Summary

As this was the first day of class, we did discuss the syllabus. We spent most of our time, however, talking about the concept of the hero. In generating a list of some of the characteristics of a hero, we discovered that there did not appear to be one consistent definition among the members of the class. This fact suggested that there is not a universal conception of a hero.

We then took some time to name some of our own heroes and worked collaboratively to place them on a scale of heroism that ran from Gandhi to anyone. While we certainly didn't agree completely on some of the individuals' placement on the scale, we could more or less come to a compromise on each person. Compromise suggested that although we do not have one definition of what makes a hero, we all had a general idea of what a hero is. This fact suggested that particular cultures do indeed have standards for what makes a hero. Throughout the semester, we will consider how the texts we read teach us things about different cultures and the values that they consider constitutive of a hero. (Naturally, we'll have to contend with our own cultural biases as we read all of these texts.)

Finally, we briefly discussed the concept of close reading and the need within our classroom to be willing to look at very small portions of a text to extract their meaning (both literal and cultural). The work of the semester will in the main be devoted to this activity.

Word count: 260

Passages

None for the day. As far as tests are concerned, however, I suggested that students will want to pay particular attention to the portions of the texts that I read aloud in the class, as those are more likely to appear on the identification portion of the exam.

Terms

close reading - the process of looking at the fine details of a poem, story, play, or novel and using them to build an understanding or an interpretation of some aspect of the work. This is the basic practice of literary interpretation. It is similar to how other fields generate knowledge in that it is making an argument based on evidence.

hero - We can't really define it at this point. Will we be able to by the end of the semester?