Fun Home process videos

Here are the videos I showed in class.

first draft of Essay 3 due Tuesday

As I said in class, I realize that we have not finished the book, but really rough first drafts are better than none at all. As always though, the more you have in your first draft, the more it will help you with your final draft. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Read chapters 5 and 6 before you start your draft.
• Focus on analysis, not summary.
• Show your analysis. In other words, explain how you read the texts.
• Remember that the goal is synthesis. Show connections between Fun Home and another text form our class.
• In Fun Home, the images are as much evidence as the words.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Reading Response 9

Reading Response 9- after chapter 4 of Fun Home

Keeping in mind what you have read of Fun Home so far, respond to one of the prompts below. Please use specific evidence from the book to support your response.

1. Compare and contrast how Alison Bechdel’s father uses books in his life to how Bechdel as a young college student does. How do books relate to their identities? To their sexual identities?

2. What assets does Alison Bechdel have that help support her coming out as a lesbian? What are her obstacles?

3. On page 85, Bechdel claims that her father prefers “fiction to reality.” How does this relate to the fact that Bechdel uses so many other stories– Daedalus and Icarus, Camus, The Great Gatsby, etc.– to understand her father?

4. On page 104, Bechdel mentions the Stonewall Riots. Do some research about this. Why is it significant that Bechdel and her father are in New York just weeks after the Stonewall Riots?

5. Choose a scene from the book and compare the narration with the monstration. What relationship do these share? In other words, what do the images show in comparison to what the words explain and how do the two work together in the scene to create meaning? Consider using McCloud.

6. Choose your own focus for analysis

Due Thursday November 20th.

Reading Response 8

Reading Response 8

Alison Bechdel, Fun Home chapters 1-2

Choose one. Please use specific evidence in your response.

1. On page 15, Bechdel illustrates some of the ways she and her father are different. Despite the differences, how are she and her father similar? Consider characteristics of behavior and/or appearance.

2. What elements contribute to Bechdel believing that her father’s death was a suicide? Do you agree that these elements warrant her conclusion?

3. Choose a scene from the book and compare the narration with the monstration. What relationship do these share? In other words, what do the images show in comparison to what the words explain and how do the two work together in the scene to create meaning? Consider using McCloud.

4. Choose your own focus for analysis

Due Tuesday, November 18th.

EWRT1A sections 37 and 63 Essay 3

A pdf of this can be found on the class website through MyPortal.

Fall 2014 EWRT1A  Essay 3- Fun Home in comparison

For the last out-of-class essay, you will be writing about Fun Home and at least one other text. I am looking for an essay with a well-developed thesis statement that states a clear connection between the works you discuss. The thesis should be backed up by concrete details from both Fun Home and the other work(s). As with Essay 2, the focus here is on synthesis. So find points that the texts you discuss have in common.

1. Speaking of Fun Home, Alison Bechdel says that “the words don’t just illustrate the pictures, but… work on a completely separate track.“ I want you to try to explain what this might mean. Choose a specific scene (or perhaps related scenes) from Fun Home and explain how the narration and monstration work to create the meaning of the scene. What role does each play? Use Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to help explain your analysis. Use only the term or terms which help you explain your thesis.

2. Both Fun Home and “A Clack of Tiny Sparks” deal with the experiences of homosexuals in the United States. Bechdel’s father, Bruce, was born in 1936 (30), so was a teenager in the 1950s. Bernard Cooper was a teen in the 1960s. And Alison Bechdel was a teen in the 1970s. Putting these two texts together, what conclusions can you draw about how being a homosexual has or has not changed over the decades. Feel free to mention other characters in Fun Home.

3. In the course of Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s family sometimes acts as an obstacle to her self discovery and sometimes acts as an asset. Explore one of these in your essay. How does family hinder a person’s identity? Or, how does family help one to discover one’s identity? As with the other prompts here, answer this by looking at both Fun Home and another text from our class. Some possible authors include: Mike Rose, Richard Rodriguez, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Bernard Cooper

4. Part of Alison Bechdel’s self discovery comes through reading books. Thinking of at least one other text in our class, how do books act as a means of self discovery? What do they offer? Answer this with examples from Fun Home and at least one other class text. Focus on finding similarities in the texts. Some possible authors to choose from: Malcolm X, Mike Rose, and Gloria Anzaldúa.

5. If you have another idea that you’d like to write about concerning how one of the previous texts in the class and Fun Home connect, then please talk with me about it.

Requirements

The essay needs to be in the MLA style. So make sure that you include page numbers when you quote or paraphrase specific scenes and provide a works cited list. I expect the paper to be about 4-6 pages in length, double-spaced, and in a font no bigger than twelve point Times New Roman. Two drafts are required.

First draft due November 25^th

Final draft due December 4^th

Fun Home reading questions

Fun Home – Reading Questions.

