CptS 401 - Class Notes

Method for addressing ethical issues:

• Understand the issue
• Analyze the respone
• Act

Threefold test of action:

• Is it good?
• Is it right?
• Is it legal?

FA331 - Homework (Examples of Modernism)

Here are 1-2 samples of Modernism in art, broken down by style. Click on any image to view it in full size.

Formalism / Structuralism:

Composition #10

by Piet Mondrian (1939 - 1942)

Op Art:

Belvedere

by M.C. Escher (1958)

Balcony

by M.C. Escher (1945)

Abstract Expressionism:

The Windows

by John Ferren (1958)

Landscape-Table

by Arshile Gorky (1945)

Precisionism:

Turbine Shafts, Coulee Dam #2

by Ralston Crawford (1971)

Americana

by Charles Sheeler (1931)

Minimalism:

Contingent

by Eva Hesse (1969)

Abstract Painting #34

by Ad Reinhardt (1964)

Futurism:

Battle of Lights, Coney Island

by Joseph Stella (1913 - 1914)

Dynamism of an Automobile

by Luigi Russolo (1912-1913)

Cubism:

Large Nude

by Georges Braque (1908)

Bust of a Woman

by Pablo Picasso (1909)

Expressionism:

Street in Asgardstrand

by Edvard Munch (1902)

Starry Night

by Vincent Van Gogh (1889)

Pictorialism:

Grand Prix at Longchamp, After the Races

by Edward Steichen (1907)

Una Balleteuse

by Robert Demache (1900)

Fauvism:

Le Port d'Anvers (The Port at Antwerp)

by Georges Braque (1906)

Nude in a Wood (Study)

by Henri Matisse (1905)

Symbolism:

Baby

by Gustav Klimt (1917 - 1918)

The Fallen Angel

by Odilon Redon (1905)

Impressionism:

The White Church, Newport

by Frederick Childe Hassam (1901)

Starry Night Over the Rhone, Arles

by Vincent Van Gogh (1888)

ENGL373 Introduction

Hello all, I'm Maurice Smiley. I'm finishing up years of school by finally deciding on a major (DTC). I own a small business in Richland, have a wonderful wife and 3 awesome kids. My oldest is enrolled at CBC and we have contests to see who has the highest GPA. I haven't been beat yet ;-)

I'm experimenting this semester by attempting to use the blog to keep track of class notes and journal all my readings from various classes. All told, I think I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ books to read this semester from English and Humanties alone. I'm also going to try and use it to post homework assignments (where applicable) so that I make the most use of this medium.

We'll see what happens.

BTW Julie, sorry for not having posted this before 10:00am this morning... I won't make this a habit, I promise.

ENGL373 - Lecture Notes

Colonialism - tribes and tribal authorities were used to control territories and their constituent populations, even when the authorities were clearly colonial puppets and the tribes themselves ossified almost beyond precolonial recognition.

Postcolonialism (PoCo)- Thus reminds us that colonialism remade the modern world and, by shaping the reactions against it, continues to do so.

"Colonial histories - the historical relations of domination between East and West - produced, and in turn were produced by, a range of discourses in which the colonial 'other' was essentialized, inferiorized, feminized, and ultimately naturalized as the always already colonized"

The Other - The non-self and the non-us. Who were ARE NOT. There is fear about what the other might do to us, about whether we could survice such an encounter with the unknown.

"There is nothing man fears more, than the touch of the unknown."

Globalization - refers to the ways in which individual and their cultures merge into a single, "global," society and attempt to function together.

FA331 - Modernism Lecture

Cezanne - Founder of Modernism

Form - All of the elements of a work of art independent of their meaning. Formal elements are primary features which are not a matter of semantic significance -- including color, dimensions, line, mass, medium, scale, shape, space, texture, value; and the principles of design under which they are placed -- including balance, contrast, dominance, harmony, movement, proportion, proximity, rhythm, similarity, unity, and variety.

Clement Greenburg - Abstract Expressionism

If art is any good, it can't be picked apart... big proponent of Pollack's art.

Beat Generation (1950's) - A group of American youth, writers and artists in the 1950s who experimented with communal living, a nomadic lifestyle, and Eastern philosophy. Often associated with jazz music, the improvisational works by authors such as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg challenged traditional forms of literature. Note: This is not a traditional “school” of Modernism, but one of its “creations.”

*** Homework Due Tues 9/1 *** - Find one or two works of art from each of the periods and attach them to an email (zip them up). Lable them with the "movement / artist / time/date"

HUM450 - Jankiel Wiernik - "One Year in Treblinka"

Wiernik was a Jew who was sent to the Treblinka death camp and managed to stay alive by being valuable as a carpenter. He provides great insight into the happenings and goings on inside the camp and talks about the horrific ways the Jews were treated.

He talks about how the Jews were killed immediately if they became sick, and the only Jews not killed were those who were put to work dragging corpses from the gas chamber to the trenches. After awhile, the bodies were getting to hard to dispose of. This led the Germans to engineer huge pyres and began digging up the bodies in the trenches so they could be cremated and thrown onto the fires. He describes in great detail the horror and stench associated with digging up the bodies and what it looks like to watch corpses burn. He even noted that women burn better than men and that pregnant women's belly would pop open and you could see the baby burning inside. Absolutely awful!!!

While working at the camp, Wiernik describes the relationship between the Hungarian guards and the Germans. The Hungarians are described as virtual retards who drank in excess. The Hungarians often stole anything they could and would be at odds with the Germans over it. The Jews were caught in the middle. If they didn't do what the Hungarians wanted, they were killed, however, if they were caught stealing for the Hungarians by the Germans, they would be killed too.

Eventually, Wiernik and the other surviving workers were able to plan an escape whereby he was able to make it 5 miles and into the woods.

HUM450 - One Day in Josefow: Initiation to Mass Murder - Christopher Browning

Browning examines the testimony of police officers (middle aged men who were recruited for police service) who were ordered to round up and kill all of the women and children in the town of Josefow, Poland. The police officers were ordered to go into the town and round up all of the Jews in the town. The male Jews were to be sent off to a labor camp and the women and children were to be shot just outside of town in the woods.

The commander, Major Trapp offered his men several opportunities to not participate without any fear of being punished. While a few men took him up on the offer, most of the men didn'tt. The men who didn't participate were given alternate duties, such as escorting the male jews to the labor camp or were reassigned to other units to fight the Polish partisans.

Of the men who carried out these orders, most admitted years later that they didn't want to be seen as weak in front of their comrades. Others admit that is was wrong, but were "cowards" by not doing the right thing and not participating in the first place. It's not clear after reading this if there is really any answer as to why these men did this, other than peer pressure, cowardice, and anti-semitism.

HUM450 - Kulmhof (Chelmno) Deathcamp

Written by Wiernik, these memoirs relate the events from actual guards who were assigned to the Kulmhof deathcamp. Wiernik described having 2 "camps."

The first was called the "castle" which was a building on the outskirts of town. In this building, the Jews were told that they were going to be deloused and that they would be showered and then sent to a work camp. They were stripped of their clothing and herded like cattle into "gas" vans. Once the Jews were in loaded up in the van, the driver of the van would hook up the exhaust pipe to the van and start the engine. This would suffocate the Jews in the van. As soon as it looked like there were no survivors, the van was driven to the second camp called "camp in the wood" where the bodies were dumped into mass graves.

Of the stories told by the guards, the vast majority stated that they were acting on orders directly from the "fuhrer" himself and that they believed all of the propoganda they were told. That is, that the Jews were boils and a plague to their society and they were not human. Only one guard indicated that it was horrific and refused to participate.