Weekly Prompts

Each week, choose ONE prompt to address in your journal.

Week One

1. Describe blackness without using visual images, visual metaphors, visual language, or any other appeal to sense of sight.
2. When you read a narrative, what is the relationship between the work your eyes do and the storied images you visualize as you read? Try referencing a recent reading experience you’ve had to help illustrate your thinking.  
3. Complete one of the below activities and then journal your responses to the subsequent reflection questions:
   1. – Prepare or procure a simple meal. Think something that you can eat without a knife and preferably with only 1 (or less) utensil. (eg. a PBJ sandwich, a cup of oatmeal, a bowl of Mac n Cheese, etc.)  Important: Pick a meal that you can eat the entirety of (I.e. no bones, shells, etc.).  Blindfold yourself with a scarf, bandana or other suitable piece of fabric.  The blindfold should be comfortably secured over your eyes without covering your nose or mouth.  Just make sure it sufficiently blocks your vision of the meal in front of you, the plate ware, flatware, and your hands.  Sit there in front of your meal for about a minute with the blindfold on. Then consume your meal completely. When you are done, sit there for another minutes before removing the blindfold. 
   2. -Watch an episode of a show you’ve never seen, heard, or read about first without sound and without any closed captioned texts. You should pick an episode that’s under 35 minutes and that is neither the pilot episode nor the first episode of any of the show’s seasons.)
   3. Exercise Reflection Questions: – A) Describe which exercise you did and the details of how you enacted the exercise.  B) What was your experience of the exercise like? What did you feel physically? Emotionally? What kind of thoughts did you have?  C) What did you notice about your surroundings and/or yourself in the process of the exercise? In particulars what did you hear? Smell? Taste? See? Touch?  D) How successfully were you able to [if you did exercise 1] eat your meal or [if you did Exercise 2] follow what was happening in the show? 

Week Two

1) Complete one of the following activities and then reflect on the experience in your journal by responding to the subsequent reflection prompts.

• A- draw, sketch, color, or paint a significant scene from this week’s reading.
• B- using cut out or print outs of celebrities or other public figures, cast all the prominent characters in this week’s reading.

Reflection Prompts:  Describe your visual creation and explain the reasoning behind the choices you made. What passages from the text most influenced the decisions you made in your sketch [A] or collage casting [B]? and Why? What were the challenges of translating this aspect of the text into a visual medium?  In what ways does your visual creation most amplify Stowe’s narrative vision?  In what ways might your visual creation complicate, challenge, or revise Stowe’s vision?
2) Watch “Perceiving is Believing: Crash Course Psychology #7.”   Then select a passage from this week’s reading and analyze the content and form of that passage through the lens of the science of perception discussed in the video. 

3) When Senator Bird decides to help the fugitive Eliza and her son, the narrator emphasizes the decision as a stark reversal of his previously political belief:

What a situation now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abettors! . . .  How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets, and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests. 

He was as bold as a lion about it, and ‘mightily convinced’ not only himself, but everybody that heard him;–but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,–or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle with ‘Ran away from the subscriber’ under it. The magic of the real presence,–the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,–these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a helpless mother, a defenseless child,–like that one which was now wearing his lost boy’s little well-known cap; he was, as everyone must see, in a sad state for his patriotism.”  (Stowe, UTC, Ch IX: “In Which a Senator is But a Man,” Project Gutenberg)    

In this passage, Stowe’s narrator seems to position “the magic of the real” against “an idea of the letters” and ‘the image” printed in the newspaper.  Visual and Textual representation are nothing compared to the real, and yet, readers are compelled to read the narrative precisely by way of a promise that the narrative will offer compelling visual evidence that exposes the truth of slavery.   

Using one or more of the many references to acts of looking and/or appeals to visual perception in the first twenty chapters of UTC (some of which are in this passage), explain how you make sense of (i.e. interpret) this tension between the real and the visual-textual representation in the passage. 

Week Three

1. Pick a scene with one of Stowe’s more minor characters (e.g. Old Prue). Read a scene in which this character appears. Rewrite the scene from the perspective of the minor character. In addition to considering the emotional and ideological perspective from which this character might experience the scene, pay particular attention to what material aspects of the setting/environment this character might notice. Follow your rewrite with 2-3 paragraph comparing and contrasting the original scene and your rewrite of it and reflecting on the reasoning behind your writerly choices.

