HOW DOES THE PAST IMPACT IDENTITY?

Listen to Fatmire Feka's story. I am so inspired by her ability to forgive, to move beyond understandable rage against the horrors she has seen. Consider how her identity has been shaped by the events of her past but how she transformed these events into becoming an 'upstander', an activist for peace and human rights.

Fatmire's 2009 Speech from The Eagle Down Foundation on Vimeo.

WHAT SHAPES OUR IDENTITY?

How do we view ourselves? What shapes our identity?

How does how we define ourselves affect how others see us?
How do others perceptions affect they way we see/define ourselves?
How do these perceptions affect the relationships we have in society?
How does our identity change over time, within certain conditions?
Watch the video of Jesus Colon. How does Colon see himself? How might others describe him?
Create an identity chart for him and compare it to your own identity chart to consider the influences on our sense of self, our identity.

Image: Pulcinella from Commedia Del Arte, illustrated by Luigi Serafini

Jesús Colón describes labels that others have placed on him. Use the following questions to write a response on your blog.

• What labels does he place on the groups to which he belongs? on other groups?
• How did those labels shape the way he perceived his choices? the decision he made?
• Why does he have regrets? Did he make the right choice?
• Would your answer be different if he were a white American?
• Who is the victim in this story–Colón, the woman, or the larger society?

from Facing History,Facing Ourselves:Choosing to Participate

What Do We Do with a Variation?

What do we do with a difference?
Do we stand and discuss its oddity
or do we ignore it?
Do we shut our eyes to it
or poke it with a stick?
Do we clobber it to death?
Do we move around it in rage
and enlist the rage of others?
Do we will it to go away?
Do we look at it in awe
or purely in wonderment?
Do we work for it to disappear?
Do we pass it stealthily
Or change route away from it?
Do we will it to become like ourselves?
What do we do with a difference?
Do we communicate to it,
let application acknowledge it
for barriers to fall down?
James Berry

What connections do you make with this poem, Jesus Colon's story and 'The Island' by Armin Greder?

DBQ PREPARATION

After reading, viewing and discussing the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, the time has come to test your interpretative skills. In order to prepare for the 'dreaded test', you should:
Re-read the myth (do this here)

Read an older version of this myth below:

But Daedalus constructed wings for himself and his son, and enjoined his son, when he took to flight, neither to fly high, lest the glue should melt in the sun and the wings should drop off, nor to fly near the sea, lest the pinions should be detached by the damp.

[E.1.13] But the infatuated Icarus, disregarding his father's injunctions, soared ever higher, till, the glue melting, he fell into the sea called after him Icarian, and perished.15 But Daedalus made his way safely to Camicus in Sicily.

[E.1.14] And Minos pursued Daedalus, and in every country that he searched he carried a spiral shell and promised to give a great reward to him who should pass a thread through the shell, believing that by that means he should discover Daedalus. And having come to Camicus in Sicily, to the court of Cocalus, with whom Daedalus was concealed, he showed the spiral shell. Cocalus took it, and promised to thread it, and gave it to Daedalus;

[E.1.15] and Daedalus fastened a thread to an ant, and, having bored a hole in the spiral shell, allowed the ant to pass through it. But when Minos found the thread passed through the shell, he perceived that Daedalus was with Cocalus, and at once demanded his surrender.16 Cocalus promised to surrender him, and made an entertainment for Minos; but after his bath Minos was undone by the daughters of Cocalus; some say, however, that he died through being drenched with boiling water.

from Apollodorus Epitome: translated by .JG. Fraser

The Painting The Fall of Icarus is by Pieter Bruegel (about 1525-69), usually known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder to distinguish him from his son, was the first in a family of Flemish painters. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, generally considered the greatest Flemish painter of the 16th century, is by far the most important member of the family. He was probably born in Breda in the Duchy of Brabant, now in The Netherlands. His paintings, including his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, stress the absurd and vulgar, yet are full of zest and fine detail. They also expose human weaknesses and follies.
Source: www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/

LITERARY TEXT - Poem Icarus, by Christine Hemp

Icarus

It was his idea, this flying thing.
We collected feathers at night, stuffing
our pockets with mourning dove down. By day,
we'd weave and glue them with the wax
I stole after we'd shooed the bees away.

Oh, how it felt, finally, to blow off Crete
leaving a labyrinth of dead-ends:
my clumsiness with figures, father's calm
impatience, cool logic, interminable devising.
The sea wind touched my face like balm.

He thought I'd tag along as usual,
in the wake of his careful scheme
bound by the string connecting father and son,
invisible thread I tried for years to untie.
I ached to be a good-for-something on my own.

I didn't know I'd get drunk with the heat,
flying high, too much a son to return.
Poor Daedalus, his mouth an O below,
his hands outstretched to catch the rain
of wax. He still doesn't know.

