During class time on Thursday, January 27, we will be meeting at Tuscana Ristorante. Students must arrive to the dining hall by 10:40 AM. Students without meal plans will need to buy lunch. The element of "food" is an important part of making this "fieldtrip" work.The purpose of this fieldtrip is to highlight--and practice--the social aspect of literature. By social, I don't mean "socializing" as a "social butterfly" might do. I mean simply, normal human interactions between people. In "real life," when literature is discussed, it is most often discussed around dinner tables or at lunch time. Literature is about life and the doing and happening of literature takes place, in addition to in classrooms, in the arenas of real life.
The guidelines are as follows:
- You need to sit with members of the class. You should sit with the small group you've been meeting with in class; however, if there are less than three members in your group, you may join with another group. No group, though, should have more than five or more than can fit around a small table.
- You should get some food and drink.
- Discuss the three readings for today. If you managed to bring a text of your own, contribute one or two points about it to the discussion. Talk about literature and the relationship between literature and life.
- You will have to stay "on topic" from after you get your food and make sure you know each other's names, until the end of the class period. However, you can decide what constitues being "on topic." You can decide what is relevant to discuss about literature and life. This will be hard work, especially if you are not used to having meaningful discussiong about literature. But since I am taking this risk of having this fieldtrip, please give it a long, solid try.
- Make sure to continually "return to the texts," weaving the actual words of the literature throughout the whole discussion. Make sure during the course of the discussion to read aloud short passages to each other.
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