2. In UTC, there are over 300 references to eyes, and some version of the words “look”; “see”; and “appear” occur over a 1000 time. Meanwhile there are only five instances of the words “ears” and 85 occurrences of the word “hear(s).” There are sixteen occurrences of “nose”; three of tongue; thirteen of “teeth”; and 49 of “mouth.” While word count (even when accounting for a variety of synonyms and conjugations) are very limited in what they can tell us about a narrative, the contrast is startling enough to draw our attention. While the contrast suggests an intentional emphasis on vision and the visual faculties (a suggestion supported by a variety of secondary and primary sources), the contrast might be most useful in calling our attention to the significance of the instances in the text in which one of the other sensory organs are mentioned. Locate one of these relatively scarce references to the nose, ears, tongue, teeth, and mouth. Read the scene. In your journal, reflect on the following questions: How is the reference to this particular body part functioning. In a text focused on the tension between white and black bodies; mother(ing) bodies and childless bodies; proper and improper bodies; mortal bodies and immortal souls, how does this reference to the anatomical body function? How does this reference to a sensory organ other than the eyes work in relation to UTC’s overwhelming preoccupation with visual senses? (Make sure your reflection includes specific reference/quote to whatever part of the text you’re examining.)

3. Scholars have paid particular attention to Stowe’s use of foils, mirroring, opposition, dualism, and binaries. Locate an instance in UTC where Stowe employs one of these binary techniques. In your journal, spend some time reflecting on the effect of how Stowe employs opposition in this passage. What makes the use of opposition so compelling? Then make a list of all the not stated, but potentially inferable, details about the sensory material at play in this scene might support or interrupt the oppositional logic structuring this part of the novel. Conclude your entry by reflecting on this list and how you think we, as readers, ought to attend or not attend to this not explicitly mentioned (nor perhaps intentionally implied) sensory material?

Week Four

• 1-  What kind of work does child-like wonder, imagination, and/or magic do in Ntozake Shange’s novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo? And specifically what kind of work does it do around the way the text imagine race, blackness, and freedom? Make sure that your reflection is both macro and micro. You should think about these questions in terms of the novel as a whole, but you should also do the work of identifying at least one passage (no longer than a page) in which you can discuss how this work happens in the specific details of Shange’s writing.

• 2- Describe the setting of the first third of Shange’s novel. How does the setting manifest (i.e. Are there particular times that Shange calls our attention to the setting? Are there particular types of objects and/or sensory data Shange uses to indicate the setting? How do the facts of and details about the setting shape our understanding of the characters and/or the events in the narrative? etc.)?  Again, you should think about these questions in terms of the novel as a whole, but you should also do the work of identifying at least one passage (no longer than a page) in which you can discuss how this work happens in the specific details of Shange’s writing.

• 3-  Imagine a fantastical (AND amazing) “Great Works Literature” podcast in which the fictional characters from different canonical texts discussed the books in which they were penned. On this week’s episode four of the black female characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin have convened to discuss Stowe’s novel. Write the script for at least five minutes of this podcast (which let’s say is generally between 25-30 minutes along). Pick any four black female characters from the novel (e.g. Eliza, Cassy, Dinah, & Emmeline OR maybe Topsy, Eliza, Emmeline, and Old Prue).

• 4- Where (and how?!) might we sense something like the material of black joy in Uncle Tom Cabin. This material may not be intended by or even necessarily legible to Harriet Beecher Stowe nor to her many white middle class readers. What’s important here is for you to locate a specific scene or moment within a scene. Describe it. Then describe how you think we might be able to sense something of the material of black joy in this moment. Point to specific textual details. Explain how you’re reading the explicit and implicit signification of those details. What do we need to be able to notice in the text? What do we need to be able to do and/or imagine as readers in order to sense this possible material?

Week Five

This week, there is only one option for the journal entry.

Pick one of the recipes for food or healing, one of the songs, dances, or other pieces of artistic performance presented in the novel Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo and enact it in. You may need to modify the recipe or nature of the craft to suit pragmatic concerns (i.e. access to materials and tools) and/or the specifics of your own life and performative expression.

In your journal:

• 1- Indicate which recipe/art/performance did you chose to enact.

• 2- Describe how you implemented the recipe?  Did you modify it in any way? If so, what modifications did you make?; why did you make these modifications? And in what way do the modifications affect how your reenactment signifies? If you didn’t make any modifications, why not?

