dialogue journal

For each day that you have a reading assignment due, you will create a dialogue journal entry. Choose a passage from the text that stood out to you as you read, copy that text at the top of your entry, and then write 200-300 words in response. Dialogue Journal entries should be completed and submitted one hour before class begins. Submissions after class discussion will not receive credit.

            Each completed dialogue journal entry is worth 5 points, and you should plan to complete 20 of them over the course of the semester for a total of 100 points.

            You must take two of your dialogue journal entries, edit them to correct any errors, and post them on the course blog (Links to an external site.) (instructions for posting will be on Canvas) for 10 additional points each. Don’t wait for the end of the semester.

Example:

Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero can be summed up like this (Links to an external site.): "Heroes exist in a world is considered ordinary or uneventful by those who live there. Often the heroes are considered odd by those in the ordinary world and possess some ability or characteristic that makes them feel out-of-place."

I like this definition because it doe not emphasize that the hero is stronger or smarter or bigger or more beautiful than everyone else, but that the hero is somehow odd. The source of the oddness might be positive superlative characteristics, but it also might be superlative characteristics that are negative or seemingly useless until the hero puts them to work to save the ordinary world. 

With this definition of oddness, the hero is a sort of every-nerd, a misfit who exists at the edge. At-the-edge is a feeling most people feel at some time in their lives, so the hero is accessible to the readers/viewers of the text.

Super Hero litruture class

Ward, Mark and Alex Ross. Kingdom Come. Burbank, CA: DC Comics, 2008.

LoCicero, Don. Superheroes and Gods: A Comparative Study from Babylonia to Batman.  London: McFarland Publishers, 2007