Modern Day Slavery

Many Americans are unaware of the prevalence of modern day slavery. In fact, 27 million people are enslaved around the world today. There are numerous TEDtalks available that hope to shed light on these dark atrocities. Here is one from a photographer that travels the world, sharing these images often ignored in our media and absent from our lives. But absent from our lives does not mean absent from our world.

How do we end slavery? Here's the other video I mentioned in class.

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Flannery O'Connor Analysis on "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Grace and Theology: A Necessary Discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Heather Chandler D.H. Lawrence asserts in his Studies in Classic American Literature, that “the proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it” (8). While this approach is helpful and necessary in many works of literature, it is both misleading and damaging to do so with Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A popular new way of interpreting her work is to look through a secular lens, but separating her Catholic beliefs and allusions reduces her work to a simplistic ambiguous tale, molded to suit our own postmodern desires; and, this is essentially as misguided as looking at Da Vinci’s Last Supper and refusing to note its religious connotations. Instead, we should look at the larger picture,...

Tiny House Living and Transcendentalism

This week's class will explore transcendentalism, Emerson, and Thoreau. But like most of the topics we've studied so far, we can find modern connections. Transcendentalism was a religious movement that grew out of Romanticism between 1836-1860. We can define it as a spiritual, philosophical, literary movement with ties to the Unitarian Church around Boston. Like Romanticism, this movement emphasized individual rights and inspiration, the latter, especially within nature. Transcendentalists believed that individuals can discover truth for themselves, rather than learning it through tradition. It differs from Romanticism in that it focused on God. Transcendentalists believed that God was everywhere and could be discovered through intuition and that all people have a divine inner light. By accessing this light or intuition, they can transcend the ordinary and experience the spiritual. The five tenets of Transcendentalism: 1. Nonconformity 2. Self-Reliance 3. Importanc...

September 12th Review and Homework

Sorry for the late post. I wanted to have this up last night, but I host a writing group once a month. Yes, I am still working on my own writing. Yesterday, you all read The Declaration of Independence ! That's pretty awesome, right? I think that already puts you above most of the population. And we tackled Phillis Wheatley's "Providence," which is certainly no easy task. Not only are you dabbling in some of America's greatest works, you are learning some very important analysis skills. This is something you will use your entire life! Even if you do not choose to read lots of great literature when you leave my class, (but I hope to convince you otherwise), you will be surrounded by music, advertisements, arguments, and political debates. You must learn to analyze those messages around you in a very critical way. What allusions are they making? Why is that significant? How does it influence their message? Or your stance? We are going to continue working on our ...

Harper's Academy U.S. History and American Literature

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