Sequence # 2

Michael Goeller , Rutgers University, Fall 2008

Assignment One (Jenkins)
Reading: Henry Jenkins, "Why Heather Can Write"

Based on your reading of Henry Jenkins, and using specific evidence from the text, address the following questions: Why do people tell stories and what role (or roles) does fiction play in their lives? In other words, what is the use and value of fictional stories?

In developing your essay, you may find the following questions helpful to think about (but please don't feel obliged to address any in your essay): How can fiction enlighten people? How can it keep people in the dark? Are there differences in the benefits derived from writing original fiction, writing fan fiction, reading fiction, reading non-fiction, and reading fan fiction? How might fiction aid self-determination, adaptation, freedom, democracy, community, or human values?

Based on your reading of Jenkins and Sacks in conversation, address the following questions: Why are some people better able than others to adapt to difficult circumstances, to overcome obstacles, or to take charge of shaping their beliefs and identities? How do they do it? What lessons are made available to us from reading Sacks and Jenkins about how people can use the power of the mind to adapt to their circumstances?

Assignment Three (Jenkins, Sacks, and Gilbert)
Reading: Henry Jenkins, "Why Heather Can Write,” Oliver Sacks, "The Mind's Eye,” and Daniel Gilbert, "Immune to Reality"

For this essay, I want you to try to use Gilbert's argument as a frame to re-examine cases discussed by Jenkins and Sacks, paying attention to the ways that Gilbert's views might complicate some of your earlier conclusions – and to the way that Jenkins and Sacks may challenge or complicate Gilbert's argument. How do we achieve happiness, and why are some people happier than others? What might Jenkins and Sacks – or the people they discuss – suggest? Do you think that Gilbert is right that we are "strangers to ourselves" because of the fictions we invent to explain and adapt to our circumstances? Or is all happiness ultimately a fiction or an illusion, and therefore there is no more authentic self than the fictional one we invent? Or is there another way of seeing it?

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