Final Paper

Please send me your paper idea (#3 & 4) via e-mail before you start to write. The final paper is due 2/8 via e-mail as an attachment (MS Word or PDF).

1. Review your notes and readings from the whole semester. Write down a few keywords that will help you remember what you thought was most interesting in our readings and class discussions.

2. Brainstorm some possible ways to compare and contrast two of the semester’s texts. Think about similarities and differences, what examples might work, which are most interesting to you.

3. Choose one of the possibilities above for a compare and contrast paper. Write what you can here about the idea: more details, more about why you are interested.

4. Now think about the real analysis part of comparison and contrast: the “why” part. Why do you think these two texts have these similarities and/or differences? What do these similarities and/or differences mean when we look at the two texts together?

5. Now look at your last paper and comments. Read over the comments and think about them. Do you want to talk about any of these ideas in your final paper? How can you keep in mind the comments when you work on your final paper (if there are some hints for improvement in #4, keep them in mind).

Sandra Cisneros "Those Who Don't" & "Bums in the Attic"

A good place to start is the Cisneros page at Voices from the Gaps. There is biographical information as well as some literary analysis of her work, plus great links to other relevant sites such as interviews, poetry, and more. The Cisneros page at Los Mujeres also has some useful resources. The Modern American Poets site has a page about her as well. Another interview also exists online, as well as critical essays on her work.

Her characters are mostly Chicano, some are US Americans and others are immigrants from other parts of the Americas to the US, especially Mexico. Many of them are children and also working-class. What do you think about her characters' identities? How do the stories differentiate between different groups of people?

Let's think of some good discussion questions for class. What do you think we should talk about? Post a comment or email me!

George Saunders & Lane Smith The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

UPDATE: Maruyama-san at the International Student Center has black-and-white copies for anyone who wants one. The generosity of their copy-budget is bottomless! I have the original still for anybody who wants to borrow it as well.

Form and Genre: What did you think about reading a so-called children's book? Did it make you laugh? Did you like the art work or was it too strange for you? What were some of your responses to the story and the style of writing? We could call this story a fable, which is a simple story with a clear moral (or several). What did you think of the moral(s) of the story?

Content of the story: The book portrays a small community that is reluctant to change; in other words, it is "socially conservative." The girl, Capable, is the only one willing to think about doing things differently, which we call socially progressive.

Some questions and observations to consider before, during, and after your reading:

• Consider the gappers and their love for goats, and later fences--what does the book teach readers about love?
• Capable's father likes things to stay the same and gets angry when they change. Why? What makes him change his attitude?
• The neighbors see the gappers suddenly concentrating on Capable's goats and interpret that as a judgment from God. What does this book imply about the uses of religion?
  
• If you think about this book as a comment on the American Dream and/or the Protestant work ethic, what conclusion does it lead you to?

Please add to this list using the comments button!

Writing a Response Paper

Due at beginning of class December 8

This writing task is not a formal essay, although it does need to be clear and well-organized. Here is what you need to consider for this paper. Follow these steps to choose your topic first.

1. What text (story or movie) was your favorite this semester? Look back at each text and your notes about it, trying to remember how it made you feel when you read it and when we discussed it in class.
2. Re-read (or re-watch) your favorite text. What did you like about it? Think about why this text was so interesting or enjoyable for you.
3. List a few of the things you liked about it. What do those things have in common? Is there a theme or topic in this text that really made you think?
4. Describe in detail, using quotations, some of the parts of this text that deal with that topic or theme. Why are they important to the text?

Okay, so now you know a bit more about your topic. How are you going to write a response paper about it? Your paper should do the following:

1. Name the text and summarize it in 2 or 3 sentences. You can assume I have read or seen it, but just to remind me.
2. Give a clear, detailed description or quotation of the part you want to pay special attention to. If it is a scene in a movie, tell what happens and who does what and who says what. If it is from a story, give a summary of the scene and some quotations directly from the text.
3. Explain your response to the text clearly and in detail. Don’t just write: “I was shocked.” Instead, write: “I was shocked by the way [name of character] acted in [some situation] because [reason].”
4. Explain why you think this scene or passage is important in understanding the whole text. What is its relation to the whole? Why does the author or filmmaker include this scene or passage?
5. Finally, explain what about that scene or passage is important to you and why. This means your response and the reasons behind your response. You can include some kind of personal experience or background if you think it helps.

Type up the paper on a computer, run the spell-checker, and print out two copies. You need to bring both copies to class on December 8 for peer review.

Joan Wilking "Proper Dress"

Hi again. If anybody needs a copy of the story, it is in an envelope hanging from my office door in ILCS S317. And remember next class will be in ILCS 105 (if we are lucky).

As for this story, as you can see it is very short but not exactly simple. The author is a poet and has written short stories and poems in the past several years; if you google her you will find many websites that mention her work.

