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| Engl 220 The Naked EYE/I | Spring 2012 | W. Nericcio & Company |
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urgent issues? email: memo@sdsu.edu | phone: 619.594.1524 Your
essays should be no longer than 3 pages in length--images do NOT count
toward your final page count so illustrate at will (if you have to go
over a page, don't sweat it). Your festival of the imagination will be
cleverly titled, double-spaced, have 1-inch margins
top and sides and be carefully
proofread; additionally, it will be chock-full of active verbs and, in
general, have syntactic variety so as to avoid the dangers of the IS
VIRUS; use MLA or University of Chicago-style works cited pages. Your works of genius are
due Thursday, November 15, 2012 in class--you will walk into class on
time and drop your paper into the decorated receptacle that corresponds
to your specific section (there will be one other bag with my name on
it as well). All A-level critical speculations will integrate carefully selected direct quotations from the primary texts and will avoid ALL of the quicksand-like bad habits noted here on the gradesheet to your right--click it to make it readable. A-level grades will be awarded ONLY to crafty undergraduates who make use of scholarly research discovered either by prowling the stacks (the shelves and shelves of books that fill Love Library, aka the "Library of Love") or that you can gather off of JSTOR or PROJECT MUSE--be sure to CITE THESE WORKS CAREFULLY. One last bit of advice, do NOT plagiarize ANY material from the internet;
unCITED material = PLAGIARISM; also, if you are going to "quote" a passage
from an illustrated text, go to the bother of xeroxing the image and incorporating
it INTO your essay. Last hint? Have a blast with this paper! Try things you have NEVER tried before! Test the limits of your imagination! Good luck! In the last IMAGINATION CHALLENGE, you responded to "prompts." For this assignment, your role is slightly different--for this Imagination Festival II, you will fill in the blanks provided and then complete the essay you have started making sure to provide specific textual evidence to sustain/defend/illustrate your clearly stated views! FINISH only ONE of the following challenges... Note that some of the blanks below are meant to be filled with authors' names whilst others should be filled with specific phrases/theses; read the prompts carefully to make your final determination. You probably have to have read the books and seen the movies mentioned in order to fill the blanks convincingly. 1. ADDICTION a. An addict is a strange thing--slaves to desires beyond their control, they answer calls to pleasure in ways that bring ecstasy and tragedy. Both Darren Aronofsky and Nick Hornby focus on the peculiar dynamics of addiction, but where Aronofsky concerns himself with_______________, Hornby, on the other hand seems more interested with __________________. In the comments that follow, I will explore the differences between this American director and British author... b. Addicts are fascinating--slaves to desires beyond their control, they answer calls to hedonism in ways that bring both satisfaction and tragedy. Both Junichiro Tanizaki and Darren Aronofsky reveal the spectacular strangeness of addiction, but where Tanizaki looks at ___________________, Aronofsky, alternatively, seems more focused on _______________________. In the subsequent paragraphs, my essay will examine the differences between this Japanese novelist and American director... 2. SEX/LIT CRIT A provocative erotic novel by Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki, The Key challenges its readers to explore the ______________________ of human sexuality--to be more specific, Tanizaki takes readers on a tour of ___________________ introducing characters that ______________________. Recently, specific critics have focused on eroticism and sexuality in Tanizaki's works--typical among these is _____________________ written by _____________. I am not totally content, however, with Professor _________________'s study of Tanizaki's writings. In the paragraphs that follow, I will briefly illustrate my problems with his/her work and suggest better ways to explore Tanizaki's fiction... 3. LICHTENSTEIN, WARHOL, and ___________________. Pop Art is big--like Pop Music (as seen in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity), Pop Art remade the landscape of High Art in the United States after 1960. Using specific works by Roy Lichtenstein ("___________"), Andy Warhol ("_______________"), and _______________choose an other American Pop Art artist using your research________ ("____________"), this essay will seek to explore major trends in the history of Pop Art... 4. READING DAN CLOWES Dan Clowes's The Death Ray is a compelling complex piece of 21st century American Literature--it's most provocative achievement is to have _____________________________________. In this regard, it shares a similarity with __________________________, a work we already read/screened this semester. The paragraphs that follow seek to explore the connections between Clowes and ___________________--if I am right, and I think I am, my conclusions will suggest that___________... 5. NAKED EYE/I REVISITED {pick any two authors/artists/directors from this semester; be sure to include at least one from AFTER Requiem for a Dream, October 18, 2012} The concept of the NAKED EYE/I seems best illustrated by the work of ____________________ and _________________. In particular, it strikes me that ___________________________________ and ____________________________ constitute the two projects that speak in such a way that our understanding of representation and subjectivity (the two key elements focused upon in our Naked Eye/I seminar) is deepened and made more complex.... 6. TEXTMEX {pick any two authors/artists/directors from this semester; be sure to include at least one from AFTER Requiem for a Dream, October 18, 2012} Cultural critic William Nericcio's Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America has ideas that seem readily adaptable to critical studies focused on literature--in particular his concepts of ______________ and _________________ taken from his 2007 book seem ready made for adaptation and application to _____________________.... The following paragraphs will work to adapt Nericcio's bizarre/useful concepts and explore _______________... 7. New! COMPARATIVE LITERARY CRITICISM {note: selecting #7 requires you to read Diary of a Mad Old Man in addition to The Key.} The odd thing? Both works come from the same pen, the same psyche, the same author. Yet when you think about it, reading Junichiro Tanizaki's The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man provide differing, unique experiences. Where The Key gives prying eyes ____________________________________________, Diary of a Mad Old Man, alternatively, forces readers to ______________________ INVENT YOUR OWN FILL IN THE BLANKS PROMPT Develop and refine your OWN independent fill in the blanks prompt--it must make use of at least one work from the 2nd half of the semester; you MUST bring your proposal to me by Thursday, November 8th, in class (typed, please). You are also welcome to run it by me in person during office hours or by appointment--ON or BEFORE Thursday, November 8, 2012. Have fun!
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| SAMPLE PARAGRAPHS FROM AMAZING CRITICS!!!! (click the images to enlarge)... Edward Said on Joseph Conrad...  Edward Said on Joseph Conrad (and Sigmund Freud)...  Helen Vendler on Criticism  J. Hoberman (extra-cool film theorist)... (click image to see review)...  |
Write unto others as you would have them write for thee! 