Analytical Imagination Challenge Numero Dos

All essays MUST incorporate research from at least TWO scholarly sources* or they will not even be considered for an A-level grade! All of the other recommendations and suggestions for success mentioned in Analytical Imagination Challenge Numero Uno are still in force for this outing.

*(no, Wikipedia is NOT a “scholarly source”—nor is Spark Notes, for that matter--if your research is not coming from a book off the shelf in Love Library, or a legitimate journal hosted on JSTOR or Project Muse, it is probably not a scholarly source. Take care to consult actual ESSAYS, not the one to two page REVIEWS many of you used in Imagination Challenge Numero Uno)


Something to remember: several of the essays below feature works we will not have read together as a class, meaning you have to read ahead and on your own.  These prompts have a higher degree of difficulty and come with higher potential rewards. Also remember: when you are doing research, you do NOT have to find an essay that specifically focuses on the work you are writing about.  For instance, you decide to write a paper on left-handed hermaphrodites in the work of William Shakespeare.  It would not be essential to find a book or article that directly addresses this phenomena in Shakespeare.  It would be equally useful to your reader to find research on 'singular sexual phenonena' in all literature and then adapt that finding to your particular focus in your essay.  If this is NOT clear, ask for more examples in class.

Your magical work is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, November 12, 2015. Place them into the bag for your team, (The Reflections, The Inversions, The Ghosts, The Perceptions, The Altered States, or my, Professor Nericcio's wicked bag of tricks) at the front of the room in the Hallucinatorium, GMCS 333.

Pick ONE of the following prompts--all A-level essays will likely subject these prompts to a healthy amount of metamorphosis, transmogrification, adaptation, and warping!

1. Using close literary analysis and outside research explore contrast elements of horror to be found in Carlos Fuentes' AURA and Haruki Murakami's AFTER DARK.

2. Gothic
metamorphosis--track the evolution of the term "Gothic" as it moves from the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson to that of Carlos Fuentes, Haruki Murakami, and/or Lidia Yuknavich: are they really that different or can similar obsessions be seen to be dominating their peculiar imaginations?
 
3. PROPOSITION: Daniel Clowes and Haruki Murakami share ruling passions that show their works to be intimately intertwined. Expore, contest, or reshape this proposition.

4. Of all the genres of literature, it is the "ESSAY" that gets the least love.  Where novels get mad affection and poetry is still all the rage, the essay, whether it be autobiographical, critical, exploratory, or journalistic, always comes in behind the pack.  Write an essay on the history of the essay clearly situating Daniel Olivas's work in this literary tradition.

5. Parody Parody Parody! Lidia Yuknavitch's DORA: A HEAD CASE is a classic parody--bringing Sigmund Freud back to life for a 21st century audience. Write an essay on the history of parody focused on Yuknavitch's writing. Only essays that include substantive research on contemporary approaches to the idea of PARODY in  will be assessed, so only select this choice if you are up to the challenge of doing first-rate intellectual archeology.

6. Using ideas adapted from your close reading of Daniel Olivas's THINGS WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT (and two other outside sources), explore what you to be the dominant goal/theme/focus of Salvador Plascencia's THE PEOPLE OF PAPER.

7. Carlos Fuentes, Roman Polanski, and Mary Gaitskill (author of "Secretary) all explore the nature of domination and submission, of tyrrany and enslavement. Write a critical essay that reveals key connections or contrasts between these three artists' works in this regard.


8. Can Carlos Fuentes and Lidia Yuknavitch be thought of as 'erotic writers.' In an essay that explores the history of the erotic and determines Fuentes's and Yuknavitch's place in this tradition.

9. With AFTER DARK, you are confronted with a novel that is obsessed with an old black and white movie (Godard's ALPHAVILLE). With DORA: A HEAD CASE you encounter a novel obsessed with an old case history (Ida Bauer's treatment by Sigmund Freud). Why is it that novels incorporate older stories within the fabric of their own unfolding.

10. Design your own thesis incorporating any two works we covered AFTER October 8, 2015. Share your proposal with me, with a typed-up working title and a supporting paragraph, by TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015—OR you can email it to me at any moment before that class at memo@sdsu.edu  Please make sure to author a well-crafted proposal that outlines the main focus of your proposed study and one that also discloses the scholarly research you will include in your project.