Blog posting

Below are the dates you've signed up for. I will create a heading for each of those weeks, and on your assigned week, you should write a discussion question relating to the reading, something to help guide our conversation in class. Please post your comment no later than Monday at noon. Then the other members of class should check the blog on Monday night and read the discussion questions.

The discussion question should be substantial (at least a couple of sentences long) and should refer us to something specific in the text, either a particular passage or a specific theme/image/character. Read the questions of the other members of your group as well, and think about links between and among the questions.

You should be prepared to discuss and elaborate on your question in class.

Inaugural Addresses

Did you hear echoes of Lincoln in Obama's inaugural address? Re-read Lincoln's speeches and compare them to Obama's speech today. Please post your response in the comment section below no later than 8 AM on Thursday. Read and respond to the other comments, too. You can either log in using your google account, or post anonymously, but be sure to include your name in the text of your comment.

You might think about the following comparisons:
-Allusions (Biblical, literary, and/or political) in Obama's speech and in Lincoln's
-Structure of the speech (how it introduces its main ideas, climax, conclusion, etc.)
-Rhetorical devices (such as repetitions of words/images, particular sentence structures, metaphors and similes, climactic/emphatic phrases, etc.)
-Depiction of the role of the presidency and/or the relationship between government and ordinary people
-Depiction of God or the role of the divine in defining the nation
-Overall theme

Or add your own item to the list! Feel free to discuss differences as well as similarities (but do not just say "I didn't see any similarities").

You can find the text of Obama's speech here:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKUtZaMLuh6KEQgRzqqEq1yTZ_2gD95R7TIO0

And the text of every presidential inaugural address here. (Just click the "full text" link under the photo):
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html?hp

Jefferson's Land Ordinance of 1785

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The lines shall be measured with a chain; shall be plainly marked by chaps on the trees and exactly described on a plat; whereon shall be noted by the surveyor, at their proper distances, all mines, salt springs, salt licks and mill seats, that shall come to his knowledge, and all water courses, mountains and other remarkable and permanent things, over and near which such lines shall pass, and also the quality of the lands.

The plats of the townships respectively, shall be marked by subdivisions into lots of one mile square, or 640 acres, in the same direction as the external lines, and numbered from 1 to 36; always beginning the succeeding range of the lots with the number next to that with which the preceding one concluded.

Welcome!

Welcome to the EN360 blog! We will be using this forum to expand on our classroom conversations. I will post supplementary materials here, and periodically I will ask you to contribute your own comments.

If you have a google/gmail account, you can sign in using that account. If not, you can either sign up for a google account, or post anonymously. If you post anonymously or have an unusual screen name, be sure to include your name in the text of your post.

To comment: go to the bottom of the post where it says "2 comments" (or whatever the number of comments is at the moment). Click there, and enter your comments in the window at the bottom of the comments section.