For Thursday, 8/3

Tomorrow's assignment is to read the Roland Barthes essay I handed out today called "The Kitchen of Meaning" (also available here if you lose yours/missed class/ or whatever). Write a response to it on your blog of at least 2 paragraphs and be ready to discuss it tomorrow in class. You should read it at least 2-3 times, make notes, look up unfamiliar words, and underline points to ask about/things you don't fully understand. A few questions to guide your thinking are the following: what does Barthes mean by "reading" and is it reading in the same sense we usually think of the term? What types of "texts" is he talking about? Also, please look up your proposed paper topic(s) on Wikipedia, print out at least one of them, and bring it with you to class. We're going to do something with that. Finally, begin thinking about your proposed topic using some of the tools of analysis we covered today in class. (See the full presentation here on Scribd.)