due Thursday 10/1

1. Read Job 1-4 and 40.6-42

2. Find three of your favorite images from Micah, Jonah, and Job and add them to your list of images from the sections of the Bible we've read.

due Wednesday 9/30

1. Find three of your favorite images from the story of Abraham, Genesis 11-22. Include them on the list of images you have from Genesis 1, Genesis 2-4, and Genesis 6-9. I also assume you have images from the Book of Jonah. If you don't you should catch up tonight.

2. Read lines 1-181 at the beginning of Oedipus Rex, findable on-line at Wikipedia, under External Links, translation by Ian Johnston.

due Tuesday 9/29

1. Prepare for Greek mythology matching quiz.

2. Imagery hunt: find your three favorite images from . . .

due Monday 9/28

1. Complete your work on your analysis of The Creation of the world and the Expulsion from Eden painting. Be ready to hand in your observations, drawings, chart, summary, claim, and discussion.

2. Read the Book of Jonah from the Bible and answer one of these prompts, or come up with a topic of your own. Remember that specific evidence is great!

a) What kind of person is Jonah, and how do you know?

b) Is God more stern or more kind in the Book of Jonah? How do you know?

c) What does Jonah actually ask God for as he prays to God from the belly of the whale?

d) Part of the story is that Jonah is sleeping through the storm and has to be awakened. Any thoughts as to what this detail adds to the story?

e) Find an image that is worth commenting on and comment on it.

Have a good weekend.

due Friday 9/25

1. Read Micah chapters 1,2,4, and 6. Comment on this post. Possible prompts:

a) find an example of imagery and comment.

b) Find a part in which Micah sounds relatively angry (or as if God is angry) and a part where Micah is relatively sweet and conciliatory (or God is). How do the two modes work together?

c) What is your favorite verse? Why?

d) Make an observation and do some column two thinking about it.

2. Read in Mythology pp. 105-121.

due Thursday 9/24

1. Please read Exodus chapters 21 and 22 from the Bible. It is a series of laws. Would Hammurabi find any of these laws too harsh? Too soft? Do you find them too hard, too soft? Comment on this post.

2. Finish you chart, summary and claim for the painting The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise.

due Wednesday 9/23

1. Please read pp. 89-95 in your mythology book.

2. Please list in one column the places in Genesis 1-22 (all we've read) that God interacts directly with humans. In the second column, write what kind of "person" (or god/God) God seems to be in each instance.

Due Tuesday 9/22

1. Genesis chapters 19-22

2. Mythology pp. 96-104

3. Write a comment on this post in which you think about the two readings, one from Genesis, one about Cupid and Psyche. The cultures that created each were obviously very different. In what ways? Or you may make an observation about either reading and do some "column two" thinking about that observation.

due Monday 9/21

1. Read Genesis chapters 15-18 and comment on this post.

2. Hand in your chart-summary-claim-discussion concerning chapter seven of Things Fall Apart.

3. Do another drawing of a portion of The Creation of the World and Expulsion from Paradise at www.metmuseum.org. Choose a portion that will be pertinent to the question of whether God is more loving and kind or more stern according to the artist who painted the picture. Note that the figure of God in the painting is just one piece of evidence (though an important one). Everything in the picture is potentially evidence.

due Friday 9/18

1. Please read chaps. 10-15 of Genesis, and blog about it here. Please try to notice places where the words reveal or imply something about the culture or values of the people who produced the book of Genesis, and speculate about what environment could give rise to such culture or values.

2. Keep working on your TFA observations-chart-summary-claim-discussion. If you've added a specific quotation from the text to your discussion in a graceful way, now choose a juicy word from that quotation, discuss that word in relation to your claim, and integrate this addition into your discussion in a graceful way.

due Thursday 9/17

1. Genesis 4-9, blog.

2. Find specific evidence, including a specific phrase from the two pages from chapter seven of Things Fall Apart, and gracefully interject it into your discussion.

due Wednesday 9/16

1. Please read Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3. Then comment, on this blog. Either compare the creation story in these chapters to the Ancient Greek creation story described in pages 65-77 of Mythology, or make some other comment about the Biblical creation story.

2. Either rewrite your summary and claim concerning chapter seven of Things Fall Apart, or go ahead and write your discussion based on the claim you already have.

Homework due Tuesday 9/15/09

1. Please read pp. 65-77 in Mythology.

2. Write your summary OR claim OR discussion, depending on how far we get in class.

homework due Monday 9/14

Read in Mythology pp. 57-, and comment on this blog please.

Write your claim and your discussion about your collections. Hand in your observations as well.

homework for Thursday September 10 2009

1. For those who didn't do summer reading or all of summer reading, email me a proposed schedule for getting the reading done. For example: "Two chapters per weekend."

2. Read in Mythology 48-55 and write a comment (by clicking on this post).

3. Optional: work on your summary for your collection. If you bring it to class Friday, I will give you feedback on it.

4. Start to locate either a copy of the Bible or print out a copy of the Book of Genesis (the first "book" of the Bible, chapters 1-21. If you have a choice, use the New Revised Standard Version (it's the most authoritative from the scholarly point of view). You can find it on line; just google it. You should have this by Monday.

homework for Wednesday night, September 9

1. Please re-read (or read) chapter of Things Fall Apart.

2. Write a blog comment (on this blog) in which you briefly list the three observations you made about your collection that you think are the most interesting observations for whatever reasons and say something about why.

Course Description

Please click on this link for a course description.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddk27gtf_46cp6rs3pb

Mythology pp. 24-36

Hercules

A. After doing the reading, please

1. Make a specific observation about the reading.

2. Use that observation as starting point and think, in writing, about what you have read. Present that thinking in a comment on this blog. You may also comment respectfully on what others have written before you about the same reading assignment.

NOTE: if someone else has "taken" the observation you were going to make, make sure you have some of your own thinking to say about the observation. Otherwise, record a different observation, and go from there.

3. A half hour or more after posting your comment, return to the blog and read what your fellow students have written. Feel free to comment again; otherwise, just write, "I have read."

B. Other homework:

Make 25 observations about a collection of yours. (An observation is something that no sane person would disagree with.) Try to come up with observations that have potential interest to you. The observations may be about the collection as a whole, different subsets of the collection, or a particular item in the collection. It's your collection; you probably know a lot about it. Bring your observations to class with you.