Here, to complement yesterday’s post of a Cultural Literacy worksheet on sexism, is another Cultural Literacy worksheet, this one on the double standard of sexual behavior that is one of the most common manifestations of sexist hypocrisy.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
My first exposure to Feminism in the 1970s was in a class I took at my high school called “Sexism in America.” The teacher was excellent. At age 15, needless to say, I found it edifying. Also, I began then to see sexism as primarily a feminist issue, since the majority of sexists acts, in my view and in fact, are committed by men.
So I think it entirely appropriate to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on sexism as part of the array on Mark’s Text Terminal for Women’s History Month.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
On a Tuesday morning, here is a Cultural Literacy exercise on the muses, those goddesses of cultural inspiration from ancient Greece.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Pen name of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, Russian poet. In her youth Akhmatova was strongly influenced by both the French and Russian symbolists. In 1903, she met the poet Gumilev, who included one of her poems in the journal Sirius, which he published in Paris. Akhmatova and Gumilev were married in 1910, and were divorced in 1913. In 1911, Akhmatova became secretary of the Guild of Poets, organized by Gumilev and Gorodetsky.
Akhmatova’s first book, Vecher (Evening, 1912), is notable for its detail and clarity; her unmistakable feminine voice and her beautiful love lyrics won her attention from Russian readers. Also in 1912, the Acmeist literary group formed, and Akhmatova became one of its most prominent members. Her second book of poem, Chetki (Rosary, 1914), made her one of the most popular poetesses of her time. Beginning with her third book of verse, Belaya staya (The White Flock, 1917), Akhmatova’s poetic image changed from that of a contemporary poet who tells of an unhappy love to that of a poet who issues from the tradition of Russian classical verse. In the early 1920s, two more collections of Akhmatova’s poetry appeared—Porodozhnik (Plantain, 1921) and Anno Domini (1922). After that, it became difficult for Akhmatova to publish her poetry. The Soviet government disapproved of her apolitical themes, highly personal love lyrics, and religious motifs, consider her a poet alien to the new order. During this period, she wrote a number of scholarly articles and pieces about Pushkin. In connection with the mass repressions and those of her son and second husband, Akhmatova wrote the long poem ‘Requiem,‘ which was never published in full in Soviet Russia. From 1940 to 1965, Akhmatova worked on her long poem ‘Poema bez geroya’ (translated Poem Without a Hero, 1973), which is dedicated to the second decade of 20th-century Russian culture, the Petersburg Silver Age. In 1946, there began a new round of round of repressions and Akhmatova, along with [Mikhail] Zoshchenko, was the subject of harsh attacks by the Soviet cultural authorities.
With the onset of the thaw under Khrushchev, Akhmatova was again able to publish. During this period she was at the center of a group of young poets, including [Joseph] Brodsky, and was recognized for her contributions to Russian literary culture. Of particular interest are [Lidia] Chukovskaya’s multivolume reminiscences about Akhmatova, Zapiski ob Anna Akhmatova (1967; translated The Akhmatova Journals, 1994). Many translations of Akhmatova’s poetry exist, including The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1992), translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward.”
Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Monday has rolled around once again. I can’t think of a better way to start the week than to offer you this Cultural Literacy exercise on Toni Morrison.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Let’s get right to this week’s text, which is a reading on Maya Angelou. You might want to use, or adapt, this comprehension worksheet which accompanies the reading. Finally, here is an Everyday Edit exercise on Women’s History Month to attend any lesson you might want to contrive frome the first two documents. By the way, you can get lots more Everyday Edit worksheets from the generous folks who operate Education World.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Today begins Women’s History Month 2018. Like last month for Black History Month, every post on Mark’s Text Terminal during March will be related to the history of women and their myriad contributions to and achievements in our global civilization. So, you’ll see two posts a day, five days a week here until Saturday, March 31st. We are at a moment in women’s history in which peril and opportunity best describe women’s position in the United States. Peril because the President of the United States is evidently a militant misogynist, and the vice president is a theocrat right out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; opportunity because these politicians have provoked a backlash that, happily, may well be be their undoing.
Clearly, the Me Too Movement is an encouraging development. So too are the courageous women Time magazine has called the “Silence Breakers.” That all of this began because women somehow got the crazy idea that they should be able to attend a business meeting without looking at the exposed genitals of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein and his ilk seems ordinary enough to me, but it has been hailed as something of a miracle. Whatever: I thank them for their witness and testimony
That said, these are grim days. Voters in the United States have elected a man who is vain, prideful, ignorant, misogynistic, willing not only to boast to a dimwitted talk-show host (who himself is a a scion of the family that produced two of our least distinguished presidents) about sexually assaulting women on the strength of his “celebrity” status, but has also paid off a porn star to conceal the evidence of philandering from his third wife, who presents problems of her own, not the least of which is her–and her parents–dubious arrival in this country, which goes some length to expose the president’s hypocrisy on immigration.
(Aside: it seems to me, that Protestant Evangelicals who have overlooked Trump’s three marriages, and his payment to Stormy Daniels, and possibly a payment to a Playboy magazine model named Karen McDougal, have a lot of hypocrisy and moral blindness of their own to answer for.)
The overall misogyny of the Republican Party, coupled with its tacit encouragement of the craziest loose cannons in its ranks, has led to attacks on Planned Parenthood both in word and in deed. I’m a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood (and I think you should be too). By any measure to which I am prepared to stipulate, attacks on Planned Parenthood, a provider of healthcare for some of the most impoverished and vulnerable women in our nation, are, in my absolutely humility-free estimation, an attack on women everywhere.
For many years, I have naively considered a number of issues in human affairs essentially settled. For example, after the Enlightenment, I take as a given that the scientific method–you know, the controversial act of backing arguments with evidence to prove them–was the sine qua non of inquiry. Yet now on an almost daily basis, demagogues (and yes, they are mostly if not entirely Republicans) seek to undermine the legitimacy of science and the means by which it establishes facts. Similarly, after the the feminisms of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, I assumed that a woman’s right to control her destiny, particularly in terms of her own reproductive system, was settled.
Yet here we are, in 2018, still listening to garbage like this, uttered by people delightfully unencumbered by decency or shame. I could supply a lot more quotes from low-watt Republicans that diminish and disrespect women, but I’d be here all morning copying and pasting links–not to mention exposing my tender consciousness to some of the most aggressively stupid and vicious rhetoric currently on offer in the American marketplace of “ideas.” So I’ll take a hard pass on that.
So, let’s begin Women’s History Month 2018 with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Zora Neale Hurston, who serves as a perfect conjunction between Black History Month and Women’s History Month. Tomorrow I’ll post a more substantial Weekly Text, as I will on each Friday this month.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“American poet, novelist, critic, and dramatist. Cullen was one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Following the traditional verse forms based in part on the works of John Keats, Cullen is best remembered for his poems treating contemporary racial issues. His first volume of seventy-three poems, Color (1925), won the Harmon Award for high achievement in literature. Among his most notable poems in the volume are ‘The Shroud of Color,’ ‘Heritage,’ ‘Yet Do I Marvel,’ and ‘Incident.’ His other published collections include The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), Copper Sun (1927), The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) and The Medea and Some Poems (1935). He also edited Carolina Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (1929). His only novel, One Way to Heaven (1932), was praised for its accurate portrayal of Harlem life. The Lost Zoo (1940) and My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942) are children’s books. Two important works published after his death were On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (1947), and My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance (1991).
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here, on the final day of Black History Month 2018, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This is a decent introduction to the document itself, which certainly bears its own lesson.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
On the penultimate day of Black History Month 2018, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Paul Laurence Dunbar.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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