This is the blog where I'll post assorted material, raise questions, and most importantly, ask you to comment, share, evaluate, and critique.
Make sure you identify yourself when you post comments--either by using a gmail account or by tagging yourself in the contribution, ie., -- Mike G.
I asked us to prepare for our next meeting by reading Charles Chesnutt's "Goophered Grapevine" (1887) @
http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam312/2004/grapevine.html
[No need to print this out--but if you did that's fine]
When reading, simply notice and focus on any elements that are interesting. You might also want to compare it to our reading of Crane's Maggie. They're obviously very different, but any general "horizontal" insights to make?
Some context: Chesnutt was biracial, interested in exploring questions of race in the South.
Finally, I leave you with the world of Devil's Row:
The picture reminds me of a series of photographs taken by WeeGee in the LES. Originally considered a "crime scene" photographer, WeeGee would follow ambulances and policeman around the city and photograph anything that struck him as unflinchingly brutal. To his credit, WeeGee used this shock photography to comment on the conditions of immigrant slums in New York at the time. The basis of this transformation lies in his ability to capture not only the crime itself, but the natural responses people have to what they're witnessing. With such a distaste for commonality, WeeGee brought a uniqueness to photography that is ironically most vividly captured in that of his most light hearted photographs. His subjects, in both color and context, were so varied that his lifes work can literally be described as a melting pot of immigrant history, where no subject takes precedent over the other.
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