The Uses of Enchantment

Referring as specifically and frequently as possible to any of the weeks course materialthe books readings, additional reading, discussion boards, and videoswrite and submit an essay answering the following prompt.

Prompt Questions

Before responding to the prompt, please make sure you’ve read Bettelheim’s article from our week 2 readings:

Look back on what you and your peers have written in our this week. Choose two to three interpretations from your peers. At least one should be an interpretation that you yourself find compelling and agree with, and at least one should be one that youre not sure about or may want to reject.

(Its possible that all of them are compelling, or you want to reject everything; if thats the case, say so, but try to differentiate between your readings.)

After you’ve chosen your interpretations, analyze them in your response paper. Share why you agree and/or why you disagree with the interpretation your peer offered. Remember to use specific examples and quotations from the discussion board, Bettelheim, and your readings from this week!

As a conclusion, address the question that we began in the discussion:

• Who do you think should read the fairy tales youve written about?
• Are they good for adults, children, or both?
• Would they be better off changed or adapted, as many of the Cinderella stories have been?
• Did you learn something from them, or from interpreting them?

Assignment Expectations

• Your essay should be about 650-750 words; a little longer or shorter is fine.
• Your essay does not need to follow a rigid format. I am not looking for a certain number of paragraphs (although there should be more than one long block of text), a conventional introduction/body/conclusion format, a specific number of sentences in each paragraph, or a three-part thesis statement in the introduction. (If you dont know what Im referring to, thats finethis is for students who have had a specific notion of essay writing instilled in them, probably in high school.)
• You can, and maybe even should, use the first person, or I pronoun, throughout, since I am asking what you think!
• Unlike what you may expect from other courses, I WANT you to reuse, rework, repurpose, and/or revise what they wrote in the Discussion boards for their weekly response papers. That is, anything that you post is still yours to use. You may not take anything that another student has posted, but you are welcome to refer to other students ideas, or to any points I have made in a recording if you credit the person by name. If you feel as though what the other student wrote is crucial to your point, you may cite that students post in the same way that you would cite from the book: using quotation marks around any language taken word for word. You do not need to include any additional kinds of citations.
• My goal is to give you incentive to take your discussion posts seriously, since stronger postsespecially if they can be developed through peers replieswill lend themselves to stronger papers and should even make the papers easier to write, since youve already thought about the material and youre not starting them from scratch. The paper should reflect everything in the weeks unit: the textbook reading, the additional course materials, the lectures, and the discussions.
• Overall, your job is to answer the question as clearly and thoughtfully as possible, using the materials from the course as jumping off points, development, and evidence of any claims.