Use these questions to help focus your reading. These are not prompts; they are simply questions to help you get more out of Fun Home. A pdf of these questions can be found on the class website through MyPortal (for instructions see this earlier post).

1. In what ways are Bechdel and her father different? In what ways are they alike? 

2. Bechdel believes that her father committed suicide. Why? What does she think the motivation for him was? Why is this significant for her? 

3. What role do books play in Bechdel’s relationship with her father? What role do they play in her own self discovery? 

4. Can you find an image in the text that sums up Bechdel’s relationship with her father? Is its placement in the story significant? 

5. In what ways is Bechdel’s father able to support her? How does he do so? 

6. Why does Bechdel allude to so many literary texts? How do they relate to her parents? To herself? 

7. TV shows, magazines, newspapers– various images of media appear in the panels of Fun Home. How do these images of media relate to the characters in the book? 

8. What do you think the purpose of creating Fun Home was for Bechdel? What passages demonstrate this purpose? 

9. In what ways are the telling (the narration) different from what is in the showing (the monstration)? Think of McCloud’s categories. Also consider that the narration is an adult Bechdel looking back and the monstration is often a young Alison experiencing things for the first time. 

10. Is Alison Bechdel a reliable narrator? What does she believe that others in the book may not believe? When does she judge and when does she resist judging? What biases might she have?

EWRT1A essay 2 due

Remember you need:

• Synthesis of at least two of our texts
• MLA citation, including works cited
• 2 drafts (i.e. bring your first draft)

E-mail me with any questions.

There is class Tuesday

De Anza takes Monday, November 10th off for Veterans Day. Classes will be held Tuesday, November 11th.

EWRT1A section 63 Essay 2 general comments

These comments are for section 63.

Incomplete drafts
Many of the drafts this time around were not full drafts. So for a lot of you the only feedback I can give is keep working.

Lack of synthesis
Also, a large number of the drafts lacked synthesis, which is a big problem since synthesis is the whole goal of this assignment. So I will probably review this on Tuesday. Keep in mind that synthesis is taking two or more ideas and weaving them into a single argument. So for this paper that would be taking two or more texts and making them prove the same point. If you have a thesis about assets to education and you say that Malcolm X demonstrates the asset of self-motivation and Mike Rose demonstrates the asset of a role model, then you do not have synthesis because the texts are proving separate points. Yes, the texts both prove the same thesis, but they prove different points within that thesis. Instead, if you were trying to prove that having a role model is an asset, you could discuss Mike Rose and his relationship with Jack MacFarland and Malcolm X and his relationships with Elijah Muhammad and Bimbi. Here you would be using two texts to prove the same exact point.

Our Rules for Writers book has a short section on synthesis on pages 477-479. 

Assets and obstacles also create effects
If something is an obstacle then it holds someone back. That is an effect. So in order to prove that something is an obstacle you need to show the thing and also show how it holds someone back, show its negative effect. So if you're writing that language is an obstacle,  it's not enough to say "English was required at school." You also have to show that this requirement harmed the person in some way. The same goes for assets. Show how the asset is an asset; show its benefit for the person. So yes, Jack MacFarland is an asset for Mike Rose, but this is only clear if we see the positive influence MacFarland has on Rose.

EWRT1A section 37 Essay 2 general comments

These comments are for section 37.

Organization of synthesis essay

I pointed out a few classes ago that students tend to be more successful when they employ a point-by-point approach to their synthesis essays. Yet almost no-one chose this approach. Almost every essay was organized subject-by-subject. In some essays, this worked. Yet in many, it made for very long, very jumbled body paragraphs and made the connections between the various texts (subjects) a bit tenuous. And in some essays, it caused writers to fall into summarizing the texts instead of analyzing them. So again, I highly recommend using a point-by-point organization. It keeps the argument more focused.

Our Rules for Writers book has a short section on synthesis on pages 477-479. 

Assets and obstacles also create effects
If something is an obstacle then it holds someone back. That is an effect. So in order to prove that something is an obstacle you need to show the thing and also show how it holds someone back, show its negative effect. So if you're writing that language is an obstacle,  it's not enough to say "English was required at school." You also have to show that this requirement harmed the person in some way. The same goes for assets. Show how the asset is an asset; show its benefit for the person. So yes, Jack MacFarland is an asset for Mike Rose, but this is only clear if we see the positive influence MacFarland has on Rose.

summary versus analysis

Looking at your Reading Response 6 papers, I can see that some of you are losing sight of what we are doing in college writing. The goal is analysis, not summary. You are trying to show something about a text, how it works or how it means what it does, not simply state what it says. If you want a bit more ideas about the differences between summary and analysis, look at pages 77-79 of Rules for Writers.

EWRT1A section 63 master list

EWRT1A section 37 master list