Final Project Abstracts

Dear Gladiators:

Please write a 150 to 200 word abstract for your final project.  This is a slightly longer version of the abstract writing you did for your Love paper.   When you have finished, please post it as a comment here and email me that it is up. 

:)

Post-Symposium Abstracts

As a response to/ comment on this post, please share your abstract here.

Your abstract should be 75 to 100 words in length.  Summarize your take on Love thoroughly yet concisely.

Assignment updates and prompts

Dear Students,

Today, we will finish a close reading of the last speeches of The Symposium.  This weekend, you should write (and finish) writing your own speech about Love.  Please make it a minimum of one double-spaced page.

Following the screening of Quantum of Solace, you should be preparing your explanation of how the film uses familiar issues of conflict and greed (i.e.: monopolization of oil resources) to communicate to the viewer the gravity of the bad guys' pursuit of the freshwater resources of Bolivia.  Why do they want to own water?  How is this going to give them power?  Is this humane?

Beginning Monday, we will be working both on rewriting past assignments and preparing final projects.  All drafts can be checked in class and rewritten without penalty.  Please take the opportunity to do so.

Should you have any questions, please let me know in class or by email:  n.brooksdevita@hccs.edu

Symposium Close Reading for 9/24/2012

Today, we will closely read Eryximachus's take on Love:

MAC (Abridged):

"Well, in my opinion, since Pausanias made a fine start to his speech but did not adequately complete it, it is necessary for me to try to put a complete end to 

the argument. Inasmuch as Eros is double, it is, in my opinion, a fine thing to 

divide him; but that he presides not only over the souls of human beings in 

regard to the beautiful but also in regard to many other things and in other 

cases--the bodies of all the animals as well as those things that grow in the 

earth, and just about all the things that are--that, in my opinion, I have come 

to see from medicine, our art. For how great and wondrous the god is in his 

comprehensive aims, both in terms of human things and in terms of.divine things! I shall begin my speech with medicine, so that we may venerate that art as well. The nature of bodies has this double Eros, for the health and the sickness of the body are by agreement different and..dissimilar; and the dissimilar desires and loves dissimilar things. Now, there is one love that presides over the healthy 

state, and another over the sickly. Just as' Pausanias was saying, it is a fine 

thing to gratify those who are good among human beings and disgraceful to gratify the intemperate, so too, in the case of men's bodies taken by themselves is it a fine and needful thing to gratify the good and healthy things of each body (this is what has the name 'the medical'); but it is shameful to gratify the bad and 

sickly things, and one has to abstain from favoring them, if one is to be skilled. For the art of medicine is, to sum it up, the expert knowledge of the erotics 

of the body in .regard to repletion and evacuation; and he who diagnostically 

discriminates in these things between the noble and base love is the one most 

skilled in medicine; while he who induces changes, so as.to bring about the 

acquisition of one kind of love in place of the other, and who, in whatever things where there is no love but there needs must be, has the expert knowledge to 

instill it, or to remove it from those things in which it is [but should not be], would be a good craftsman. For he must, in point of fact, be able to make the 

things that are most at enmity in the body into friends and to make them love one another. The most opposite things are the most at enmity: cold and hot, bitter 

and sweet, dry and moist, and anything of the sort. Our ancestor-Asklepios, who 

had the expert knowledge to instill love and unanimity into these things--as the poets here assert and as I am convinced is so--put together our art. Not only 

medicine, with moderation and justice, among us and among gods, this has the 

greatest power and provides us with every kind of happiness, making us able to associate with one another and to be friends even with the gods who are stronger 

than we are. Now, perhaps in praising Eros I too am omitting many things; but 1 

have done that unwillingly. For if I did omit anything, it is your job, 

Aristophanes, to fill it in; or if you intend to make a different eulogy of the 

god, proceed to do so, since you have stopped hiccuping." 

9/21/2012 - In-Class Writing

Please read and muse over the following blog post.  After you reflect, write down the thoughts and feelings this blog entry inspires in you.
Possible prompts:
What are your thoughts about the cost of a meal?  For an individual?  For a family?
What are your thoughts about access to food/necessary nutrition?
What are your thoughts about waste of food?
Are there any similarities between this and "On Dumpster Diving"?

SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 2010

A Meal With Haiti in Mind

Often people from less wealthy countries are in a situation where the only meal they get is based on beans and rice. Looking into the nutritional value of those economic meals, we find that they are very well balanced and, as I said before: Balance is everything!
Last night, while thinking about the famine that the people of Haiti must be going through, I cooked a meal that was super economical, easy to prepare and rendidor, a source of bounty. I cooked one bag of black beans, boiled 2 cups of long grain brown rice, fried 2 sweet potatoes cut in the shape of long french fries in an inexpensive blend of soy and olive oil, and fried two thin-sliced plantains. I topped the black beans and brown rice with queso fresco and wedges of avocado and had an island dinner for 4 while Mafusser read to us "Please, Malese", a Haitian trickster folk tale. The leftover beans were used for breakfast the next day.
It is unfortunate that, as I'm typing, thousands of Haitians do not have this economic meal in their stomachs, but we can manage our personal economy by preparing meals like this. Instead of splurging on a fancy dinner, we can help by sending financial support to Haitian relief funds and by praying for their spiritual and material rebuilding. Remain curious my friends!

Extra Credit - TSU "Latin Night"

Students:

This extra credit event is at Texas Southern University this Sunday.  If you attend, please write a short response paper about it.  See you there!

Final Project Research

Today's (9/17/2012) assignment is to search online, including through databases like JSTOR, for statistics that you can use in your final research paper.  Look for information that is appropriate for your topic.  By the end of class, you should have one to three outside sources to support your thesis.

Additionally, you should plan your research interview.  Who are you interviewing?  Why?  What does this person have to say that will help support or explain your paper's point?