Final Portfolio ( Subtitle: Into The Woods)

Posted Tue, 12/15/2009 - 17:35 by John Reitz says

Friend,

   Between my first attempt at finishing this class (this Spring) and my second attempt (now, this Winter) I’ve had a lot of first hand experience dealing with the contemporary English Literature classroom. I’ve put in nearly thirty hours of volunteer work at Carrboro High School this semester assistant teaching Honors English III to an incredibly diverse group of students. More than any reading I’ve done in my Education courses or any theorizing I did with my English 366 classmates, this first hand experience has shown me the necessity for the evolution of English Studies to meet the twenty-first century.

Lost In This Podcast

Posted Tue, 12/15/2009 - 15:28 by John Reitz says

My revised and completed podcast about the album "All Alone In An Empty House" by Lost In The Trees.

A BambInconvient Truth

Posted Mon, 12/14/2009 - 23:14 by John Reitz says

AFI lists "Man" from the movie Bambi as the #20 top movie villain of all time. In a round about way, Man plays an equally evil role in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth . In this video mash-up I've tried to show the devastating effects Man has on nature by combining these two movies created more than half a century apart.

Peer Gynt Collage Revision

Posted Sat, 12/12/2009 - 16:27 by John Reitz says
Peer Gynt Collage Revision

Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt is a dramatic poem spanning the life of Norwegian folk hero of the same name. Epic in scale, Peer travels from nineteenth century Norway, to the kingdom of the trolls, to Egypt, and back again. I've tried to capture the dynamics of Peer's journey by combining the elements of land and sea in this image. In his youth Peer spends most of his time impishly sneaking around through the forest but in his adulthood he's forced to flee his home and travels, for a time, over the water. I've taken a dark image of a forest and replaced what would be the underbrush with tossing ocean waves to illustrate both these important periods in Peer's life. I've also laced a piece of a map of Norway between the trees in the background to emphasize the scale of Peer's journeys.
My favorite part about this epic drama is Ibsen's use of fantastical elements. Most people when they think of Ibsen focus on his more realistic works (A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, etc.) but this play defies all of those stereotypes. I've highlighted a pair of trees in this forest image to represent the other-worldly qualities of the play. I wanted the trees to glow green to give them a slightly spooky effect.

Language as a Medium

Posted Thu, 09/10/2009 - 23:17 by Corinne Porowski

Language as a Medium

I have always thought that the purpose of an English major is to preserve something of the past, the art and love of language, in a time when humanity is enraptured with the visual and digital. But language is not a thing of the past and never will be. Through this project, perhaps the most profound lesson I have learned amongst the brainstorming, recording, splicing, dicing, and dragging is that language is a medium for ideas, and the written word is not the only one. In fact, communication is like a movie making program—it is most effective when there is an idea bound and linked perfectly with images and sounds—an art which whether on a paper page or on the internet, is what communicates ideas, but also perpetuate the thoughts and feelings that without such would evaporate. (But still, despite all I learned, the Media Library is still a terrifying place for an English major! And making myself walk into it was perhaps the greatest accomplishment.)

http://www.teachmix.com/litflow/node/193

Put Your Records On

Posted Thu, 09/10/2009 - 19:24 by Corinne Porowski

Dory Perspective

Posted Thu, 09/10/2009 - 17:05 by Corinne Porowski

“Just keep swimming”

I’ve always wondered how if asked, Dory would tell the story of her adventures in the film, Finding Nemo. I decided that because of her short-term memory loss, she wouldn’t remember a thing. That is, she wouldn’t remember anything except swimming around.

So, through the song, “The Swimming Song” by Loudon Wainwright, I am re-telling Finding Nemo through the voice of Dory the fish.

As seen in this montage of the actual adventure, regardless of the dangers, the excitement, the friends made, the final success at finding the lost Nemo and her profound involvement, all hat Dory remembers is that she simply, happily swam around.

Francie Nolan: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Posted Thu, 09/10/2009 - 00:34 by Corinne Porowski

"What a Wonderful World" -Connie Talbot
I see trees of green........ red roses too
I see em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn begins with Francie Nolan, an 11 year old girl I nthe year 1912, sitting by a tree that grows by her family’s tenement house. And while she is the daughter of parents with a strained relationship, her mother, Katie Nolan, being a hardworking janitor and her father, Johnny Nolan, a undependable alcoholic singer and waiter, she loves her neighborhood and her life with her brother Neeley. The song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” describes well the innocent mind of Francie, the young idealist, who though in poverty, sees a hopefullness and ability in life through her imaginitive mind and her love and absorbtion of the books she reads in the library.

Watch this video

Hard Times: Louisa Gradgrind

Posted Thu, 09/10/2009 - 00:24 by Corinne Porowski
Hard Times: Louisa Gradgrind

In the center is an imitation of a human being, the frame of a girl holding a book, which is symbolic for the character of Louisa Gradgrind, from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, created by the philosophy of her father: facts, facts, and nothing but the facts. But beneath her and in the background is the reflection of a moving, living human beings shadow, which is more alive in appearance than the frame of the human, depicted above it. In the end, this is the part of Louisa that fall in a heap of stored up emotion at her father’s feet. I included snapshots of a factory because the factory is a significant part of the setting of the novel, which is written to scrutinize the mechanization caused by the industrial revolution, pictured in Louisa’s life. The snapshot of the circus horse is a crucial image from the novel, because of the definition—included beneath it—the dry factual definition. While the definition is factual, it is not the essence of what the horse truly is. The significance of the collage is snapshots are taken of real objects, but they are resting on the background of the one which completes the real.

Girl with book: http://cubeme.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/pedestrian-project-yve...
Reflection: http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/200021172-001.jpg?v=1&c=NewsMaker&k=2&d...

Olivia Murphy's Final Portfolio

Posted Thu, 05/07/2009 - 21:52 by Olivia Murphy




Olivia's
Literature
and the Arts
Portfolio


Why Save English?
...A Personal Statement From a Confused English Major
When I signed up for this class, honestly, I had no clue what to expect. The class description sounded different than your run-of-the-mill English classes, and, upon asking around, Professor Anderson himself received very favorable reviews from friends of mine who had taken his classes. So I signed up. Then, on the first day of class, we got hit with a question which I had never encountered: "why/how do we save English studies?"

I have spent considerable time pondering this question- as someone who has no clue which career she wants to pursue and is not heavily considering teaching (which is always the assumption), why am I an English major- what is so attractive about literature? Slowly but surely, the answer has become manifest- besides the fact that I simply love to read, the mission of literature is to tell a story, and stories are, hands down, the most powerful mode of expression and communication.

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