• 3- Describe the experience of carrying out this recipe? Consider:  How did it feel (smell, sound, taste, look, etc.)?  How did you feel (i.e. nervous, excited, confused, etc.)? How did it feel to prepare, stage, maybe even rehearse the performance versus actually enacting the performance?  Did you have a sense of audience? If yes, who? How did it feel to come out of the performance; to clean up afterwards; or in theater parlance strike the set? 

• 4- Describe how your experience affects the way you read some aspect of Shange’s novel. Perhaps you notice a detail or a connection you didn’t notice previously? Perhaps you’re better able to imagine the sensory material of a particular moment and how that affects the atmosphere of that moment?

• 5- Please make sure to include some documentary evidence of your performance (e.g. a photo, video, piece of food you can share with your classmates, a recording, a scrap of fabric you used, etc.).

Week Six

No Journal Prompts – Work on Midterm Journal Assessment Sheet

Week Seven

No Journal Prompts – Get going on your group projects.

Week Eight

1 – Read the following brief web article by Ann Douglass: “Awakening the Senses: Pregnancy Body Changes.” and watch the following Ted-ED video “The Surprising Effects of Pregnancy” on YouTube.com.

Read one of the following through the lens of Douglas’s web article and the TED-ed video:

A] The final scene of Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo when Sassafrass is giving birth.

B] Cypress’s Dream

C] The initiation ritual Sassafrass undergoes on the commune (i.e. the scene in which she finally decides to let Mitch go).

D] The chapter describing Linda Brent’s first pregnancy.

E] The brief references to Linda Brent’s second pregnancy.

2. If in the bildungsroman and many traditional western narrative forms, there’s a relationship between the developmental rise of the narrative form and the developmental rise (or formation) of the subject identity, how might the sequencing of “incidents” in Jacobs’ suggest about Linda Brent’s subject formation?  There are a lot of ways to answer this question. Try not to generalize and don’t feel you need to be exhaustive in your answer.  Try identifying a one or two places in the text where you can really explore the relationship between the form of Jacobs and/or Brent narration and the type of subject formation that narration presents.   Tip: Try focusing on a moment in the text that deals with time; rituals; coming of age; maturation; status classification; and/or citizenship status.  

Week Nine

1. The title of the chapter describing Brent’s entry into the garret above her grandmother’s house is “The Loophole of Retreat.”  How does this title inform the way we read the chapter and Brent’s mode of escape?  What implications might this title have for how we ought to read both the mode of escape and the narrative mode of relaying that escape?  

2.  Using housemates, friends, stuffed animals, figurines, sock puppets, etc. to stage the drama that Linda Brent orchestrates in chapter XXV of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  When you journal about the experience, make sure to describe and discuss your choices about the following:  casting, set design, lights, sounds, props, staging and blocking. What material conditions and/or social-environmental dynamics did you need to consider that weren’t explicitly mentioned or foregrounded in the text but which nevertheless matter to staging the event? How does the way you understand (interpret) the scene affect (determine) your choices?   How does thinking about and making decisions about those choices affect (influence, possibly change)  the way you understand the scene? 

3 – The purpose of this exercise is to help you contemplate something of the physical dynamics of Harriet Jacobs’ garret escape. Please read all the instructions as well as the below “Warning” note before attempting this optional exercise.   Jacobs wrote that “[t]he garret was only nine feet long and seven wide. The highest part was three feet high, and sloped down abruptly to the loose floor board.”  

• A.  At a time when you are relatively awake, find or construct a space that roughly equivalates to 9’x 7’x3′. Make sure your space is completely enclosed with the exception of possibly a few holes no bigger than the width of your ring finger.  
• B.  If you have roommates or housemates, you should try to do this exercise without their assistance or knowledge to the extent that doing so is feasible and advisable. You should however call, text, or email a classmate, friend, family or someone else outside the space informing them about the time and place you intend to start this exercise.  
• C.  Procure your journal (if you have a physical  one) OR a recent piece of mail OR  a sheet of newspaper as well as a pen or pencil.
• D.  Set an alarm for 40 minutes. The alarm should remain outside of this structure.    
• E.  Remove your shoes.
• F.  Enter the structure with nothing other than the items from step B and the clothes you are wearing (less any electronic accessories).
• G.  Spend 40 minutes in this space:  Begin by taking note of your body, the smells, the sounds, etc.  Then try to experience the space of the room from this vantage point. Try to feel the distance between you and the door.  Try to assess how many people and/or animals are within a 2-3 minute range of reaching you.  Now try recording these sensations with your writing materials.  
• H.  When the alarms goes off, do not burst out of the garret.  Inhale deeply, check in with your feet, your legs, your spine, your neck, your head and your arms. Find cautious and deliberate movement.  Slowly, carefully, leave your garret space. 
• I.  Turn off the alarm.  Let the friend, classmate, family member you contacted know that you have completed the exercise.
• J.  In your journal, write a brief letter addressed to Harriet Jacobs or Linda Brent (you choose).  Your letter should consist of three parts:  
  • PART ONE:  describe the simulated garret you made–its location, dimensions, materials, climate, etc.  
  • PART TWO: Using more than one sentence, fill in the blank– “What I felt  was ______.”  Describe what you felt both physically (with your sensorial apparatus) and emotionally (with your mind).  
  • PART THREE:  Using more than one sentence, fill “What I still do not, and perhaps cannot, know is______________. “

