Text Satellite
http://prezi.com/wl2b2gnkugvm/copy-of-age-of-anxiety/

Hello everyone!

I hope the above link works.  Before I explain the thought processes behind my text satellite, I want to give a big thank you to the ladies in the Fishbowl for their tutorials!  Many thanks.  Once I understood the process I could have fun with it!  It was fun to consider texts in a different way than it is traditionally approached.  I began thinking about literature from the early Modern period.  I read Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome in high school and think it is less widely known, but has important themes in it.  It is definitely represents concepts of determinism and conflict on many levels--first of all internal conflict, then romantic conflict, as well as the overarching concept of man vs. nature.  I considered other texts, but kept coming back to this one.  I also think Barbara Kingsolver's texts should be taught in schools, so I chose The Bean Trees as a text that follows many of the themes that are addressed in the early part of the Modern period, but by choosing Kingsolver, I wanted a text that felt more recent and thus more applicable to students.  In addition, this text addresses themes such as migration and treatment of the earth, which I believe all connect with trends that started in the early part of the century.  For this reason, I also chose an excerpt from Rachel Carson's famous work as a way of making a connection with scientific discovery and writing which also influenced fiction writing.  For news articles, I was pleased to find an article from the September 24th issue of "The Guardian" which discussed the fiftieth anniversary Carson's The Silent Spring.  An additional benefit is that this article could work as an article of the week.  One failure, I must note is that I couldn't get that particular article to link correctly with my text satellite. (The image is a representation of the article I found.

In choosing short stories, drama, and poetry, I went with the traditional with "The Open Boat," which is a story important to teaching for the early modern period, as well as the poetry of Robert Frost.  I particularly chose the Frost poems to offer a contrast in styles between blank verse ("Birches") and the rhyme scheme of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."  In keeping with the style of the time period, I chose the humorous drama of Anton Chekhov.  This play offers social commentary in a humorous way that is also in keeping with the dominant themes of the unit.

For additional material I chose the music of U2 and a 1993 film version of Ethan Frome that was directed by John madden.  I also chose graphic novels by Joe Sacco which are based on modern day Israel and the Gaza Strip.  Some might argue that these novels are very dark, but I thought they might offer a stark look at the themes of determinism and conflict that are central to the unit.  Overall, I had fun with the text satellite, and definitely think it is a medium that causes one to think about texts in a new way.  I hope everyone enjoys it.