Plan for the day
- Early Alert information
- I had to send “alerts” to your Advisors for poor performance. If your Test 1 was below a 70%, you got an alert. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the bureaucratic machine separates “Poor Performance” from “Attendance,” so you might get an alert combining the two. On the other hand, you might have alerts from multiple classes.
- If you haven’t don the “Introduce Yourself” post on Canvas, do it ASAP. Even though this was due last month, I’ll give you partial credit.
- Finish up The Time Machine
- Privileging Knowledge
- Devolution
- The Problem of Utopia
Products of the Culture from which They Come
One way to think about texts as products of the cultures from which they come, is to consider Wells’s original text alongside the 1960 and 2004 films. Establishing science seems to be the most important part of The 1960 film, but all of the texts–the novella, 1960 film, and 2004 film–try to show the Time Traveller’s motivation. His motivations are slightly different in each text, but each Time Traveller wants to transcend his place in time.
Questions to consider for the film clips:
- Representations of war or social collapse
- Preoccupation with death
- Problems with attempting to change the past
- Role of women in the world(s) of science
A Little More about H.G. Wells
Time permitting, I’d like to read you a bit more from the author bio introduction of my copy of The Time Machine. Wells was naughty and had an affair with another writer, Dame Rebecca West. In 1912, Rebecca West wrote a scathing critique of H.G. Wells’s novel Marriage. Wells invited her to his home to discuss her review, and they hit it off…
Timeline of Wells’s “formal” relationships:
- 1891–Married Isabel Mary Wells; divorced/separated 1894
- 1895–Married Amy Catherine Robbins; she died in 1927
- Fathered two sons, George and Frank
- 1909–Fathered Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves
- 1914–Fathered Anthony with novelist Rebecca West
- 1920–Affair with Margaret Sangar…not surprisingly, father no children with her
Next Class
Next class is our Friday Fretwell 402 meeting, so Ms. Rogers will have further discussion for you. To prepare, consider what you do when you interact with a culture or group unfamiliar to you:
Whenever we confront a culture or group unfamiliar to us, there can be some confusion. We often judge other cultures based on our own values, so, when we observe practices that aren’t familiar to us, we get confused. We might go out of our way to avoid other cultures or groups, or we might try to understand their approach and what they privilege.