Paper Three (due May 12)
Write a 6 pp. paper (due Monday, May 12, at 5pm in my department mailbox) in which you construct an original argument about any one or two texts from April onwards on the syllabus (i.e., Open City, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Animal’s People, or Never Let Me Go). This is an “open” essay assignment in that you will have both the freedom and responsibility of developing your own thesis about the text in question. Whichever text or texts you choose, make sure to ground your argument in detailed and patiently explained observations about it. You are welcome to engage ideas drawn from the supplementary readings on the syllabus, but I would like for you to make a primary text (or texts) the center of your discussion.
Paper Two (due April 4)
1) Allan Sekula’s Fish Story cultivates an edgy, antagonistic relationship to many of the assumptions shaping globalization studies. How would you describe the nature of Sekula’s disagreement with some existing ways of thinking about globalization (many of which are covered in Manfred Steger’s book)? In formulating your argument, try to show how the style, composition, subject matter, tone, and sequencing of his photos factor into the equation.
2) Write a paper exploring Jumpa Lahiri’s characterization of Mr. Kapasi in “Interpreter of Maladies.” How does Lahiri go about constructing a sense of his identity, his desires and aspirations, and his difference from other characters?
3) Being a novel, Pattern Recognition is obviously a written text rather than a visual one. And yet much of the novel dwells on the power of visual images to engross, pacify, confound, and sometimes terrorize their viewers. Write a paper discussing the role of the image and/or visual spectacle in Pattern Recognition. What are some of the memorable images in the novel? How would you describe the peculiar hold they exert on spectators? How does Gibson imagine the relationship between spectators and images (and indeed between spectators and other spectators)? Do these relationships stay the same or transform over the course of the novel?
4) Pattern Recognition places a female protagonist at the center of a complex global order also peopled by a resourceful female spy and a talented female filmmaking duo. Does this make Pattern Recognition a feminist novel? Write a paper exploring the novel’s construction of gendered identities. Does Gibson suggest that latter-day globalization has the power to liberate women from conventional gender roles? Or does the novel’s familiar association of women with mass consumption and the domestic romance with which the novel concludes qualify Gibson’s feminist credentials? How does Gibson go about constructing Cayce’s femininity?
5) Gibson routinely juxtaposes the expansion of capitalism with the eruption of violence, on a scale ranging from Cayce’s panic attacks to the explosion of the Claymore mine that kills Nora and Stella’s parents, from 9/11 to the Blitz, the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and beyond. How does Gibson deal with violence over the course of the novel? What relationship does Gibson imply between violence and the otherwise innocuous transactions and exchanges characterizing global capitalism?
6) A memorable image in Brick Lane is that of the “fallen woman.” Ali frequently reworks a situation where a woman—the ice-skater, Amma, the suicide jumper, Hasina, even Nazneen herself—appears to be suspended in a real or metaphorical downward plunge. Write a paper exploring some of these moments in the novel. What details go into the construction of these falling figures? Are these images of freedom and agency or of danger and peril?
7) Both Nazneen and Hasina appear to be deeply affected by their childhood experiences of village life. What kind of picture does Ali present of their childhood in Bangladesh? What are some of the events that Nazneen and Hasina remember? How does Ali go about constructing them? Since many of these memories (those about Mumtaz’s “jinni” in Ch. 17, for instance) appear to have nothing to do with the plot in contemporary Britain, what purpose do you think they serve in the narrative?
8) Write a paper on a topic of your own design, as long as it is related to the readings on the course syllabus from Feb. 25 onwards. Please consult me if you choose this option.
Paper 1
Write a 5-6 pp. essay (double-spaced) in response to one of the prompts below. Whichever option you choose, your goal should be to advance an argument based on careful observations of textual evidence drawn from the work in question. In order for your argument to be successful, this evidence must be carefully presented, carefully sifted through, and discussed in great depth. Due Friday, February 28 (at 5pm) in my department mailbox (Axinn 302).
1) “Isn’t it odd that that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal?” (31). Jamaica Kincaid’s relationship to the English language is marked by a profound ambivalence. On the one hand, she identifies it as an instrument of colonial power; on the other, as a way of articulating dissent against colonialism. Write a paper in which you call attention to Kincaid’s striking and often unusual manipulation of language—the stylistic tics and idiosyncrasies, parenthetical remarks, pronoun shifts, inconsistencies of perspective, abrupt lyrical turns, direct addresses to the reader, long meandering sentences, etc. Choosing any combination of these idiosyncrasies (or other ones), try to explain their purpose and function in Kincaid’s book. What is the relationship between Kincaid’s stylistic quirks and her arguments about Antigua, tourism, colonialism, and/or globalization?
2) Kincaid is fascinated with the idea of time. In A Small Place, she explores how time and its various units—namely “events”—help explain the impact of colonialism on Antiguan culture. Since these parts of Kincaid’s book are often dense and difficult, write an essay that walks through and attempts to make sense of her various treatments of time, events, and history. What does she mean by these terms? How does she use them? How and to what ends does Kincaid critique the way Antiguans think about the passage of time?
3) A Small Place is full of intriguing women characters, ranging from the “imperious and stuck up” head librarian and condescending Mill Reef Club heiress to the narrator’s charismatic mother. Write a paper exploring Kincaid’s representation of these women. What are some key features about these women and their relationship to the narrator? How does Kincaid go about constructing them symbolically and thematically? You should craft your argument to suit your own particular observations, but you may want to consider the relationship between white women and colonialism, the role of female royalty in the shaping of the narrator’s budding femininity, and the narrator’s complex representation of her mother’s defiance (“I may be a she, but I am a good she”).
4) Write a paper on a topic of your own design, on either A Small Place or “The Interpreter of Maladies” (in conjunction with any of the supplementary material that you think is appropriate). If you choose this option, please consult with me.