Familial and/or generational conflict
Instructions:
1) Analyze the significance of familial and/or generational conflict in two of the following texts: A Rose for Emily, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Dogs in Winter, and Simple Recipes.
2) Analyze the portrayal of women of color in Oryx and Crake and Rachel.
3) Analyze the representation of motherhood and/or parenting in two of the following: When Twilight Falls on the Stump Lots, Little Pilgrims, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Dogs in Winter, and Simple Recipes.
4) The domestic realm, traditionally a realist space, is depicted as a gothic space in several of the texts we have read this semester. Analyze how two of the following texts draw on gothic conventions to evoke the dangers/fears/anxieties that lie behind the seemingly homely veneer of the domestic realm: The Fall of the House of Usher, A Rose for Emily, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Turn of the Screw.
5) Analyze how Oryx and Crake and Rachel interrogate essentialist/traditional understandings of nature and/or the human.
6) Several of the texts we have read this semester feature writerly characters who stand as figures of authorship and, as in some cases, as figures for the author him/herself (i.e., Del Jordan in Alice Munro’s The Flats Road). Analyze how two of the following texts represent the figure of the writer, taking into consideration the significance of this figure to the broader thematic concerns of the texts in question: Dracula, The Turn of the Screw, The Yellow Wallpaper, Everything that Rises Must Converge, We Must Sit Opposite, and The Flats Road.
7) Analyze the significance of geographical locale in two of the following: A Rose for Emily, Everything that Rises Must Converge, and The Flats Road.
8) Analyze the function of irony and/or satire in two of the following: Everything that Rises Must Converge, A Rose for Emily, and We Must Sit Opposite.
9) Analyze the theme of confinement/imprisonment in two of the following: The Fall of the House of Usher, Dracula, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Turn of the Screw.
10) Analyze the treatment of psychological trauma in Dogs in Winter and Simple Recipes.
11) Analyze the treatment of outsider figures in two of the following: A Rose for Emily, Everything that Rises Must Converge, The Flats Road, Dogs in Winter, Simple Recipes, Oryx and Crake, and Rachel.
12) Examine the relationship between scientific rationalism/enlightenment humanism and folklore/superstition in Dracula and The Fall of the House of Usher.
13) Examine the relationship between empiricism/scientific rationalism and myth/storytelling in Oryx and Crake and Rachel.
14) You are welcome to develop an essay topic of your own which engages with any two of our texts, but you must present your topic for approval no later than March 21st.
