Category: Announcements

For our last big-ticket event of the semester, we will be going to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center to see Puccini’s “La Bohème” on Tuesday, November 29. The performance starts at 7:30, so we should plan on meeting in the lobby near the ticket windows no later than 7:15. The whole Lincoln Center plaza, with its selfie-friendly illuminated fountain, is well worth lingering in, so you might want to arrive even earlier. Note: running time is approximately 3 hours (including intermission), so you’ll be out around 10:30.

Is there a dress code?  Not really: you will see people in a range of sartorial styles, from very casual to very dressy (some people come straight from work, so they’re in business attire). Let’s put it this way: for a special occasion like this, it can be fun to dress up, and you will definitely feel like you blend in with the festive, somewhat opulent environment if you’re a little more fancy than usual.

Getting there: from the S.I. ferry terminal on the Manhattan side, get on the 1 train and take it to 66th St./Lincoln Center. I’ve included a map of Lincoln Center below. (Pro tip: if you like shaving off a little bit of commute time, you can cross the platform at Chambers Street and take the 2 (express) up to Times Square, and then switch back to the 1 and take that up to 66th st.)

The opera is in Italian, but a friendly digital display on the seat back in front of you will stream English subtitles. It also helps to acquaint yourself with the basic plot ahead of time. Here’s the concert program, in which you will find a synopsis:

[gview file=”https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5648/2016/11/16123505/La-Boheme-Program.pdf”]

Here’s a link to the Met’s web page about the opera:

http://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synopses/La-Boheme/

And here’s the Lincoln Center layout:

Photo credits: Left: Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster (1931). Right: Gene Wilder as Victor Frankenstein and Peter Boyle as the monster in Young Frankenstein (1974).

For our first week’s discussion of Frankenstein, please read at least through the end of Vol. 2, Ch. 4 (p. 92 in the Oxford edition of the original 1818 version). For your post, please respond to one of the following prompts:

1. If you have never read Mary Shelley’s novel before, you might be surprised by the difference between the popular Halloween/movie version of Frankenstein’s monster (green skin, squarish head, neck-bolts) and the original. What surprised you most? Please comment on the relationship between the novel’s imagination of the monster and familiar 20^th/21^st century versions of it.
2. Mary Shelley’s story famously grew out of a kind of tale-telling contest among herself, her husband (the poet Percy Shelley), the poet Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician, John Polidori. As Shelley explains in her Preface, these friends had been amusing themselves with “some German stories of ghosts.” And yet Shelley insists that her own story is “exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment.” If it’s not a ghost story, what is it? More specifically: what do you find most terrifying or haunting about the novel? Why might Shelley have felt that she had written something better than a ghost story?

Instead of meeting for class at CSI on Wednesday, Oct. 19, we will all be meeting at the venue for the performance of Sense and Sensibility. The performance begins at 2 p.m., so please arrive by 1:45. (Late seating in such an intimate space would be rather disruptive.)

The Gym at Judson is a small performing arts theater located at 243 Thompson Street, between 4^th St. (which borders Washington Square) and 3^rd St. From the Staten Island Ferry terminal, take the 4/5 train from Bowling Green to the City Hall station; then cross the platform to the uptown 6 and take that to Bleecker Street. Walk west on Bleecker for several blocks, and then turn right up Thompson St. The performance should last until about 4:30, after which there will be a talkback with the director, Eric Tucker (and possibly a few of the actors). The director is very generous to make time for us, and his theater company has enabled us to see this performance by selling us tickets at a significant discount—so please be good Macaulay ambassadors by asking thoughtful, stimulating questions. The whole thing should be over by 5:30.

For this week’s post (October 19), I would like you to share your impressions of the play. Because it’s better to formulate your thoughts when the performance is still fresh in your mind, please upload your post by this Friday, October 21. It might help to have particular questions in mind as you go into the play. For instance: How will the differences between Elinor and Marianne be portrayed? How are Marianne’s frantic letters to Willoughby conveyed? Does the play make any attempt to translate Elinor’s interior thoughts in the novel into speech? (Are there any soliloquies, in which a character addresses the audience rather than another character?) Are any of the narrated events (such as the duel between Willoughby and Col. Brandon) represented on stage? How is the scene of Marianne’s “putrid fever” handled?

For our two theatrical performances this semester (Sense and Sensibility and Phantasmagoria) you will be asked to write one longer (2-3 pp.) review on one of them. It will be up to you to decide which play you want to write about—so if you have a strong sense you might like to write about S&S, think of this week’s post as a dress rehearsal (and take good notes!).

Topic 1

Hearing of Marianne’s illness, Willoughby comes to pay a visit in Vol. 3, Ch. 9. But he doesn’t get to speak directly to the woman he jilted; instead, he has a long conversation with Elinor. Please comment on this scene, focusing on such questions as: 1) What does Willoughby’s visit achieve? Does it make him appear better, worse, or the same? 2) What is the significance of having Willoughby speak to Elinor rather than Marianne? 3) How does Elinor respond to what he has to say, and does that affect our judgment of Willoughby?

Topic 2

Like a good Shakespearean comedy, Sense and Sensibility ends with multiple marriages. But these outcomes are handled in different ways. Elinor’s marriage is enabled by a surprising revelation that is made in Vol. 3, Chs. 12-13; and it is treated at some length (including a detailed conversation). Marianne’s marriage, on the other hand, is treated more briefly, in two compact paragraphs in the final chapter of the novel. How would you compare these two outcomes and how they’re handled? Do these differences in any way reflect the differences between the two sisters? If Austen is trying to make moral lessons or social observations about the two marriages, what are they?

For this week, please read the selection of essays on photography in the “Readings Menu,” and bring print-outs to class.

For this week’s post, please apply the ideas of Susan Sontag or Roland Barthes (or possibly both) to an interpretation of a digital photograph of your choice. (The source could be from any website—e.g, an Instagram feed, a street photography blog, or a news outlet.) Your post should consist of two parts: the image itself and your brief commentary on it.

The above image shows the lobby ceiling of the Met Breuer museum, where we will be visiting an exhibit of Diane Arbus’s photography in the coming weeks. I cannot show you a picture from the show itself, because personal photography is strictly prohibited by the museum. Think about that for a minute: no photos of the photographs. There are many famous images by Arbus that are easily downloadable, but many of the photos in the show are in private collections, and the owners would like to keep them out of digital circulation. In “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger talks about the way that photographic reproduction changes the way we look at and think about paintings. Perhaps the same might be said about some photos.

This is just a test