Heracles
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Assignment for Tuesday, Nov. 23:
We will meet in Morton (for a change). Heather and Rose will present on Women. Be prepared with your comments and questions about Herc and the femmes.
Assignment for Thursday, Nov. 16:
We will meet in Westside. I will present some information on Seneca (the Roman tragedian who wrote on Hercules) and discuss some differences in his takes on Hercules from what we saw in the Greek tragedians. We may want to discuss some differences in Roman perspectives on Our Hero. Part of the class will be set aside for group discussion or for you to consult with me on your work. I think this would be a great time for people who have author annotations ready, to go over them with me -- if you bring your work in hard copy we can edit some then and there. Also, let's get the bio's done. We can post them from Westside.
Assignment for Tuesday, Nov. 14:
We will meet in Westside.
Our focus will be on art. Come prepared with your ideas and questions about art -- you may be wanting some perspective on art as you approach your own projects so we will make your needs a topic of discussion as well.
Send me annotations. Remember you need to annotate your author(s) too.
And I have bios from only 2 of you. I want everyone's by class time Tuesday. If worst comes to worst we will sit there in class and put them in.
All work must be in by Nov. 30. The thing is, if I read it and we revise it and I feel you need to add to something or revise it substantially, you need to reserve the time and energy to do that, because it won't go up unless it's ready. And if it doesn't go up, you can't get credit for it. I would love to see work from folks, even sketchy, before Thanksgiving, because I feel it will be safer for you to see what you have to do and how you have to do it NOW . . .
Assignment for Tuesday, Nov. 7:
Our focus will be on monsters. Jack will present on his research on the descendants of Gaia and Echidna in the Labors. You should search your minds for what you know or notice about monsters, or anyone related to these forces, or Poseidon, in Heracles' other deeds. We'll be looking for connections, also discussing symbolic ramifications of the monster slayings/tamings -- we may deal with ideas of Heracles as a civilizer, culture hero, etc. So if these ideas sound remote and foggy, review Padilla on the subject.
I will also talk a little about bad guys Heracles killed. Your thoughts appreciated.
Continue with your annotations. I would like to get more of these up. Send them to me preferably in a MSword attachment to an email.
Also, please send me by Thursday your brief bio (basically who you are, include your major, we're looking for a sentence or two) and the name/initials you wish to be listed under. This is important because most of our output will be signed with your initials and I don't want to be getting anyone's wrong (by including/not including middle initials etc.)
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 31:
We will meet at El Cerro Grande (341 S. College Rd., that's in the Phar-Mor/ TJ Maxx shopping center).
We will have two points to focus on:
(1) Heracles Literacy. I will conduct this part -- I'll have a handout detailing some on Heracles' various deeds and issues concerning them.
(2) Cross-Cultural Comparisons. Melissa will talk briefly about what she's been working on and we can bring in our own insights -- anything that strikes you as similar between Heracles and heroes/gods you are familiar with from other cultures -- anything which might tie in with eastern art and archeology -- what these cross-cultural similarities imply about the nature of Heracles.
Assignment for Thursday,Oct. 26:
We will be inWestside.
One focus will be on websites we find useful. I hope we will be able to make a Word document (easily converted to a web page) which outlines many of the links we want to steer others to. We will concentrate on sites which are particularly useful for the study of Heracles, as opposed to minor sites which might provide you with a couple of snippets of information. So:
- note websites which have been particularly useful. This includes the biggies like Perseus.
- note features of these websites which have been particularly useful, and maybe think of a line to describe them --their advantages and shortcomings if any.
- consider whether this website is more interesting to a particular field, or as a general site
- bring URL's.
Our other focus will be on primary sources. We will make a start on putting together an FAQ style intro to primary sources. We'll do some writing in class. So:
- think up questions about primary sources and how to use them
- if you're really advanced, think up the answers . . .
Also: If you have annotations, send them to me in an electronic format. Order your articles/books from IL if they are not in the library. I hope we don't give the IL folks a nervous breakdown with all our requests coming in . . .
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 24:
We will meet in Westside. Bring any and all Internet materials you have found on Heracles. Also, bring the list of books/articles/items you have annotated or intend to annotate. We will be sketching out the overall plan for our page and assessing prograss so far on individual projects and on our page as a whole. I also figure on settling on some annotation assignments if you have been having trouble finding stuff to annotate.
Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 19:
I will talk to you a little about Hercules as a figure in Roman cult. Then y'all will talk. Your assignment:
Find a reference to Heracles/Hercules in cult. It can be a primary or secondary source. It would be great if you found a couple. And try to find things that you think others might not find. Note your source, whether it's an archeological source or a primary source from literature, or a secondary source. Be prepared to describe the cult site or the cult practice, and maybe provide some perspective on it from the standpointof what you know about Heracles' myths or his function as a mortal and a god.
BTW if you have an annotation of a secondary source, send it to me via email so I can post it to our class "draft" page.
Assignment for Thursday, Oct. 10:
We will discuss ideas about Heracles and the gods, and also Heracles and women/sexuality, from all of our resources. So, anything you have encountered in your research, or especially the material from the plays we have read, will be very useful for this discussion!
Assignment for Tuesday, Oct. 3
Annotations: keep them coming. Try to find yourself a good book or article and bring me the bibliographical reference for it even if you haven't seen it/annotated it yet!
Reading and Discussion: OK, let's hope that we can all now somehow find Sophocles' Trachiniae. We will continue with our discussion of relationships with gods, and women/sex issues. When you find something you want to talk about, and especially when the research coordinators note this stuff down, make sure you get/keep references to specific places in teh text or in secondary sources that you use to help. That will make our referencing for the web page much, much easier.
Etc: I will talk about Heracles in comedy -- Heracles as a buffoon . . . Should be fun. Billy, if you have a chance to come up with some of the Marvel comic references you mentioned, that would be great -- but don't worry about it.
Assignment for Thursday, 9/28
Annotations: if you have them, bring them in to me. We will probably edit them privately later, but I want to start getting these in. Everyone should have something at least chosen -- get me your book/article title now.
Reading & Discussion: We will begin with Sophocles' Trachiniae (Downloadable from MIT or Randall Library reserves, or check-outable from the Library stacks or reserves). I will give some background on Greek theater and also on some of the references to cult we see there and in Pindar. For our Trachiniae discussion, be prepared to talk about Heracles' relationships with the gods, and how his relationships with women and sex are shown in the play. We will split into groups for part of the class, your choice of which topic you want to focus on, and see if we can outline some ideas for the research organizers of these categories to write up from this play and possibly from the other plays we have just read.
We meet in Westside Hall.
Assignment for Tuesday, 9/26:
Annotations: We will look at Melissa's restructured annotation of Campbell, and also a review by Jack of T. Gantz's Early Greek Myth, and discuss briefly what format we want to adopt for our web page so we can be consistent. Everyone else, work on something for your first annotation. Use the bibliography in Padilla as a starting point. If you find something our library doesn't have, request it through Interlibrary Loan. If you are not sure how to do this, bring it up in class and we'll go over the process.
Plays: We will go through The Madness of Heracles for information on some of our topics, so check our class page and recheck the text. Also we will begin looking at Euripides' Alcestis, focusing on the presentation of Heracles there and contrasting it with The Madness of Heracles.
Readings and Links for 9/5 (Guys, I am sorry this wasn't up sooner -- I put up the page but forgot to make the link. If this ever happens again, the address of all readings and links is just, www.uncwil.edu/people/deagona/courses/herc9-5.htm; the bold section will be the month and date of the class.)