Option One:
Produce an argumentative essay that makes a specific claim regarding one or more ideological positions produced in your selected stories. You may choose your own topic – developed out of lectures, class discussions and your own reading – for the essay and provide an argument to support the claim you deliver in your thesis statement.
Option Two
This includes the components of option one with the added explicit focus of one or more of the literary theories mentioned in the relevant chapter in your manual to help shape, guide and focus your thesis and argument. For this option, your secondary sources should carry you beyond the basic theory summaries provided in your manual. You should not be quoting from your manual here. Do some research, find out more about your selected theoretical method and/or theorists themselves and develop an argument regarding how your story illustrates or generates commentaries on the concepts you have identified. Here you could also look for literary criticism influenced by your theoretical focus. Productive directions here include one, or a mixture of more than one, of the following: Feminist and gender criticism, Queer Theory, Marxist Theory, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial theory, Historical or New Historicism, Psychological Theories, Reader-Response Theory, or Poststructuralism and Deconstruction. I suggest that you work with a critical essay that you can see utilizes one or more of the theories listed above. Note: These are general topics and your thesis statement would make a claim regarding a specific commentary on a particular topic.
Option Three: Cultural Studies
Select one story from your options and another narrative or text (novel, graphic novel, poem, advertisement, film, t.v. show, current event, play, song, art exhibit, dance performance etc.) that focuses on similar issues and generates a specific thematic commentary that connects with your reading of the thematic commentary that your selected short story makes. Then develop a comparison essay that demonstrates how your selected story helps to illuminate or extend your critical understanding of the subject you identify in the cultural text or event that you have identified. This essay should begin with your argument regarding the course text and then shift to the claim and argument regarding the second cultural text. Remember, the list of what can function as a cultural text is a long one and the suggested guideline here is that it is a text, a mixture of language and visual/auditory representation that provides an illustration and exploration of a concept or thematic commentary that you have identified in your reading of a course text. You can also use different theories to focus your engagement here. For example, how does your text critically engage an issue you have spotted in a film, an advertisement, or in a current event?
Option Four: Reader-Response
Select your short story, and an example drawn from your own experience and develop a comparison essay that demonstrates how the course text helps to extend and expand you’re your critical engagement with a significant aspect of your own experience. This essay should begin with your argument regarding the course text and then shift to the claim and argument regarding your experience. Remember, the list of what can function as an experience is a long one and the suggested guideline here is that it provides an illustration and exploration of a concept or thematic commentary that you have identified in your reading of a course text. You need to be able to use evidence (description of events and quotation of speakers) from your own experience and provide effective explication of this evidence to support your claims. You can also use different theories to focus your engagement.
Option Five: Short Story and Analysis
Note: For this option your story will be scored out of 5, and your analytical section will be scored out of 10 for a total score out of 15.
Focus on a specific thematic commentary developed in your selected short story and then develop your own short story that produces a thoughtful critical engagement with the thematic or ideological commentary you claim is produced in the course text. Your story can be entirely fictional, a fictionalized treatment of an aspect or fragment of your own experience, or a creative engagement with the character or events of your selected course text. Your story can agree or disagree with the author’s commentary that you identify but in all cases it should provide an illustration and exploration of your own critical position on the issue or thematic commentary that you have identified.
The length for your original story is 3-5 pages and should adhere to the same format requirements for the essay option. In addition, you must include a 3-4 page critical explication and analysis of the course text and how it produces the thematic commentary you claim it does, and then of how your own story produces your stated thematic commentary This section must include references to at least one critical secondary source.
