so bear with me here)...
I am really passionate about tying the old in with the new. This is one of the reasons I find literature so fascinating, because we can still relate to the concepts written about hundreds of years ago. The human race is changing and has been since the very beginning, but one thing that has not entirely changed is our desire to connect with something/someone. The books we read, movies we watch, poems we recite can all be tied together in one way or another, and I think that's really beautiful.
So, my unit idea... I am going to tie my Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, in with my superhero buddy, Superman. I think there has been a huge push of superheroes in pop culture lately, and I would love to take advantage of that. I happen to be huge into superhero movies... I have watched every single DC and Marvel full feature film ever created (yes, even Howard the Duck, seriously George Lucas, what were you thinking?). Anyway, I was thinking of expanding my lesson serious which focused on the concept of "free will v. predetermined fate." I'm not really sure much beyond these few facts:
1. I want my students to be able to think about the important question of what is free will in life and what is "fate," if there even is such a thing.
2. I want my students to be able to watch a movie that came out in 2013 and see the similarities between that film and a piece of text written in the sixteenth century.
3. I want myself and my students to be truly interested in what we go over in class.
4. I think I want to use The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Maybe I won't cry this time (hah).
Let me know what you guys think or if you have any ideas or suggestions. I would love all your feedback.
Hope all is well in your life, outside of this blog.
Alexandra K. Wiesyk
I got really excited when I saw that you wanted to incorporate Fault into your lesson. You know that's only my favorite book EVER now (thanks, Dave!). Your lesson series sounded great, and I would love to see you expand from that. By tying in "the old with the new", your students will have a better grasp on ideals from years past and how they can be compared to those of today. Fate and free will is a fabulous topic. While you are playing into your own interests, I know you're incorporating your students into that as well. Great ideas, Alex.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex,
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, I'm wondering if you've ever read *The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: A Novel*? Well, it's not so much a side note, but it, as an epic novel, works through the conception of an ongoing fascination with the worlds of superheroes. I wonder, actually, if there's not a recent push, but if that there's always been a kind of pop culture fascination with the conception of "superhero" that's made most famous by comics. There's something about "epic" and "tragic flaw" that's ultimately pervasive and often prevalent in stories (television, film, and novels) since the middle of the 20th century.
Anyway--I like this angle a lot! What do you imagine your essential questions might be? I'm going to encourage folks to avoid the "versus" as a mode of thinking through concepts, merely because it limits exploration that kind of either/or framing that conceptual units seek to undermine, in some respects. That is, *The Old Man and the Sea* isn't only about "man" versus "nature." This kind of framing starts to suggest that topic and theme are the same thing, which isn't so much the case. Instead, by asking questions about human nature, and about the natural elements, we can being to suss out, say, how humans tend to try to make sense of their own realities when they encounter and name what they imagine nature is "doing" to them. I wonder, too, how your students may already be thinking about questions of free will, or how they're making connections in their lives between what's seemingly new and seemingly old?
What's the draw in the Green novel? I wonder if you can't sort of pull from all of the texts you're thinking about and start to imagine some key developing questions that are coming from them and overlapping for you (the terms sections on your lit reviews might be helpful to this end). A focus on that may help you start to pull things together!
I also seem to notice a lot of reference to the visual, and I wonder if this is something you could focus on more specifically, even if you do so in pop culture? What would it be like to make *Julius Caesar* a pop culture text? Arguably, the play itself is a text "from back then" and seeks to make sense of something that happened even more "way back then," but what happens when you use and frame the texts in order to interpret contemporary experience? Are we making connections? Or new meaning? Here, the Beach article might be helpful for making sense of what you want to "do" with how literature means when it comes to the longevity of the idea that we desire to make connections (scholars, say, could argue this isn't true--teens, could, too, after sitting through a unit on Shakespeare!).
Very interesting! Can't wait to seem more.
sarah
Here's an update, all:
ReplyDeleteI will not be using Green's novel. Instead I will likely be using the YA novel The Hero and the Crown.
Also, Sarah, thank you for the "Caesar in pop culture" idea. I think I'll have to steal that :)
-AKW