Drugs and Pills and Shit and Culture and Art and Drugs and Stuff

After having read the Burroughs piece and the Bruce piece, are there any unifying elements to the drug culture that the two men write about and describe? Are there values, qualities, morals that the culture emphasizes? Are there ways in which the two pieces reveal discord and disagreement within the culture? Please make sure to site examples from each piece in your response.

So Beat...

In the spirit of Jack Kerouac's piece, let's write some free-flowing associative explanations of what you understand the "beat generation" to be all about.  No arguments necessary, just speak from your heart, you hep cats, you hot hipsters, you bop masters and jive kings...or whatever...what we're seeking here is a genuine exploration of this concept and an attempt at an explanation, but we are also attempting to capture the style and spirit of the movement (think of how Glenn O'Brien wrote his introduction. It wasn't formal and scholarly, though it was certainly intellectual, etc.).

Please remember, as always, this blog is due by 11 pm tonight.

The Unstuck in Homework Blog Post...

Since we've read so much more than we've talked about in Slaughterhouse Five, pick something you find fascinating, intriguing, puzzling, confounding, hilarious or disturbing anywhere from chapters 2 through 5 and share your musings on that topic. If it is a topic that comes up in more than one chapter--awesome. If not, also awesome. Just share and muse, muse and share.

The Historical Context Necessary to Understand Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

Research the economic and political situation in Ireland when "A Modest Proposal" was written (you may use any sites you deem worthy) and then compose a blog entry in which you explain how the humor in "A Modest Proposal" relates to the facts of the historical situation at the time.  The point here is not to write a comprehensive history of English-Irish relations, but rather, to discover what the salient social and political issues at the time were when Swift composed his satire.  

What Is the Meaning of "Whiteness" in the United States?

Per our final conversation in class today, please explore the meaning of whiteness as a social construct as you see fit. For those of you who have insight from living in or being from other countries, please feel free to share your understanding of whiteness in other cultures and countries as well.

How Does Satire Work?

Based on the episode of South Park you watched and the two pieces by Sherman Alexie you read, describe how a satirical approach to a topic works. You should try to identify and describe the type of humor and the type of criticism within the episode. What you should be doing is trying to dissect the episode a bit in order to understand its structure, its style and its purpose as best you can.