Hi everyone!
For those who missed week 6 classes or want to revise, on Monday we talked about “curationism” and rise of the curator in popular culture. We read the articles here and here. Both these pieces are examples of what has been called “cultural criticism“. It might be a form of criticism you’d like to experiment with.
On Wednesday we looked at ways to find new angles for our critical writing, using randomly selected prompts. We each chose a television series to work on, then selected a “lucky dip” prompt. We did 10 minutes of nonstop writing on the TV series in relation to the idea in the prompt, before revealing the combinations to the rest of the class and workshopping the ideas further.
Some good ones were:
- Sex and the City + architecture
- Everybody Loves Raymond + night
- Desperate Housewives + the past
- Girls + temperature
This is something you might like to try at home if you’re struggling with finding an interesting way into a text.
We also looked at the difference between ACTIVE and PASSIVE voice. We’ll talk about this more in week 7, but see if you can notice where you might strengthen your voice by switching to active in your own writing.
OK. The plan for Week 7:
Monday 12:30pm – 3:30pm: studio pitch session
I will bring snacks, but you will need to bring two things to Monday’s class:
1. An idea for a piece of critical writing that you will “pitch” to the rest of the class for the anthology website we will produce. Your pitch does not need to be exhaustive (remember Simran’s advice), but it does need to be a considered idea that gives the rest of the class a clear picture of what you want to work on.
It could be:
- a comparative review of croissants from Melbourne bakeries
- an in-depth review of your favourite (or your Mum’s favourite) album
- a piece of cultural criticism about a recent trend you’ve noticed
- a critical reconsideration of a film you think deserves another look
- a piece that considers the historical significance of movie snacks that also reviews the snacks available at Melbourne cinemas
- an essay about the cultural value of Billy on the Street
- OR anything else you think of
2. An idea (or two) for the title of our website/publication.
HERE’S an example of the kind of thing we might want to produce.
Wednesday 8:30am – 10:30am:
We’re going to be looking again at the idea of passive and active voice and other aspects of sentence construction. We’ll be applying the principles we look at to earlier drafts of our own writing.
Have a great mid-semester break!! Here’s a cheap date idea:
