Updated March 6:

Hello all,

Can you believe it is the end of the quarter already?! Here is the information regarding the final paper, readings, and discussion topics. As always, please post one question to the message board and please respond to another students’ query. Also, please feel free to bring yummy food for our final class viewing and discussion!

-Amy, Kathleen and Jen

WRITING ASSIGNMENT:

Both Stuart Hall (in “Encoding/Decoding”) and Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy (editors of Athena’s Daughters) address the idea of “participating in the creation of meaning.” Drawing on this concept (as well as Joss Whedon’s idea of “Bring your own Subtext,” analyze a specific episode or character. You must incorporate and cite at least three of the readings we used in class, and at least ONE must be strictly academic (i.e. De Beauvoir, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Campbell, Wehr, etc...).

This paper should be 3-5 pages in length and is due by Tuesday March 16. Please have your paper turned into Amy Peloff BY 5 p.m.!!! If you need to send it via email attachment that is fine. Please send it to Amy.

There were many great ideas suggested in class for possible paper topics. Some are:

• “Once More With Feeling” and the concept of the wish statement
• Otherness and Language
• The Human Element: Xander as Everyman
• Evolution of Human Nature: Perspectives on Good and Evil
• Spike's Ambiguous Morality
• The Racial Other
• Vampire as Other
• Inter-textuality in/of the Buffyverse
• A Comparison of the Traditional Hero vs. the “Modern” Hero
• A comprehensive analysis of one dream from the episode, “Restless”
• Is BTVS conscious television?

FINAL TOPIC: Readings and questions to think about

Conclusion:
Week 10: Breaking the Heroic Mold
Episode: Chosen (May 20, 2003) The final episode.

Readings:

• Selections from “Sound of a Silver Horn” by Dr. Kate Noble, handed out in class on Thursday, March 4th. Introduction, Chapter One, and Chapter Six
  • Revisit Joseph Campbell’s model for the Hero. How does Kate's work effect your relationship with that model? Does it fit with the model we discussed in class during Week 2, when watching “Prophecy Girl” (Linear=traditional, Cyclic=modern or feminine)? Does she describe a female hero that works for you? How would you describe a hero, of any gender? Why study heroes at all?
• CR: Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy, “Intro to Athena’s Daughters”
• CR: Frances Early, “The Female Just Warrior Re-Imagined: From Boudicca to Buffy” From Athena’s Daughters (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003)

Highly Recommended Readings:

• CR: Selections from The Feminist Companion to Mythology (London: Pandora Press, 1992)
  • Jane Caputi, “On Psychic Activism: Feminist Mythmaking”
  • Diane Purkiss, “Women’s Rewriting of Myth”

Addresses how women write and re-write myths. What are the possibilities, goals, motives, obstructions, dangers?

On love and anger:

What role do emotions play in the female hero story? Is embracing “love” empowering or does it reproduce a feminine stereotype? What does it mean that many, if not most female heroes are created and written by men? If you believe that men are an important part of feminism, how does this belief complicate your thinking? Compare Wonder Woman (as written on by Trina Robbins, included in the CR) and Buffy.

• CR: Elyce Rae Helford, “My Emotions give me power” Pg 18-34, Fighting the Forces
• CR: Trina Robbins, “Chapter 1,” The Great Woman Super Heroes.
• CR: “Warrior Women on Screen” By Douglas Eby from http://www.talentdevelop.com/wwos.html
• CR: Zoe-Jane Playden, “What you are, what’s to come: Feminisms, citizenship and the divine” Pg 120-147 From Reading the Vampire Slayer