Assignment 5: The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe DEADLINE: Tuesday 30 October

The Cask of Amontillado

Link to the original story:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/cask.html

Link to the easy version:

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/a-23-2005-10-25-voa6-83125537/124606.html

Answer one of the following study questions in about 150 words:

1 Discuss how the Poe uses setting (where and when the story takes place) to enhance the atmosphere of horror in the story.

2. What if Montresor is a woman? Most people assume Montresor is a man. Why? Would it change the way you think about the story if Montresor is a woman?

3.Discuss the theme 'revenge' in the Cask of Amontillado

4. OR draw a comic of the Cask of Amontillado of max 6 pictures which capture the spirit and feel of the story well. 

Assignment 4: The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin DEADLINE: Friday 19 October

Kate Chopin's The Story of An Hour (1894) is considered one of the finest pieces of Feminist Literature. 

You can find the story here:
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/

Historical Context

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Feminist literature, both fiction and non-fiction, supports feminist goals for the equal rights of women in their economic, social, civic, and political status relative to men. Such literature dates back to the 15th century (The Tale of Joan of Arc by Christine de Pisan), Mary Wollstonecraft in the 18th century, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Perkins Gilman, and Louisa May Alcott. Kate Chopin's best known novel, The Awakening (1899) and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's A New England Nun (1891) led the emerging modern feminist literary movement into the 20th century, during which women earned the right to vote, fought for economic, social, political, educational, and reproductive rights with Gloria Steinem and the Women's Liberation Movement. The 21st century has brought a resurgence of interest in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Talewith a new streaming video series, and the Women's March After President Trump's Inauguration (2017) drew more than a million protesters in cities throughout the country and world.
It's helpful to know the list of grievances and demands a group of activitists (mostly women) published in The Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. Principal author and first women's conference organizer was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with high-profile support from abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Many more struggles and attempts to change public opinion followed the conference; it took 72 more years for women to secure the right to vote.

Can this story be considered a work of feminist literature? Answer this question in about 150 words. In order to answer this question you might have to do extra online research on feminism in the 19th century. 

OR

Read Chopin's allegory about freedom from a cage, her short story Emancipation: a Life Fable You can find it here: https://americanliterature.com/author/kate-chopin/short-story/emancipation-a-life-fable 

Compare the story to the one you read in about 150 words. Use at least one of the following words in your comparison: tone, theme or symbol (you can Google the meaning of these literary terms if you have forgotten them). 

How to upload a picture to the blog

Step 1: Upload the image so anyone using the Internet can access it. Websites that allow you to upload images for free are picasa.google.nl or www.flickr.com

Step 2: Get the image URL for the image that you want to display on your blog. Photo-sharing websites usually have a text box that provides the image URL underneath each image. If you cannot find this text box, you can open the image in a new browser window and copy the URL where the image is located.

Step 3: Post the image URL on the blog under the assignment 

Assignment 3: The American Dream DEADLINE: FRIDAY 5 OCTOBER

When you click on the following link you'll find ten very short articles about American people who lived the "American Dream". From those ten stories, choose the story that you liked best and discuss how and why it is a good example of the American Dream. Start your blog-post with a short definition of the American Dream. Use your own words! Aim for approximately 150 words or more.

Alternatively, you may choose to draw an illustration of your idea of the American dream.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11173382/1/10-people-living-the-american-dream.html

Second short story: "The Flowers" by Alice Walker DEADLINE WEDNESDAY 26 SEPTEMBER

Read Alice Walker's 'The Flowers' and answer one of the following study questions in about 2-3 paragraphs (+- 150 words).

http://theliterarylink.com/flowers.html

Study questions:

1. How does the author, Alice Walker, use the symbol of flowers to show Myop’s coming-of-age experience?         
2. What is the significance of the final sentence?
3. What clues in the text allow us to construct a historical context around this story?
4. Create a drawing that symbolizes the way Myop feels when she discovers the body. Scan it/make a picture of it and upload.

First short story: A&P by John Updike, (Extended) DEADLINE: 20-09-2019 (original deadline 14-09-2018)

The first short story you are going to write a blog-post about can be found here:

http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/

Read the story and answer at least one of the following questions in about 150 words:

1. Explain how this story argues for what we call "freedom of dress". Do you agree with this argument? Do people need to be told what to wear? If so, who gets to decide? 
2.  Why did Sammy quit his job?
3. Discuss a possible theme of the story.
4.  What does the story tell us about the time period in which it was written?

Project goals

Through literature (short stories) we endeavour to build international understanding. Adolescents have therefore the opportunity to go beyond a tourist perspective of gaining information about another culture. In this way they may gain insights into how people feel, live and think around the world. Moreover they might as well value cultural differences. Creating new understanding about cultural perspectives and global issues should diminish stereotypical perceptions, i.e religion, gender, relationships, class, race, sexual orientation etc. Although intercultural understanding is grounded in awareness of one’s own cultural perspective, students need to consider points of view beyond their own…

Reading critically is the stance that race, class, and gender matter in how we interpret and analyse our experiences in the world as well as in the texts we encounter.

Welcome to the USA blog 2018-2019!

TIP: write your blog comments in a Word document first (which you save, of course) and then copy & paste your comment into the blog. If for some reason the blog is not working correctly at that moment, you won't lose your comment. 

Each student is expected to post or comment on each of the short stories we will read during the USA project. You will have to write 5 blog posts in total.

Please ALWAYS start your comment with your name (first AND last name)

To comment, click on "comments" under the relevant post and leave your comment in the text box which will appear. Follow any other instructions and your comment will be visible on the blog under "comments" after a few minutes.

• There will be a question or discussion topic posted on the blog each week and your challenge is to respond to it in 2 – 3 substantial paragraphs (~/+ 150 words). You don’t need to do any research (though you may, if you wish!); your own opinions and insights after reading are all you need. 

• Use your own words (don't copy/past). If you want part of your post or comment to be a quote, then put those words in quotation marks and name or hyperlink your source.

Good luck!

Miss S.

Ps: Note that co-authors can also post pictures, hyper-links, and edit the html code in their posts. Please feel free to pimp your post. Please note, though: Posts or comments which I consider to be offensive or wildly disrespectful will be deleted.