Monday, Monday, Monday February 13th

"Hello class!" said Smith with incredible enthusiasm.

Actually I really don't know if that happened, I was late.

New seats were chosen today! I hope you don't expect me to tell you where you sit. After new seats we all got our Last Lectures back, with great, sloppy advice from Smith written all over them.
REMINDER: Don't forget about Last Lecture pt.1 conferences with Smith during the next two weeks.

After that we got to sign up for discussion and presentation dates for fishbowling on The Picture of Dorian Gray. We then went over the background reading on Oscar Wilde, the author of the Picture of Dorian Gray.
-Oscar Wilde was convicted for being a heretic. He believed the Victorian Era and its inhabitants had it all wrong.
-Victorian Era had very strict classes and was not okay with homosexuality.
- Wilde's wife was the man in the relationship, meaning she had all the money, and therefore the power.
- when Oscar had a relationship with another male it was outrageous, not only because of this fact but because of the Victorian beliefs. Some wonder if he was homosexual on purpose.
-Oscar was a self-absorbed man that fully believed in individualism.
- words to describe Oscar Wilde
-defiant
- individualist
- intelligent
- Wilde is famous for his use of epigrams or aphirisms
- one liners that capture the essence of what he's trying to get across

We then read the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, which basically told us that Oscar contradicted himself. He said art was useless in this world, but then later said art was a beautiful creation.
Smith gave us the great question that we derived from the preface of,
Is society just black and white, or is it gray (the picture of dorian gray...)?
We were then assigned to read Ch.1-2 with the guiding questions of:
- Who is the creator in this piece (there could be 3 or 4)?
- Who or waht is the creation?
- What is the role of beauty?
- Connect to guiding question (to what extent does the creator have responsibility for its creation? when does the creation assume responsibility?)

Then ended with the in-class reading of most of Ch. 1.

I hope you all have a great 4-day week.