Lunch Date Video Discussion

Objectives: Students will be able to read and analyze the youtube video “Lunch Date” through the lens of culture.

Materials: “lunch date” video, “Subjectivity” heuristic, “Culture” by Steve Greenblatt

Do Now: What’s culture? Share one idea from your reading of “Culture” by Stephen Greenblatt or the chapter of “Culture” in Theory Tool Box. How does one identify a specific culture and what are its boundaries?

How do we see ” race” and ” ethnicity” in this context?

Additional quotations for class discussions-

  1. Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits by man as a member of society(Greenblatt 225).
  2. An awareness of culture as a complex whole can help us to recover that sense by leading us to reconstruct the boundaries upon whose existence the works were predicted(Greenblatt  226).
  3. A full cultural analysis will need to push beyond the boundaries of the text, to establish links between the text and values, institutions, and practices elsewhere in the culture(Greenblatt  226).
  4. The very notions of race and ethnicity are already cultural constructs, understood differently at different places or sites ( Giroux 52)

Teaching Points

  1. What’s cultural context?  Why is using the nationality as a uniform or common “culture” is becoming ab old-fashioned notion in the ” new world order- globalization”?( Giroux 53)
  2. How does culture relate to the concept of subjectivity?

We ask ourselves a set of cultural questions about the text before us-

  • -What kind of behavior, what models of practice, does this work seems to enforce?
  • -Are there any differences bet my values and those implied in the work I’m reading?
  • -Upon what social understanding does the work depend?
  • -Whose freedom of thought or movement might be constrained implicitly or explicitly by this work? (pg226 in “Culture” by Greenblatt)

Student Independent Practice

  • How does Greenblatt “read” Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of culture? Cite examples from “Culture” by Greenblatt and analyze how he ” reads” Shakespeare through a specific cultural lens.
  • In the video ” Lunch Date”, what are the details( characters’ behavior & language, race and ethnicity, setting, etc)you have noticed that suggest a specific culture?
  • As Giroux states in the “Culture” chapter of the Theory Too Box, “As we saw with ‘subjectivity’, cultures influence subjects as much as subjects influence cultures, but even culture somehow controlled subjects in some simple cause-and -effect way, contemporary culture itself is so diverse and diffuse that those methods of ‘control’ would necessarily produce a very strange being indeed”. Insofar as we are cultural subjects, just think for a moment about the complex web of things that we encounter within our ” common cultural context every day: media, family work, schools, the internet, friends, food etc.)
    How does culture relate to the concept of subjectivity?
  • -How are we cultural subjects?
  • What kind of culture may the “lunch lady”‘ be subjected to?
  • How would you analyze her behavior to the black man in the video?

Homework: Read and annotate the rest of the chapter of “Culture” in the Tool Box. Write a few paragraphs in which you organize what we discussed today in class.

Sharon Old’s Poems

Objectives: Students will be able to use subjectivity theory to analyze one of the poems by Sharon Olds.

Texts: “I Go Back to May 1937” and “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds

Do Now: Briefly describe what each poem is about. What may be the poet’s message to the reader?

Mini Lesson with Guided Practice

  • Now let’s select one idea from subjectivity ( theory):“The Fly”/”Say Yes” in the light of tension and entanglement within subjectivity.
  • We’ll reread the poem from the new perspective of subjectivity.
  • How does the speaker’s experience reveal how subjectivity theory works in a character?
  • Discuss in a pair or small group.
  • Share in class.

Independent Practice

Start composing the Thinking Paper #4.

#4 Thinking Paper

prompt#1-

Through the innate tension within subjectivity, analyze a prevalent social or cultural narrative, which is to “rebel against authority” as a way of gaining one’s independence, a sense of self.

Prompt#2

According to Lacan, “Metaphor and Metonymy are share structure of the unconscious. The “self” within the subject lurks from such “chains of signifier”. Use the poem “I Go Back to May 1937” by Sharon Olds and another poem of your selection to examine how the “self” struggles to free itself from the entanglement within subjectivity.

Homework: Read and annotate “Culture” by Greenblatt ( create a dialectical journal)

We ask ourselves a set of cultural questions about the text before us-

  • -What kind of behavior, what models of practice, does this work seems to enforce?
  • -Are there any differences bet my values and those implied in the work I’m reading?
  • -Upon what social understanding does the work depend?
  • -Whose freedom of thought or movement might be constrained implicitly or explicitly by this work?(pg226 in “Culture” by Greenblatt

The Fly and Say Yes Analysis

Objectives: Students will be able to use the Subjectivity theory to read and analyze the poem The Fly and short story “Say Yes”.

Do now: Share one important theory of Subjectivity and explain how it can be implemented into reading.

Mini Lesson and Guided PRACTICE

Read “Say Yes” in a small group and each member of the group uses one theory of subjectivity to explain a part of the story.

Share in class.

Independent Practice: Start working on Thinking Paper #4.

Homework: Complete Thinking paper #4.