You will probably want to understand what type of class the story is describing: public schools in the US often have a program for "gifted and talented" students, which can involve more creative and less traditional kinds of learning. Often the students set their own goals and teachers help them reach the goals, rather than teachers setting the same goals for all the students. There are also often non-traditional styles of education that emphasize experience over memorization. So this class seems to be a special class like that (though of course this class is only a fictional one; I'm sure no teacher would ever really do this!).

Next, you will need to get some of the connotations of the burqa. A good place to start might be an online catalog where you can buy one, but you can also use Google to find out more: when I googled the word I found some interesting news stories such as these from Radio Netherlands and MSNBC. The most famous women's group in Afghanistan, RAWA, also has a good website with a lot of information about how they resisted the Taliban and how they continue to work for women's equality there. As we discuss the burqa, let's be very clear about the fact that requiring women to wear burqa is a fundamentalist Muslim practice and not all Muslim people (not even a majority) believe women should be forced to wear burqa.

But obviously the story is not set in Afghanistan but the US. Maybe some reading on religious fundamentalism (see Wikipedia again; I just discovered that page and you can see I really like it!) would help you understand the story better. I do think the author is making some kind of statement about American culture.

The other popular culture references in the story include the scent of patchouli, which in US and European cultures often has particular implications; see the Wikipedia definition. Likewise the fabric the teacher uses to make the burqa suggests she was a hippie in her youth. Please email me or hit the comment button if you have other questions about things like that!

• So how does this story contrast with Girls Town?
• What does it say about gender and violence? Gender and power?
• How is the space of that class re-defined and re-organized to create an alternative social order?
• Why does the author include the hints about the teacher's past as a hippie?
  
• Why do you think the teacher designed the burqa assignment? What could have been her teaching goals? Did it succeed?
  
• Explain the motives for the different students too.

Girls Town (1996)

Hi everybody! First, remember three things.

1. Next class is November 17, because of the holiday and my conference trip.
2. And it will be in a new room, ILCS S105. That is Institute for Language and Culture Studies, or 言語文化部　in Japanese. If you are taking Paul Stapleton's class you probably already know it. This map has it as number 53. The room, S105, is on the first floor in a quite old building next to the North Cafeteria.
3. The video is available to watch at the HUSTEP office with Maruyama san. Another copy of it is also available in the box on my office door (ILCS S317) if you borrow it for 24 hours only. Please sign the list if you take the tape and return it within 24 hours.

OK, on to the movie. It is about high school girls who are friends and who learn about their friend's rape after she commits suicide. Their reaction is to begin talking more honestly about their own experiences with men, and they are all upset at what they learn. If you understand the basic story, then don't worry if you don't get every word or every sentence. The girls speak very naturalistic teenage slang, at least from that time and place (New Jersey in the 90s), so it is difficult for some older adults to understand too. It is also pretty rough language, using a lot of curse words that are usually inappropriate except in the company of close friends your own age.

But you can understand the bigger questions that the girls face: what does violence do to friendships? How do girls or women deal with violence from men they date? Is violence ever acceptable as a form of revenge? Each of you might have different opinions about this, so think about it before class.

This movie is described on the Internet Movie Database here, with lots of links to more information: you can read lots of user comments and external reviews if you click those links in the left sidebar. Think about how each character deals with Nikki's suicide and the violence they hear about from their friends. What do they do to try to stop the sexual harrassment and violence against women? Does it work?

These girls are pretty tough at school, they listen to hiphop music, skip classes, fight, and smoke cigarettes and marijuana. Why do you think the movie shows them as tough girls?

How do the different spaces of the movie create the social relationships of the characters? For example, the girls' rooms at home, the school bathroom, the baseball dugout are sort of private spaces for them. Walking on the street or in the park is more public; how is it different for them?

I'll add more soon.

Judith Ortiz Cofer "American History"

The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a good entry about Judith Ortiz Cofer here. The author's own web page is also available here. You can read an interesting personal essay by Ortiz Cofer here. This link gives you a chance to watch a video of the author giving a lecture at the University of Wisconsin in 2000. Two of her poems are available online here, as well as a useful Puerto Rican History timeline with links to images.

The story is set in Paterson, New Jersey, in the 1960s. Here is a good summary of New Jersey history (the last three paragraphs are maybe the most directly relevant). Another history website specifically about Paterson is here. If you need a good brief history of immigration in the US, this page by the Center for Immigration Studies is a good place to start. A helpful overview of Puerto Rico-US relations can be found on this site, including the current debates over independence.

How does this story portray the many different scales in all our lives? Remember, the smallest scale is the individual and her own thoughts and feelings and the largest scale is the universe, with family, neighborhood, city, region, nation, world all ranged in between. Each of these scales has its own power relations and conflicts that might include gender, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, age, nationality, class, region, and more.

How does the story represent the "place" of Elena's world? If you had to define the place of this story, which social and cultural networks and personal relationships would you include? What would the map of this place look like if you tried to draw it, including the connections to "outside" or other places?