On Longing Assignment Guidelines

In Class

• Participate in an in-class discussion. Be prepared to take notes in class. I will read aloud excerpts from the book, On Longing by Susan Stewart.  No handouts or links given for this portion of the assignment.  Must be present in class to listen to reading, take notes and discuss.
• As a class we will discuss the the ideas and history behind mementos/souvenirs. 

Homework:

• Personally respond to each of the five sentences I read aloud in class. 
• Personal response to include a personal image for each sentence I read aloud
•  and a brief statement about why you chose the image. 
• Select a personal photo that you think connects with the each sentence. I suggest selecting images from your Instagram account (if you have one). Videos are also acceptable. 
• All images must be your own personal images that have already been taken. Do not take new images for this assignment. 
• Each sentence to have a different personal photo. 
• How to post on the blog:
• Under each personal image, place the sentence in quotations.  
• After the sentence, the name of book and author appears. On Longing by Susan Stewart. Title of book will always be in italics. 
• Next is your brief statement why you chose the image. 
• Tag the post "Memento". 
• Student Examples:
• See student examples. Note, some sentences may be different as I do not assign the same five sentences every semester.     http://foundations3ddesign.blogspot.com/search/label/On%20Longing%20Student%20Work

"Miniature books, eighteenth-century novels, Tom Thumb weddings, tall tales, and objects of 

tourism and nostalgia: this diverse group of cultural forms is the subject of On Longing, a fascinating analysis of the ways in whicoks, eighteenth-century novels, Tom Thumb weddings, tall tales, and objects of tourism and nostalgia: thish everyday objects are narrated to animate or realize certain versions of the world. Originally published in 1984 (Johns Hopkins University Press), and now available in paperback for the first time, this highly original book draws on insights from semiotics and from psychoanalytic, feminist, and marxist criticism. Addressing the relations of language to experience, the body to scale, and narratives to objects, Susan Stewart looks at the "miniature" as a metaphor for interiority and at the "gigantic" as an exaggeration of aspects of the exterior. In the final part of her essay Stewart examines the ways in which the "souvenir" and the "collection" are objects mediating experience in time and space."

Susan Stewart, Professor of English at Temple University, 

is the author of Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation and Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature. -source is Duke Press.  Link here.