Assignments for Monday, March 24, and Wednesday, March 26

For Monday, finish reading and annotating Press's Beautiful Souls (ch. 4 and the epilogue). There is no writing assignment.

On Wednesday, you will write an in-class essay on Beautiful Souls.

Assignment for Wednesday, March 19

In Press's Beautiful Souls, read and annotate Chapter 3, "The Rules of Conscience," pp. 85-129.  You have no writing assignment.

For Monday, March 17

Read and annotate chapter 2 of Eyal Press's Beautiful Souls. Write one or two well-developed paragraphs in response to each of the following question: Press writes,  "[W]hat ultimately determines moral conduct are not character traits, personal beliefs, or political attitudes but situational factors ... 'Studies designed to test whether people behave differently in ways that might reflect their having different character traits have failed to find relevant differences,' the philosopher Gilbert Harman has argued. 'It may even be the case that there is no such thing as character.'" (29) Do you agree with this position? What do you think determined moral conduct?

Essay for Tuesday, March 11

Here are your topics for the Beloved essay; it should be three pages in length and it is due in class on Tuesday, March 11. 

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, how does the memory of slavery affect the characters's perception of the present? Select three of the following characters to develop your analysis: Sethe, Beloved, Paul D, Stamp Paid.

How does selfishness shape the the memories of the characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon? 

If you need to review scenes from Rashomon, you can find a fully translated copy of the movie here:  http://youtu.be/38WdmtBOo34