Welcome to Critical Reading and Writing at Taliesin. I
have a great summer session planned
out for us, and I'm looking forward to getting to know you while we
explore these texts both on this blog and face-to-face in
the classroom. This blog will serve as the platform for our online
discussions. Every week, I will have questions posted to inspire your
blog posts. Students should expect to post weekly on the blog and
should check in frequently to comment on students' ideas and engage in
the general discussion. For more
information on blog posting and how it factors into the course see the
section on "Blog Posts"in our syllabus.
To help us feel comfortable with commenting on blogger, I would like for all of you to take a moment and comment on this post by answering the following questions:
1) What's your name and where are you from?
2) Who are some of your major architectural influences and why? Can you post a link to an image?
3) Do you have any experience studying critical theory?
4) What literature courses have you taken in the past, and
what were your experiences?
5) What is one place in the world you would like to visit and why?
6) Finally, post a link to a video, meme, or cartoon that makes you laugh.
Remember to sign your name on all of your blog posts!
Writing Workshop I
Friday, June 6, 2014
Monday, August 19, 2013
Invisible Cities
Your
blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 21st at 10:00 am. You
may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop
your own response to the readings.
1) Trace
some of the ways in which Calvino constructs the city. What are some of the themes he explores? What issues does he examine? In what ways do the constructions of these
various cities reflect the imagination of the narrator? Of how we imagine the
city?
2) All
of the cities are named after women.
Draw connections between this novel and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman and explore the ways in
which architecture and urban planning can be gendered and informed by the
complex nature of desire.
3) The
title of this text is Invisible Cities.
In what ways are cities “invisible”? Use
this text to draw connections from texts we have previously explored in this
class.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Harlem is Nowhere and Seeking Spatial Justice
Your
blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 14th at 10:00 am. You
may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop
your own response to the readings.
1) How do both Ellison and Soja suggest the ways in
which we internalize spatial identity?
Use examples from both texts to support your answer.
2) In Soja’s prologue, he suggests that the BRU victory
could have had the potential of forcing any public work having to pass a “justice test.” What does he mean by this “justice test”? Do
you think public works should abide by such standards? Consider your own work as an architect. Would
your work pass a “justice test”? Should
it? Use examples from the text to
support or defend your answer.
3) What does Soja mean by the term “spatial justice”? We began this session reading the works of
two architects—FLLW and Le Corbusier—who, in their own ways, sought to remedy
the social ills of their time through space and the built environment. How would Soja critique their efforts? What does spatial justice mean for the 21st
century? Use examples for the text(s) to
support your answer.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture
Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 7th at 10:00 am. You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop
your own response to the readings.
1) Even though Robertson presents her readers with a “manifesto”
on Soft Architecture, the exact definition of this term remains elusive,
perhaps intentionally so. Trace
Robertson’s references to “Soft Architecture” in this book and define in your
own words how you perceive the concept.
Make sure to quote from the text to support your analysis of this term.
2) Robertson’s prose engages a great deal in the idea
of the city, specifically her native city Vancouver. What are some of the ways in which she
engages in issues dealing with the city in her prose? Consider the ways in which Robertson explores
ideas of memory, nostalgia, surfaces, globalization, urban decay, and
renewal. Make sure to quote from the text
support your analysis.
3)Robertson explores several themes that echo many
texts we have read in this course:
utopias, memory, the suburbs, the city, ideology, capitalism,
imagination—just to name a few themes.
Find a quote from Robertson’s text and draw relationships between her
ideas and that of an author we have previously read in this course. Make sure to quote both authors directly in
your analysis.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman (continued)
Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, June 17th
by 10 am. You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop
your own response to the readings.