Week Ten

No Prompts. Happy Easter.

Week Eleven

In chapter 31 (XXX1) of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda Brent (as Jacobs’ title chapter suggests) narrates some of the “incidents in Philadelphia” she experienced during her first days in the free states. After arriving to Philadelphia from the south via ship, a free family of color in the city hosts Brent until more secure arrangements can be made for her further north. One of the incidents Brent includes is a visit to an “art room” (what we might call an art gallery or studio). About this experience she states “One day she [her host] took me to an artist’s room, and showed me the portraits of some of her children. I had never seen any paintings of colored people before, and they seemed to me beautiful.” While Jacobs only allots two sentences to this incident, the incident is not intrinsically important to the plot nor any of the major narrative tensions. As such, that Jacobs chooses to mention this incident (as opposed to others or as opposed further elaborating the major conflicts), however briefly, suggest that it might hold significance enough for us to ponder. And indeed as we begin to discuss Hannah Craft’s The Bondswoman’s Narrative, this brief incident seems all the more compelling as it resonates with Craft’s depictions of Hannah’s moving encounter with the portraits in the gallery hall of her master’s house. To help you think about the potential resonance between these two textual moments as well as their individual importance within their respective texts, choose one of the below one of the following prompts to explore in your journal:

A: Imagine that the first-person protagonists of Jacobs’ and Crafts’ narrative are having tea together and talking (and not talking) about their pasts and ideas for the present. In the conversation, the realize that among other things they have in common, they have both had one memorable experience looking at paintings. Paying particular attention to the relationship between speech, touch, and vision, recreate their exchange in a form of your choosing. Dedicate 5-10 minutes of your journaling time after you’ve worked on your recreation for reflection. Use this reflection time to journal about how your particular recreation and/or the experience of figuring out how to recreate this exchange affect your understanding of one or both of the texts.

B: Revisit your earliest recollection of encountering a piece of visual representation in which you saw yourself and/or a significant aspect of your identity reflected. What was the image? What was the medium or scale of the image? Where did you encounter it? How close were you? Who was with you? What did you feel physically and emotionally or even spiritually? What did you say? What did you do? How did the encounter conclude? How did the representation and/or your encounter with it influence you going forward? Dedicate 5-10 minutes to think about how your personal experience might position you to understand either Linda’s experience in the art room and/or Hannah’s experience in the portrait hall. In what ways does your experience and how it positions you to these texts affect the what you read and/or how you read Jacobs’ and /or Craft’s narrative.

Week Twelve

In our exploration of the role of the senses and sensory material in how we imagine and think about black life, our discussions have frequently been preoccupied with the presence (as well as the status and function) of the pregnant body; black female labor; and the relationship between the artistically eccentric or admirably different and the troublingly lunatic or crazy. Use one of the following prompts to help you explore these topics and their potential connections further in your journal:

A. Imagine: As an effort to provoke consideration about how enslaved black women thought about their health and what their stories suggest about the ongoing physical and mental effects of gender, racial, and economic violence, we have decided to stage an Instagram performance art piece. Our performance entails creating an Instagram account from the perspective of Hannah’s new mistress. In order to raise awareness and provoke conversation, we will create and post content that documents her life following her marriage to Hannah’s master and arrival at his estate house.

Using descriptive prose or your choice of visual mediums or some combination of both, design at least three pieces of content for this Instagram account. In addition to thinking about the key moments you want to highlight, think about whether to use still or moving images. If you use moving images, will you include sound? You should also consider order, filters, captions, hashtags, and other aspects that increase the effectiveness of content shared on this platform.

