November 7

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Strength, Courage & Wisdom" by India Arie; "I Just Want to Celebrate" by Rare Earth]

Long before we met, and long after you've passed the AP exam and gone on to greater things, literature has always been and will always be an act of self-expression. Literature is the human record of how we create stories for ourselves and others. And, as we've discussed, literature also serves as an artifact of how individual authors observed, critiqued and were influenced by the times and cultures in which they lived. As Marshal McLuhan (the non-Eminem Marshal with whom Roy Christopher identifies) famously observed, "The medium is the message." As we've also discussed, we'd probably get to know Hamlet in a completely different way if he maintained a blog or posted pics to instagram, tumblr, flickr, pinterest, or...[?]  Explain how using technology to research/create/share content online can amplify your best qualities and more effectively tell your story. If you don't see a difference between telling your story in online media versus telling it with pen and paper, explain that too.


AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Writers' conferences
3. Vocab
4. Sonnets


HW:
1. Resurrect "to be or not to be" and/or begin memorizing the sonnet you selected