·  Tuesday February 9th

·  1. Finish book as far as possible
2. Precis on Obama's speech
3. Write, using the speech as a departure point, whether or not you think the ending (chapters 31-44) of Huck is racist. This is not a formal paper but a reaction and exploration of ideas getting ready to discuss the ethics of the characters and Twain.

Twain’s reponse

·  Huck Cultural Lesson

·  Objectives:

·  Read and write literary criticism

·  Perform historical/biographical analysis of non-fiction works

·  Define cultural context and describe aspects of others' contexts as well as their own

·  Make inferences and develop the ability to provide convincing evidence to support their inferences

Twain’s Response

1.  Compare and contrast the ideas in these two published critiques or reviews of the novel, ideally from two different authors and time periods, with their own opinions as expressed in their critiques.

Wednesday, February 10th

Read both these articles about Huck Finn .

Take notes in chart or paragraph form, analyzing similarities and difference in Smiley and Lester’s arguments.

Be thorough and complete for credit. Details in the form of quotations from both articles are needed to prove critical thinking

1. “Say it Ain’t so Huck” Jane Smiley

http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/mcunningham/say_it_ain.htm

2.  Morality and the Adventures of Huck Finn, Julius Lester.

Tuesday February 17th

Read two more reviews on Huck Fin, one must be from the 1800’s and one from 1900-1940.

Search for reviews of Huck:

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/twainrev2www?specfile=/lv6/workspace/railton/reviews/twainreview.o2w

Magazine articles and Reviews of Huck

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/about/txtindex.html

Gale infotrack

http://sduhsd.net/sd/library/researchguidelines2.htm

Password

Maverick or Mustang

Take notes on main arguments, details that support and your opinion on the truth or validity of the argument.

Thursday February 17, 2009

Look up the years 3 of the four critics of Huck lived (At least one has to be Julius Lester or Jane Smiley). Use the following links or sites of your own choice to analyze the cultural context of the reviewer.

Answering these questions will help determine how the writer’s culture influenced his or her opinions:

1. What is the writer’s ethnic background?

2.  What important historical events happened in the writer’ life have shaped his or her views, list at least four major events.

3.  Are there any personal events that are hinted at or known that have shaped the writer’s views?

4.  Are there any details or quotations in the text that indicate the writer’s bias?

5.  What political events may have happened in the writer’s life to shape his her views?

6.  Where did the writer grow up and what level of education did he/she receive? Do either of these play a part in the writer’s opinions?

7.  Write a brief paragraph on how the writer’s cultural context may have influenced his /her view.

8. 

Students will then explore the cultural context of each critic whose work they are analyzing. They will look at contemporary historical events and social practices during the critic's life, governing such realms as race, gender, age and class-based roles in society.

·  Resources: The following EDSITEment-reviewed websites provide diverse information that will help students gain a sense of historical influences and social practices that may influence critics:

a. The Time Line of African-American History, 1852-1925, from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory Collection.
b. The National Women's History Project's A Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998, a link on the EDSITEment reviewed History Matters site.
c. Gonzaga University's A Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890-1929 , a link from History Matters.
d. The 1900s Timeline, accessible through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library.
e. Harlem 1900-1940: Timeline, a timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community.
f. Duke University's Ad*Access site, a terrific look at popular culture through advertising, a link through History Matters.

·  Other Resources:

a. Consider how your school's history or social studies department could provide other resources for students; this may be a good opportunity for interdisciplinary cooperation.
b. As students find historical and social markers that may influence critics, it will be beneficial for them to note what did not happen or had not yet happened. This may influence their inferences in the next step. For example, how could the fact that the Civil Rights Movement did not happen until after Booker T. Washington's death explain some aspects of how Washington views Huckleberry Finn?

·  Rationale: This background search will help students grasp what cultural context is and will give them a scholarly foundation for the inferences they will make in the next activity.

A Baseline Definition of Culture

People learn culture. That, we suggest, is culture's essential feature. Many qualities of human life are transmitted genetically -- an infant's desire for food, for example, is triggered by physiological characteristics determined within the human genetic code. An adult's specific desire for milk and cereal in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be explained genetically; rather, it is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger. Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (ie. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture resides in all learned behavior and in some shaping template or consciousness prior to behavior as well (that is, a "cultural template" can be in place prior to the birth of an individual person).

This primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an important element of cultural systems:

·  systems of meaning, of which language is primary

·  ways of organizing society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national corporations

·  the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products

Several important principles follow from this definition of culture:

·  If the process of learning is an essential characteristic of culture, then teaching also is a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced (see reproduction in the glossary) is itself an important component of culture.

·  Because the relationship between what is taught and what is learned is not absolute (some of what is taught is lost, while new discoveries are constantly being made), culture exists in a constant state of change.

·  Meaning systems consist of negotiated agreements -- members of a human society must agree to relationships between a word, behavior, or other symbol and its corresponding significance or meaning. To the extent that culture consists of systems of meaning, it also consists of negotiated agreements and processes of negotiation.

·  Because meaning systems involve relationships which are not essential and universal (the word "door" has no essential connection to the physical object -- we simply agree that it shall have that meaning when we speak or write in English), different human societies will inevitably agree upon different relationships and meanings; this a relativistic way of describing culture.

