More Practice with Research Questions

For this blog post, please continue practicing developing analytical questions.  Think about different approaches to embodied identity we’ve taken so far, relationships between bodies, technologies and culture, ideas about gender, sexuality and agency.  Using this background, come up with three or four different analytical questions about the Munro story.  Try to aim for a question that might start a good class discussion, that makes connections to earlier class material, that provokes interesting ideas about the story.

We’ll use these in class discussion tomorrow. One aim of asking you for multiple questions is to help us evaluate together what makes a “good” analytical question: provocative, compelling, intelligent, synthetic-yet-specific (i.e. synthesizes course material while addressing specifics about the story).  We’ll discuss this together tomorrow, using your questions as examples.  Please bring copies of your questions to class, to help facilitate the activities.

“Good Country People”

The short story is a genre requiring its own set of interpretive tools: their linguistic density rivals poetry, while their prose form offers narrative, characterization, setting, tone, and all the other analytical categories we have discussed in class. Our encounter with two examples of this form, the O’Connor and Munro short stories, coincides with our beginning the final unit of our course, on disability and illness. In addition, we will use these final weeks to focus on developing your own analytical questions, which can help you develop more sophisticated thesis arguments.

To begin thinking about the story critically, remember your existing set of analytical tools (i.e. the Analyzing Fiction handout and the modes of analysis we have developed in class activities). Think about setting, character, voice, tone, symbolism, and theme. Also, consider the questions guiding our course: How do non-normative bodies signify relations of social, economic, racial, or political power? What can we learn from thinking more critically about representations of physical difference? We have most recently focused on racial difference. Can we apply what we learned about race to disability?

For this blog post, focus on the character of Joy/Hulga and her physical traits, one of which is her artificial leg. Please think of an analytical question about this character, then try to answer it. You can use the questions above as models for an analytical question of your own, or modify those above to something more specific.

Also, please remember to bring that Analyzing Fiction handout to class tomorrow.

Extra Credit Assignment

Here is the extra credit assignment.  The essay is due any time before the final essay is due.  On the printed copy, please specify where you’d like to apply the extra credit points.

Some Resources on Blackface Minstrelsy

PBS’s American Experience documentary on Stephen Foster includes a section on minstrelsy. Their Web site features a handful of historians discussing aspects of minstrelsy. PBS’s Jazz series also covered minstrelsy.

University of Virginia put together an extensive digital archive on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American culture, including a page of digitized images related to minstrel shows, including those we examined in class today.

Here’s an interesting article about folklore research on the survival of minstrelsy in the Adirondack Mountains.

Finally, here is the page on minstrelsy from the Bamboozled movie Web site.

Bamboozled Discussion Question

The film is linked to our course material, in particular Passing, because it represents an ambivalent and complex notion of racial self-making: people choosing–to some mitigated extent–their racial identity, a choice with implications both positive and negative.

To what degree is racial identity is a choice in this film? Are the show’s fans and audience members really black? What are the differences in this film between blackface and blackness?

What is so compelling about the New Millenium Minstrel Show’s representation of blackness? Why do its fans love it and identify with it so deeply? What does the show’s appeal say about the status of race in general and blackness in particular in contemporary United States?

These sets of questions are related, but your response need not address all of them.

Bamboozled Viewing Scheduled

My apologies to all who prefer the group viewing but cannot attend this one, which was the optimal of the times available.

Tuesday, Feb 19, 6-8:30, SH 2635.

If you rent the film from Emerald Video or another local source, please post that information on this site in case others can watch it with you.  If multiple people cannot make your particular screen time, perhaps you can share the same rental copy.   Thanks for sharing our resources to keep the film accessible to everyone.

No Post Today!

Take a break from the blog for the evening!  See you in class tomorrow.

Passing and its Contemporaries

Note: I wrote this at 10am this morning and thought I posted it, but apparently I pressed the “save” button instead of the “publish” one. I’m sorry that it has been posted so late. Most of you don’t respond until after this time anyway, so I’m hoping it won’t be a huge inconvenience.

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For this post, please find a point of connection between the novel and the poem you are analyzing in your essay. What are some similarities or differences?

Think about rhetorical style as well as plot. How do the two authors use language? Characterization? The role of history? Do both approach concepts of essentialism and social construction in similar or different ways? As always, use cited quotations to demonstrate your ideas.

A perhaps self-evident note: Please go further than “they both address black identity” or “they both address black female identity.” Take that surface similarity and deepen it to explore the significance of different approaches to literary expression of identity.

Handouts from Wednesday, 2-6

Here’s the Writing Tips handout.

And here’s the Poetry Essay Assignment.

Handouts from class Monday, 2-4

You can download the Harlem Renaissance lecture notes by clicking here: harlemrenhandout.doc.

Here’s the sheet on poetry terms: poetryterms.doc

And here’s the guideline to analyzing a poem: poetry-guideline.doc.