1) One of Carter’s projects in this novel is to reveal
the ways in which desire can very much be a social construction. From Desiderio’s ever-shifting subject
position, we see him perpetrate a rape that runs him afoul of the law in one
instance, but then becomes an initiation of sorts later in the novel. It is the tale of Sleeping Beauty we tell our
children, but a horrible act of violence in another context. Pedophilia is socially acceptable in one
particular social schema, but taboo in others, and so on, as Carter switches
from exploiter to exploited, subject and object, and back again. What do you think of Carter’s game? To what extent is desire socially
informed? And if desire is truly the
root of imagination as was discussed in our earlier class session, what does
that mean for the work of the architect?
2) Both feminist non-feminist critics have criticized
Carter’s novels as “pornographic,” but Carter articulates how she sees herself
as bearing the legacy of the Marquis de Sade whom she calls “a moral
pornographer” who “might use pornography as a critique of current relations between
the sexes…Such a pornographer would not be the enemy of women, perhaps because
he might begin to penetrate to the heart of the contempt for women that
distorts our culture even as he entered the realms of true obscenity as he
describes it” (from Sadeian Woman 20). Mandy Koolen argues that Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor
Hoffman “demonstrate[s] the pervasiveness and insidiousness of patriarchy,
the ways that women internalize sexist and misogynist beliefs and, in turn, how
women’s sexual desires are shaped by living in patriarchal environments” (400).
Do you agree with Koolen? How can
certain environments be “patriarchal” and in what ways do we internalize such
systems of oppression?
3) In the House of Anonymity, Albertina (in disguise)
states, “My house is a refuge for those who can find no equilibrium between
inside and outside, between mind and body or body and soul, vice versa, etcetera,
etcetera” (131-2). In a previous class
session, Connor brought up the pervasiveness of “in-between” spaces in the
novel. What other instances of “in-between-ness”
do we see in this novel in terms of space, bodies, and desire?
Sunday, July 7, 2013
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Your
blog comments will be due on Thursday, June 11th by 10 am. You may
draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response
to the readings.
1) In many ways, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a meditation on the city. What are some of the ways Carter describes the city and the effect Dr. Hoffman’s machinations have on this space and the experience of this space? What sort of connections can you draw between this anonymous city and other “fictional” cities we have read about in other texts in this class? Make sure to use examples from the texts to support your answer.
2) In what ways does this novel explore the nature of the imagination? How does Dr. Hoffman via his ambassador describe it? How does the Minister see it? How does Desiderio? Given these different perspectives on the nature of the imagination, how do you see and experience it? Make sure to use examples to support your answer.
3) In what ways is this novel a “postmodern” novel? Draw connections between previous texts we have read and this novel to explore the ways in which this novel explores postmodern themes. Make sure to use examples to support your answer.
1) In many ways, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a meditation on the city. What are some of the ways Carter describes the city and the effect Dr. Hoffman’s machinations have on this space and the experience of this space? What sort of connections can you draw between this anonymous city and other “fictional” cities we have read about in other texts in this class? Make sure to use examples from the texts to support your answer.
2) In what ways does this novel explore the nature of the imagination? How does Dr. Hoffman via his ambassador describe it? How does the Minister see it? How does Desiderio? Given these different perspectives on the nature of the imagination, how do you see and experience it? Make sure to use examples to support your answer.
3) In what ways is this novel a “postmodern” novel? Draw connections between previous texts we have read and this novel to explore the ways in which this novel explores postmodern themes. Make sure to use examples to support your answer.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Essay I (part two)
For this assignment, students are to revise their essays based on the comments they received from their conference. For this revision, students are to pay careful attention the kinds of arguments they are putting forth and how they are supporting those arguments with support from the various texts we have read this session. Students will also want to ensure that they are providing adequate analysis of difficult passages, key terms, and ideas from the essays we have read thus far in the course.
This assignment must be typed, double-spaced, stapled and in accordance with a standard documentation style such as MLA or Chicago style.
Your revised essay is due at the beginning of class on July 12th (please note the schedule change).
This assignment must be typed, double-spaced, stapled and in accordance with a standard documentation style such as MLA or Chicago style.
Your revised essay is due at the beginning of class on July 12th (please note the schedule change).
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