Dedicate 5-10 minutes to journaling about the ways in which the content you designed and/or the choices behind your designs might help us think through Craft’s depiction of Hannah’s mistress.

B: Imagine: After a stellar competition series, a video of one the Lionesses’ best sets goes viral on YouTube. Quickly another video featuring two of the older girls doing their signature move with Busy’s incredibly cute and surprisingly coordinated 3 year old foster sister goes viral on TikTok. Almost overnight the Lionesses are the darlings of social media (thanks in no small part to the added intrigue circulating around their inspirational struggle against the mysterious affliction that had defined the dance team’s previous season). After the girls decline an invitation to perform at the Grammy’s out of solidarity with the many overlooked black performers, Beyoncé announced that she has decided to create a line of Ivy Park clothing inspired by the Lionesses. According to the announcement, in preparation for the new line, which some are already referring to as Ivy Park Fits, Beyoncé plans to meet with the girls directly in order to learn more about their story and how they imagine the colors, cuts, and textures of their movement.

In your journal use descriptive prose or your choice of visual medium or some combination of both to design one or two possible items in this new collection. While your design shouldn’t ignore practical concerns, it should prioritize the goals of capturing and sharing elements of the Lionesses’ story with those who view and/or wear this apparel. Consider colors, patterns, shapes, textures, breathability, weight, the sound the fabric when in movement as well as the who and when the items are most likely to be worn and how the item might be paired with other articles of clothing.

Dedicate 5-10 minutes to journaling about the ways in which the item(s) you designed and/or the choices behind the design might help us to think differently about the girls’ relationship to “the fits” in the film.

Week Thirteen

Revisit a character from one of the readings that you DID NOT like and/or whom you struggled to sympathize with.

A. Imagine you are this character’s childhood best friend. While your lives may have taken different paths, you will always regard this character as one of those “like family” friends whom you can’t help loving no matter what. Recently the character reached out to you because they are having a particularly rough time. Write your old friend a letter or an email of support and encouragement.

B. Imagine that you are this character’s lawyer. The character has been accused by another character (from this text or another text) of a crime that your character swears they did not commit. In your journal write out the opening or closing statement of your defense for this character. Remember that you have a legal and ethical duty to represent their interests as best as possible.

Week Twelve

In our discussion of Shange’s novel we talked about the Shange and the novel’s relationship to The Black Arts Movement. In our discussion we mentioned how if read through the lens (within the context of) the goals of The Black Arts Movement, the novel might suggest a surprising connection between Indigo, who has become something of a patron saint for our class, and Sassafrass’s (at best) painfully problematic boyfriend Mitch. There may be a connection between the creative-political imperatives of avant-garde jazz artists like Mitch and the ethos undergirding Indigo’s dolls, recipes, and fiddle playing–the ethos to make what she needed, what she thought black people needed. One of the ways I tried to help us think about this possible connection was by calling our attention to seminal poem “Black Arts” by Amiri Baraka, often referred to as the father of The Black Arts Movement. For this last journal entry, I invite you to revisit both Baraka’s poem and the questions and stakes of producing literature, art, music, dance etc. that materially manifests what’s needed in the world.

Start by revisiting the first two and a half lines of Baraka’s poem “Black Art”:

Poems are bullshit unless they are
Teeth or trees or lemons piled
On a step.

-Amiri Baraka, “Black Art,” Rap Genius

Consider the importance of the first line break which calls our attention to the verb “to be” and the fact that Baraka opts for neither representation nor simile here. He does not say that “Poems are bullshit unless they are about teeth” (representation) or “unless they are like teeth . . .” (simile). What then does it take for a poem to actually be teeth, trees, or lemons (piled on a step)? Use the following exercise to help you reflect on this question in your journal:

1. Choose one of the three objects: teeth, trees, or lemons piled on a step.
2. Write the first stanza of a poem that is ABOUT the object you chose.
3. Write the first stanza of a poem that is LIKE the object you chose.
4. Write the first stanza of a poem that IS the object you chose.
5. Read each of your stanzas out loud at least twice.
6. In your journals reflect on both the three stanzas you produced and the experience of writing them. Your reflection should consider: the similarities and differences between the three stanzas; the considerations each stanza required; the writerly choices you made and why?

Week Fifteen

No Prompt. Prepare your Final Journal Assessment material.