English 505

Over the last three class periods my class has been presenting their portrait playlist projects. Everyone did a wonderful job--on the pres.'s at least. Warning: I told them that their presentations only had to be five to seven minutes and it still took 3 full days, so from now on I'm going to have to schedule these accordingly (I'd only planned for two days with maybe a _little_ spill over). They had the option, as you can see on the guidlines that I posted, to do a visual project as opposed to a paper. No one abused this, they all (more or less) put a lot of work into them and did some very creative stuff. Next I'm starting a unit on rhetorical analysis. I welcome any suggestions on activities, response papers, etc, for teaching, experimenting with rhetorical analyses, interpretation, critique. For the next assignment--response 2--I want them to practice doing an analysis (or summary?) of a short story the thematics of which could be broadly construed as addressing identification issues, identity problematics, recognition, and so forth. Any suggestions on stories (I decided that the one I had planned is far too long for a response) would be a BIG help. Perhaps something by Baldwin, Welty, I. Reed, Maxine Hing Kingston, maybe a sci-fi story (Samantha?)....whatever you think might be productive and applicable to these themes. Thanks.