Archive for category: English

You are not asked to answer the questions in your essay, but rather to use them as a guide in articulating the argument. However, the phrases rendered in bold and underlined should be the focus of your essay’s argument. You are asked to pay special attention to aesthetic aspects of the literary works—i.e. to perform literary analysis. Investigate Their Eyes Were Watching God from the standpoint of feminine writing / écriture féminine. How does Hurston’s focus on a woman—and therefore on gender—disturb its easy identification with “protest” literature of the Harlem Renaissance (the kind of literature that explicitly addresses racial injustice, its origins, and effects)? How does the novel’s use of the omniscient narrator who speaks “standard” English problematize the racial dimension of the novel? What is the role of the frame story? What are some of the ways in which the presence and handling of race in the novel may complicate its feminist aspects? Required elements: • a clear and arguable (i.e. controversial rather than straightforward) thesis statement—i.e. argument; • a series of closely read passages from the literary work you are analyzing; • two secondary theoretical/critical sources (either both from the Syllabus, or one from the Syllabus and one of your own choosing) that frame your topic and aid your analysis of the literary work. • Please note that only scholarly, peer-reviewed books, essays or book chapters count as credible secondary sources. This means that the source you bring in ought to have gone through the process of rigorous scholarly vetting. Social media, newspaper articles, opinion pieces and the like are not scholarly sources. Writings published by university presses—in the form of books or journals—are. • The secondary sources from the Syllabus you are allowed to use are: • Valerie Babb, “E Pluribus Unum” • Homi Bhabha, “Locations of Culture” • Luce Irigaray, “The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine” • Barbara Johnson, “Thresholds of Difference” • Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” • Louis Tyson, “Feminism”