Our Reading Assignments - a Few Observations

Current Logophiles students have just SOFTLY started to wake up to the reality of Application Works. Like every previous year, there is a general lack of Cultural Exposure and hardly any reading at all beyond Textbook acquaintance. Naveen, Rafi, Rufiyat, Adiba, Ramishat, Sanjeeda, and Tahsin - all of you are required to look through this blog-post very carefully and send me your reading updates. Samira, Samrin, and Ashfi are also requested to follow this plan.

Since, I am always prepared for this, there is a whole page dedicated to what the students shall do part of 'initiation process' - the page can be found on the BANNER - Books Film Theatre. In the past THREE weeks I had been trying to put this thing straight - that NOTHING can replace ones's preparedness for application to US colleges. In the same time we have started a "Poetry Week" and already made a few names a part of our class discussion. One can see a list of poets' names hanging from the inside part of the door - Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Keats, Elizabeth Bishop and the inevitable Eliot-Baudelaire-Poe trinity. 

Interestingly, we have done a little in depth about Milton and the Political world of 17th Century England and tried to connect Milton's Protestant work-philosophy with the advent of Industrial Age. We have also tried to link this new approach to 'world at large' with Max Webber's concept of how progress can be achieved by a concerted investment in "Culture". 

Marx is currently a very rudimentary part of our discussion. In fact, I have NOT contributed anything beyond pointing to Marx's photograph in the Northern-wall of our classroom. I am yet to bring in the issues of Marx's discussion of political ideology through a rough ride with Manifesto of Communist Party and a very superficial discussion of Thomas Picketty's "Capital in 20th Century".

I have also made them read through a few philosophical figures and a couple of schools - Bertrand Russell, Stoicism, Atheodore Adorno, and a very flimsy mention of Foucault. Of the fictions, I have mentioned Moby Dick, Hotel Du Lac, Metamorphosis, The Stranger, and My Antonia. I have also introduced Carl Popper and Leo Strauss to Naveen and to Sanjeeda. Both sent me their own thoughts on these seminal writers. I hope to discuss both these authors in a greater length in our next class. 

I have also been giving HIGHEST emphasis on writing 2 (two) research papers - one General and one Technical research paper.