No Place Like Home Syllabus REVISED 1/13 – 1/21

Syllabus: January 2011

Http://blog.lrei.org/jbelton

Thursday 1/13

CLASS:                        Response # 3 due. Discuss excerpts from letters and The Warrior, A Mother’s Story…; share our poems and discuss interpretations of Telemachus and Penelope.

HOMEWORK:             Read and annotate The Odyssey, Book 5. Note: in Books 3 and 4 Telemachus visits King Nestor and King Menelaus to learn more about his father; the suitors make plans to ambush/kill Telemachus when he returns.

Friday 1/14

CLASS:                        Discuss Books 5: The first sight of the “hero,” Odysseus. Calypso; Odysseus as “he who gives and receives pain”.

HOMEWORK:             Read and annotate The Odyssey Book 7 (lines 94 – 181 & 266 – end) and Book 8 (lines 1-413 and 559-end). Note: In Book 6, Odysseus lands in Phaeacia and flirts with the king’s beautiful daughter, Nausicaa, who is washing her clothes on the shore.  Eventually, Nausicaa sends Odysseus to her father’s (Alcinous) palace in order to help him return to Ithaca. Prepare for Odyssey quiz on Thursday 1/20: identifying key terms and characters. Review notes and annotations.

Monday 1/17 – No School

Tuesday 1/18 – Unit 3: Staying in Combat Mode; The Spoils of War

CLASS:            Discuss The Odyssey, Books 7 & 8. Odysseus’s tactics, heroism, masculinity, achievement and failure.

HOMEWORK:            Read and annotate Chapter 3 of Odysseus in America: Pirate Raid: Staying in Combat Mode (pp 19-34) and Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home”. Prepare for Odyssey quiz on Thursday: identifying key terms and characters. Review notes and annotations.

Wednesday 1/19

CLASS:            Discuss “Staying in Combat Mode”, “Soldier’s Home” and connections to Odyssey.

HOMEWORK:             Read and annotate The Odyssey, Book 9 and pp. 46-50 from Odysseus in America. Prepare for Odyssey quiz on Thursday: identifying key terms and characters. Review notes and annotations.

Thursday 1/20

CLASS:            Odyssey quiz: identify key terms and characters; discuss Odysseus and the Cyclops;

HOMEWORK:            Read and annotate The Odyssey, Book 10 lines 1-60 and 146-631.

Friday 1/21: Unit 3 – Women at War

CLASS: Discuss Book 10; women and the soldier

HOMEWORK:            Read and annotate selected readings (handout)