Your Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Blog Posts

Your final three blog posts should all be on sources you're using in your final paper. These should be academic sources that are not on the syllabus. The blogs should be 250-300 words each. As you write these, you should follow the directions given for your fourth blog post:

1. Summarize your source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say?

2. Evaluate your source. After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to assess it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective?

3. Reflect on your source. Finally, once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

Although one of these blogposts is due tonight (4/3), one on Wednesday (4/8) and the final one on Friday (4/11), the crucial thing is that you have all of these done by Sunday night, 4/12.

Your Fifth Blog Post

Your fifth blog post, due on March 28th, was originally supposed to be on Elisabeth Anker’s introduction to Orgies of Feeling. However, I’ve decided that if you would like to write about one of your research paper sources instead, that’s also perfectly fine. Keep in mind that the source needs to be an academic source that is not one of our class readings. If you choose to do that, follow the directions for your fourth blog post.

If you decide to blog about Anker’s introduction, you can choose your own approach to the text. The only thing that you need to keep in mind is to include one quote from her text, which you then discuss in some detail. Don’t feel pressure to cover everything said in the introduction; you should choose a focus for your post, e.g. “the melodramatic elements of the political discourse surrounding 9/11”, “the effects of melodramatic political discourse”, “things from the introduction that are useful for my research”, “what I liked/disliked about Anker’s introduction”.

The blog posts should be 250-300 words.

Björk's New Album 'An Inquiry Into Melodrama'

Hey everyone! I came across this album review over break, where critic Ann Powers discusses Björk's new album, Vulnicura, as melodramatic. I thought you might be interested!

An excerpt from the review:

"Melodrama is a feminine form, the designated space where domestic and erotic stories can turn grandly operatic. We associate it with bodice-ripper novels and Technicolor movies in which beauties wear their anguish openly, without shame; overwrought stories, maybe, but ones that have always filled in the gaps between relentlessly macho tales of crime, politics and war. In recent years, women artists and some empathetic men have reclaimed melodrama in ways that make it both more introspective and more clearly critical of the gender divisions that required its existence in the first place. The film collaborations of Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton's extraordinary performance in I Am Love; Lydia Davis's novel The End of the Story and Jenny Offill's more recent Dept. of Speculation: these are the works that form a frame around Vulnicura, reminding us that this is not just a raw reflection of Bjork's breakup with her fellow fabulist Matthew Barney, but an intellectually ambitious intervention into melodrama itself.

In Bjork's hands, melodrama becomes an avenue of self-reflection."

Click here to check out the NPR review: Bjork's 'Vulnicura': An Inquiry Into Melodrama

Your Fourth Blogpost

Your fourth blogpost – as well as almost all of the blogposts you'll be writing for the rest of this semester (there's one left to write on the course readings, Elisabeth Anker's text) – will be on one of the sources you're going to use in your research paper. Although I discussed today's blogpost with you in class today, I wanted to list the things you need to keep in mind as you write about sources. By reading and responding in this way to a variety of sources on your topic, you'll start to see what the issues are, what people are arguing about, and you'll then be able to develop your own point of view. In your blogposts you should do the following:

1. Summarize your source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say?

2. Evaluate your source. After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to assess it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective?

3. Reflect on your source. Finally, once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

Your Second Blog Post

In your second blog post, I would like you to explain the way Peter Brooks makes sense of the melodramatic mode as a way of locating and articulating the “moral occult”. I would like you to ground your discussion in Brooks’ text by including at least one quote you expand on (remember to refer to the page number). In order to clarify the way the moral occult operates in the melodrama, I would like you to briefly discuss one cinematic/literary example, which can be one of the examples we discussed in class, or something you noticed reading/watching something at home.

Your First Blog Post

Since the blog posts you are required to write in this course are rather short, it is imperative that you select a good focus with which to approach your subject. In the case of the first assignment, you should write 200-250 words on All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk’s film from 1955. As you write about the film, I want you to chose a particular approach to the film, in order to avoid too general of a discussion. Also, I would like you to ground your discussion in one of the texts you have read for the class, quoting at least one of them. There is no need for a full citation, just refer to the author(s) and the page number in parenthesis after the quote.

Potential focuses:

– narrative

– style

– social critique

– feminist critique (Cary’s position in the film)

– different characters (the children, Ron, the men in Cary’s life, the film’s representation of society, Ron’s friends vs. Cary’s friends)

– emotions
– the use of music (or any specific characteristic of the melodrama)

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Hi everybody. I just discovered that the film we watched a clip from in class today is available in its entirety on YouTube!