My wings fell, yes - I saw him hover
over the tiny splash - but by then I'd been
swallowed into love's eye, the light I've come to see
as home, drowning in the yes, this swirling
white-hot where night will never find me.

And now when my father wakes
each morning, his bones still sore
from his one-time flight, his confidence undone
because the master plan fell through,
he rises to a light he never knew, his son.

ABOUT CHRISTINE HEMP: Hemp's poetry and essays are heard on NPR's Morning Edition and her work is published widely. She has worked with such groups as Los Alamos Laboratory scientists, Harvard and University of Washington students, National Park Rangers, corporate lawyers, and Native American tribes, as well as the U.S. Navy. She has also has broken new ground in England and the U.S. by uniting youth offenders and police officers, using writing as a tool for crime prevention. Read more on her website: http://www.christinehemp.com/index.html

YOUR WRITTEN RESPONSE
In part B you will be asked to write a paragraph about the following:

It has been said that this myth deals with the following themes: "captivity and escape, ingenuity and creativity, flight and fall, success and failure" (J.E.Nyenhuis 2003). Select one pair of themes and discuss how well they fit the idea of a journey for either Daedalus or Icarus.



You can also view the videos below as more sources of the myth:




Source: Jim Henson's The Storyteller - Greek Myths, Sony Pictures (2006)

Also look at these interesting interpretations:

SOCRATES

In David's painting, Socrates continues to speak while at the same time stretching his hand out to accept the cup of poisonous hemlock. This emphasizes his commitment to his principles.Around him others faint, collapse or cry in distress contrasting the calmness and dignity Socrates shows in the face of death. His wife is seen only in the distance leaving the prison. Plato, his student and later a great philosopher, stands the end of the bed while Crito, grasps his master's leg. It is Socrates alone who is in quiet composed control willing to die for what he believes is right.

· "Know thyself."

· "The only thing I know is that I know nothing."

· "Ignorance is the only evil."

We know about Socrates from others, in particular Plato. Plato's writing describes Socrates's most famous philosophical ideas: 'the necessity of doing what one thinks is right even in the face of universal opposition, and the need to pursue knowledge even when opposed'(Nails, D).

Socrates has been admired and may try to be emulate(imitate) him which according to Nails (2010) is 'strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods'. Yet many found him strange.

What was odd was that he did not work for money, nor take part in state affairs. He accepted poverty and, even though many of the young men followed him and imitated him, Socrates steadfastly insisted he was not a teacher and refused all his life to take money for what he did. 'The strangeness of this behavior is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students'. Because Socrates did not just give out information and expect others to passively, unquestioningly receive it , he claimed that he absolutely was no teacher. He expected people to think and reason. He saw his role as helping others recognize for themselves what is real, true, and good.

Socrates also had a higher opinion of women than many others of the time.He talked of “men and women,” “priests and priestesses,” and spoke of foreign women as his teachers: Aspasia of Miletus, Pericles's partner.

Read more about Socrates at:

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/philosophy/socrates.htmHistory for Kids

Philosophy Slam

MARBLE BATTLES

The British Museum and the Greek government have been in a battle for many years over the Elgin marbles- the sections of marble frieze and statues taken from Greece in the 19th century by Lord Elgin to London and housed in the British museum. Today however, a new museum has been built in Athens, Greece near the Acropolis. The museum has asked for the return of the marbles to their homeland claiming that Greece now is adequately able to store and care for these antiquities. The trustees of the British museum still refuse to return the marbles.

What do you think?
View the following videos and follow the links to determine your position.
Where do these marbles belong? ' Is it better or worse to have them scattered through the world? Are they the possession of those who live in the place where they were first made? Or are they the possession of everyone? The likelihood is that we will be debating these issues for many years to come.'(Mary Beard, 2002)






British Museum position

Video on Elgin marbles

Press statement concerning Museum position

Lord Elgin : Saviour or Vandal?

BATTLE OF SALAMIS

As we continue watching the DVD The Greeks, its helpful to look at a map to understand the Battle of Salamis and the strategy the wily Themistocles used. Read Mike Anderson's blog entry concerning the battle and examine the map.

What's in A Name?

Think about the name Phoenix in Alan Gibbon's 'Shadow of the Minotaur'. Authors can be very deliberate in their naming of characters. Note the allusion to the myth which many of you have picked up from The Harry Potter book 'Order of the Phoenix'. Follow the links and read the myths of the phoenix and consider the number of cultures this bird occurs in. Why might this idea recur throughout time and culture? How do the associations and symbolism of the phoenix link with the character Phoenix? what are the qualities of the phoenix? What is being suggested here in Shadow of the Minotaur with this name?
Phoenix myths:
The Legend of the Phoenix
Rise of the Phoenix