Below are the prompts for the take home part of the midterm. Choose only one prompt. The essay will be due on Monday, July 27.
1. Discuss the way that childhood is depicted in up to three of our works. What does the author seem to assume about childhood, parents, and the family? What role does class and/or gender play? How do depictions of childhood change from culture to culture or genre to genre? Feel free to talk about your own assumptions about childhood.
2. One theme that we've talked about this session is Imperialism or Colonialism and Post-Colonialism. Choose up to three works that we have read so far, and examine how each fits--or doesn't fit into this focus. Do any works complicate this focus? Consider that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is writing about a flourishing Ottoman Empire and that The Story of the Stone is set during the last dynasty of the Chinese Empire. Raise the Red Lantern and "Stale Mates" are set in the aftermath of empire.
3. Discuss the role that masculinity and/or femininity play in up to three of the works we've read so far. Consider the role that history, culture, and even genre play in defining what appropriate masculinity and femininity are. Also, consider your viewpoint as a 21st century man or woman.
4. Consider the novel as a genre. What do our novels (Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, The Story of the Stone) have in common? How are they different? Feel free to bring in other novels that you have read in the past. How does the novel change from time period to time period? How does it change from culture to culture? Also, how are novels different from autobiographies like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?
5. Discuss life writing as a genre of literature. Given your definition of literature, how is lifewriting (not only autobiographies and memoirs but also biographies, letters, and diaries) literature? How is it NOT literature? Could life writing be a more personal form of history? Consider The Turkish Embassy Letters, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as your main examples, but feel free to include other examples from your reading (The Diary of Anne Frank, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Black Elk Speaks, Into the Wild).
6. Discuss film as a genre of literature. Given your definition of literature, how is film literature? How is it NOT literature? If you were to teach a film and literature course, which films would you include? Why? In this type of course, is it more important for a film to be a groundbreaking film (like Apocalypse Now) or for a film to be based on an important work of literature (like Jane Eyre or David Copperfield or Things Fall Apart)? Why?
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