What do Sparkly Vampires Have to Do With It? Discussion Leading, Girls' Leadership and Twilight

Goals/Purpose:

This assignment asks students to take an active leadership role in the learning process by sharing information, interpretations, and puzzles with peers. As we read cultural texts and examine cultural representations of girls’ leadership within popular culture, it will be our responsibility to frame this discussion within the context of feminism, girl culture, and hegemonic masculinized and neoliberal formations of leadership.

Description of assignment:

During our two-week discussion of Twilight, each of you will research an outside source that significantly brings to the forefront the issues being presented within the text. You will then lead the class in a discussion of the issues, the research, and a set of passages/passage from the assigned text that you believe are important, confusing, disruptive, rich, or merit our attention for some reason.

So that we get variety, you all will post your chosen issue/article to my blog in the comments section on the Discussion Leading Posts (according to your day of discussion). You may not double up on any article or topic. I also encourage you to team up or to create a panel/theme for those students presenting on the same day. That is, you may choose to work as a group of five with five articles and five interwove topics that you lead discussion/group work on for that day. The goal, here, is for me to power shower and for you to take responsibility and lead the focus of our discussion on Twilight.

With that in mind, your topic should bear clearly and compellingly on the issues of this class and should always come back to the notion of girls’ leadership. You are not providing the class with a plot summary of your pages; instead, you must focus on one smaller aspect that you believe connects to the issues and themes we have discussed throughout the semester, such as: power sharing, the stages of leadership, transactional/transformational leadership, the “Can-Do” or “At Risk” girl, Ophelia, Save the Girl--Save the World, the tension of the focus on girlhood, consumerism as leadership, etc.

During class, you have five minutes!  After five minutes you will be cut off. You may talk for a few minutes and invite the class to discuss the idea with you, or you may talk for the whole time.  It’s up to you how to use your five minutes. You must also bring in the information you have researched but do not assume we have read this, you must inform, explain, and connect the dots for us.

Also, don't feel obligated to burden us with a mass of information. One idea is enough for 5 minutes.  Don’t be worried about having the “right” answer.  Sometimes questions (especially in a discussion) are more interesting than answers.

 Here are some ideas:

·       Pose an interpretive problem or conundrum. For example, how is Bella’s power being constructed and negotiated within different relationships? What types of images does Meyer use to construct her identity; do these images connect to images we have studied about the construction of girls’ leadership? Or, differently, within popular culture how are people discussing girls and this text—what does this mean for girls’ leadership?  Point us to passages that will help us to figure things out.

·       Offer an interpretation or argument.  Take a stand and show us with text why you’ve done so.  Invite the class to respond and engage in a dialogue that extends, complicates, or supports your stand.

What to do in preparation:

Remember that the goal is to discover ideas and enter into new perspectives.  Therefore, the most important means of preparation is to know the text well and to be conversant with the issues we discuss throughout the semester. And, many people are very heated in their response to Twilight and whether this text is “right” for girls—keep this in mind. What might this, in and of itself, mean for girls’ leadership. Personally, you may hate or love this text, but I want us to engage in the act of cultural criticism that is nuanced and does not simply replicate popular conversations of good/bad culture.

Beyond your understanding of the primary text, you must also complete outside research on the text. Therefore, on the day of your in-class discussion leading you will also turn in to me a 300-500 word critical article summary of a secondary source. The summary should identify the thesis of the source, how the author(s) engage(s) with other work surrounding the text, the claims the author(s) make about the text, and a final evaluation of the source. Please make sure to include the proper MLA citation for the source. *Unlike most of my assignments, you may use a popular source for this assignment because much of the work being done on this text happens in informal cyberspace. However, think about the authority of your speaker and weigh whether this is the kind of article we should be reading (your sister’s blog is probably not what we want, unless your sister is eleven and she writes about Twilight.)

So how do you go about writing an article summary?

Before you can write a summary on a source, you have to know the following:

• Full bibliographical information (author(s), title, place, and date of publication, page numbers, etc.)
• The author’s major points; make an outline of the author’s thesis and major areas of support; put the ideas into your own words; that way, you’ll be sure you fully understand the source, and you will be prepared to present the summary of the article
• Make sure to define any technical or theoretical terms (or in this case popular cultural slang) the source uses
• Condense the information, but make the ideas clear and concise
• Your opinion about the author’s viewpoints and conclusions
• Evaluate the evidence the author(s) presents. Determine if enough evidence was used to convince you; does the author speak in generalized or stereotypical ways; identify the author(s) assumptions about the text.

Criteria for Evaluation:

Presentation (50%)

·       know the texts well

·       demonstrate knowledge of course materials

·       choose an interesting, thoughtful, non-obvious topic that bears on issues relevant to the course/texts, especially for that week

·       narrow topics to one main idea or question

·       avoid rehashing material already covered or merely telling us what a text says

·       refer to specific passages as necessary

·       avoid reading to us from notes, but, of course, your jottings are permitted as prompts

·       use no more than 10 minutes

·       check with others presenting that same day to avoid embarrassing (and grade impacting!) overlap

Article Summary (50 %)

·       meets word count (500 words) and word count is clearly presented at the end of the summary

·       proper MLA bibliographic entry for source

·       Proper MLA style, including paraphrase and introductory author tags

·       Clearly identifies article’s thesis and explains the implications of the author(s) main idea

·       Clearly identifies how the author(s) engage(s) with other scholarly work surrounding the text

·        Provides a final critical evaluation of the source

Grades will be based on how well you meet the criteria described above.

Rules: If you are absent, these discussions cannot be made up, as that would disrupt the class. If you discover in advance that you have a conflict, a generous classmate might volunteer to trade with you.  

Places to get started: 
Seduced by Twilight: The Allure and Contradictory Messages of the Popular Saga 2011

They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill: The Psychological Meaning of Supernatural Monsters in Young Adult Fiction (Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature)2011

Bitten by Twilight (Mediated Youth) 2010

The Twilight Mystique: Critical Essays on the Novels and Films (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy) 2010

The Twilight Phenomenon: Forbidden Fruit or Thirst Quenching Fantasy 2009

Twilight and History (Wiley Pop Culture and History Series) 2010

Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series)2009

Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What's at Stake in a Post-Vampire World, 2011