If you have read through other discussions/definitions of culture on these pages, you probably already have the sense that there is much disagreement about the word and concept "culture" and you probably already realize that any definition, this one included, is part of an ongoing conversation (and negotiation) about what we should take "culture" to mean. For a very brief history of this debate, see the glossary entry for "culture"; for interpretive discussions and explorations of culture, visit the "Exploring Culture" section of these pages.

The Culture Debate in the U.S.: Whose Culture Is This, Anyway?


Part of the debate about culture revolves around issues of perspective and ownership. Within a nation such as the United States -- a nation whose cultural heritage includes elements from every corner of the world -- there are a great many perspectives coexisting and intertwining in the cultural fabric. When we all ask ourselves as individuals, "what belongs to me, to my culture?" we are rewarded with a spectacular variety of responses; in this way, different perspectives and ownership of different cultural traditions enriches everyone. But when we ask "what belongs to us, to our culture?" we ask a much harder question. Do the people of the United States, or of any culturally complex human society, necessarily share common cultural elements? If so, who gets to decide what those elements are?
This debate is a crucial one in many cultures throughout the world today. In the U.S., the debate promises to impact the way we educate our children -- that is, the manner and shape in which culture reproduces itself -- and the way we write our laws. In other countries, equally crucial issues are at stake.
For a sample of the issues and voices of this debate in the U.S., please visit the three links below:

·  E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know

·  Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"

·  Richard A. Shweder, Thinking Through Cultures

After reading through these very brief quotes, ask yourself: What is your own position in this debate about what elements are a part of the national culture? Perhaps you agree with Hirsch and you feel that a greater body of shared cultural knowledge among all U.S. peoples would enhance communication and intercultural understanding. Perhaps you agree with Hirsch but wonder why his list has room for numerous scenes from Shakespeare's plays but no room for a famous corrido like "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez," or why there are three references to a famous slaveowner like Thomas Jefferson but no reference at all to a famous slave like Phillis Wheatley; are the traditional elements of the majority culture to be the common elements of the national culture? Perhaps you would go even further, agreeing with Alice Walker that to understand our cultural tradtions we need to look not only for what was recognized as genius in the past but for the genius that was suppressed and had to assert itself in new, creative, and anonymous ways.
For many people, the what is at stake is the character of U.S. national identity. Hirsch argues that this identity needs to become less culturally fragmented; others, like Walker, argue that the national character gets its strength from cultural diversity, from the freedom (at home and in schools) to celebrate, honor, and reproduce different cultural traditions. Those who take this latter view follow the reasoning of Shweder, arguing that we need to accept that there are multiple valid cultural perspectives and that two such perspectives can both be valid even though they might contradict one another. For a fuller articulation of this argument, visit Engines for Education, an electronic publication which argues forcefully that Hirsch's "cultural literacy" project threatens the effectiveness and integrity of the U.S. educational system.
Recognize that the position you take in this debate about culture -- whatever position you take -- is a political one with implications about what we should value, what we should praise, what we should accept, what we should teach. When you reflect on this debate, when you contribute your own voice to the discussion, try to be aware of the implications that follow from your position. When you listen to the voices of others, try to listen with awareness, deciding for yourself what is at stake and how their positions relate to your own.

Simple explanation of culture:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/517173/how_the_power_of_culture_influences.html?cat=47

culture and the Physical Environment: Introduction

What do we mean when we say that culture is, in part, "a system of meanings" which governs the way a group of people understands its learned behaviors, its systems of organization and production, even its physical environment? Why do we say that culture resides in the meaning system and not in these things themselves?

In fact, the distinction is an important one. Learned culture is like a lens which filters all the information we perceive through our senses; sensory information passes through this lens of culture and is filtered, or interpreted, into a recognizable pattern that has meaning. Our perspectives in regard to the environment around us are a good example of this. The same physical object or environmental element, when perceived through different cultural filters as a symbol or sign, can have widely divergent meanings.


One way to think about this divergence is by extending our metaphor of the "filtering lens" to the image shown above. The image above is a straightforward digital scan of a photograph; the picture is easily recognizable as a mountain with grass in the immediate foreground and low clouds below the peaks. The images below were each derived from the image above; the mountain scene image was run through different filters on a computer program. These resulting images don't look at all alike, and one is barely interpretable as a "mountain scene" at all.


In the same way, the system of meanings which constitutes a culture can dramatically influence how we perceive and make sense of the physical world around us.

Press here to move on to the first (model) exhibit, an exploration of how this process of signification works using the environmental example of rain.

go back to the top of this page

go back to the Environment Gallery

go back to What Is Culture? page

In our baseline definition of culture, we have said that learned behaviors represent an essential component of culture.

Learned behavior in this sense can mean almost anything, from the way we dress to the way we speak to the food we choose to eat. Whenever we brush our teeth, cross our legs, send our parents' a birthday card, kiss someone, listen to music, or go out for recreation we are practicing learned behaviors which are a part of our culture. The learned behaviors which are a part of culture include all of the following (and a whole lot more!):

·  behavior toward/around specific people: family members, lover/spouse, teachers, friends, police officers, etc.

·  behavior in small social groups

·  behavior in large social groups

·  eating and food preparation

·  work/production

·  behavior involving the home: building, maintenance, cleaning