Tue. 10/24 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Part I: “On Violence” (pp. 1-62)
Discussion Questions: Group One
For each Part of Fanon’s work, a small group will be responsible for writing five or six discussion questions pertaining to the reading. Your questions may voice interpretive assumptions about the text at hand, but try to develop open-ended queries that you don’t necessarily know the answer to, but that you feel strike in some way to the heart of the text under consideration. You may, of course, present questions that attempt to understand how a theoretical text helps us to better understand Star Wars and vice versa. Please post your questions to the “Discussion Questions Google Doc” no later than 5 pm the day before our meeting. Some points to consider when constructing quality questions:
- The question should be open-ended. Open-ended questions invite discussion and debate and lead to an informed position; close-ended questions can be answered with a simple yes or no. Good questions tend to generate more questions.
- The questions should build on what we have studied. They should engage the issues under the discussion in the class or the readings; they should use information and concepts understood by the other class members; they should explore ways of incorporating new information into what is already known.
- The questions should be directed at the assumptions and conclusions of the discussed topic. They should challenge assertions and conclusions that are illogical or weak; they should illustrate a general refusal to accept easy answers to complex questions; they should always be directed to specific points of the subject under analysis.
Thurs. 10/26 Star Wars: Episode IV––A New Hope