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ENGLISH 220: THE IMAGINATION CHALLENGE* *aka, your major essay of the semester!
Your imagination challenge will be cleverly titled, double-spaced, have 1-inch margins and be carefully proofread; additionally, it will be full of active verbs and, in general, have syntactic variety so as to avoid the dangers of the "IS" VIRUS (use the sample grading sheet, above, as a checklist of what NOT to do). Lastly, please use MLA or University of Chicago works cited pages formatting. Your eyegasmic expository bundles of genius are
due
Monday, October 30, 2017--you will drop your paper into the
appropriate bags at the front of my office door, AL 273, Arts and
Letters 273, that correspond
to your specific #mirrortext team (there will be one other bag with my
name on
it as well for those who want to brave the choppy waters of my grading!). Late
papers will not be accepted. Early papers, in most cases, will be
cherished lovingly. All "A-grade" level imagination challenge responses will integrate select, direct
quotations
from the primary texts read thus far in the class this semester and will avoid ALL of the
quicksand-like bad habits listed on the gradesheet already mentioned above. Additionally, 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. In
general, avoid research garnered from the internet--any use or
adaptation of material from Spark Notes, Cliffs Notes, Barron's Notes,
etc (and especially essays that rely on Wikipedia) will likely be
returned to you ungraded or burned ritually at a secret sacred site guarded by literary druids! One last bit
of advice, do NOT plagiarize ANY material from an online source or
'paper mill.' In other words: unCITED material = PLAGIARISM; also, as noted above, if
you are going to analyze a key element
from an illustrated or filmed work, do please go to the bother of
xeroxing the image and incorporating
it INTO your essay with captions and with a notation in the 'Works
Cited' to let your readers know where you got it from. Last hint? Have a blast with this paper! Try things you have NEVER tried before! Test the limits of your imagination! Good luck! This IMAGINATION CHALLENGE is slightly different from other writing assignments you may have completed as an undergraduate (for example, please leave everything you learned to loathe in RWS 100 or 200 at the door--unless your instructor was a genius, in which case, use your best judgment). For this Imagination Challenge you will fill in the blanks provided below and then complete the essay making sure to provide specific textual evidence to sustain/defend/illustrate your stated position in your writing! 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/ideas; read the prompts carefully to make your final determination. One last thing. Try to finish your paper a DAY BEFORE it is due. Print it out and lay it on a desk in your room. A day later, wake up early and take this printed work and go to a room/library/cafe you don't usually go to--go there with a big old printed dictionary, you should own one and you can get good ones for cheap at old book stores like Maxwell's House of Books, Adams Avenue Books, DG Wills Books, Bluestocking Books and other area book shops. Take your paper to this special place and edit your paper. We really don't have the power to carefully edit a document on the screen where it was composed. You must switch the medium, going from screen to paper, from photons to ink, to see errors your reader will trip over! Cool. Go for it! Here are your prompts! Unless you KNOW you can write a better introductory paragraph, please use these PromptParagraphs™ (an intellectually enhanced version of MadLibs!) as your actual opening paragraph for your paper. Option 1. Sigmund Freud, via Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate, Goes For a Walk With John Green. Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate's graphic treatment Sigmund Freud and his theories of hysteria explode
with images and stories that bring Freud's theories to life. Their
vision of
Sigmund
Freud's evolving theories are both provocative and clever.
In particular, Appignanesi/Zarate's
analyses of Freud's theory and practice seem perfectly suited to an
analysis (diagnosis?) of the main characters in John Green's The Fault in our Stars. In the
pages that follow, I will attempt to forge a link between Appignanesi
and Zarate's intriguing treatment of Freud's work and Green's novel,with a particular focus on
____________________________. By doing so, I hope to illustrate how __________________________... Option 2. Psychology
& Graphic Narrative (note that doing this challenge means also doing some
cool secondary research on human psychology) A provocative graphic narrative by Dan Clowes, Ghost World challenges
its readers to explore the
_________________ and ____________________________of human
psychology--to be more specific, Clowes take viewers/readers on a tour
of _____________________
introducing
characters and situations that reveal ______________________. Recently,
specific scholars have written essays that shed new light on these
phenomena--typical among these is "_______________________{essay title}________________________" written by
____{scholar's name}_________________. However, I am not totally content, with Professor
_________________'s study. In the paragraphs that
follow, I will briefly illustrate my problems with his/her work and
suggest better ways to explore the concept using Clowes's novel comic book to guide my way. Option 3. Carlos Fuentes, Surrealist Patricia Allmer and Iker Spozio, in This is Magritte, and Andrea Kettenmann, to a lesser extent, in Khalo, introduced creative visual artists who transformed the art world (and the world at large) with their mesmerizing paintings and sculptures. Along the way Allmer, Spozio, and Kettenmann treat us to a veritable mini-history of Surrealism with critical meditations that situates the movement with regard to Art History and History in general. Using Allmer's and Kettenmann's writings as my point of departure, I will, in these pages, seek to draw a connection between the work of the surrealism and the writing of Carlos Fuentes in Aura. One thing we know from our class is that surrealist artists sought to incorporate Sigmund Freud's theories on their splendid canvases; similarly, Fuentes can be seen to reveal the complicated corridors of the human psyche in his seductive erotic mirrortext of a novel. At first glance, it may seem that the surrealists are more concerned with ________________________ while Fuentes more focused on ____________________________. I will show, however, that the unlikely pairing have more in common than not, especially when it comes to _____________________________. Option 4. Kahlo, Woodman and Waller-Bridge, Fused! How
is it possible that a Mexican painter from the first part of the 20th
century an American photographer from late 20th and a British writer/comedian from the early 21st century
can be seen to
share a singular obsession? And yet that is the case with Frida Kahlo, Francesca Woodman, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. In
my brief study that will unfold before you here, I will take the time
to focus on the themes of _______________ and
_______________________ as I weave a critical tale of
Kahlo's, Woodman's and Waller-Bridge's kinship. But I will also take time below to
point out their contrasts, especially with regard to
__________________________________. Option 5. Comparative Literature: Wilhelm Jensen and John Green The best literature is merely a vehicle for surveilling the complex corridors of the human mind. With ___________{main character name}___________(from Gradiva) and ___{main character name}__________ (from The Fault in our starts), writers Wilhelm Jensen and John Green introduce readers to _________________________________. I will use the next few pages to creep carefully into the psyches of these two memorable characters from literature in order to explore how ___________________________. In order to add complexity to my comparative dissection of Jensen's and Green's achievements, I will incorporate a recent piece {after 2010} of literary criticism authored by __________________ on _______________________ --this essay helps us probe the imaginative depth and psychological complexity of these two memorable characters. Option 6. James Baldwin and Sigmund Freud, Reconsidered James
Baldwin does a remarkable job letting us get inside of his head in
"Notes of a Native Son" giving us a taste of
the black male psyche, in particular showing how
______________________________. Alternatively, Sigmund Freud gives us a
vocabulary and methodology to unpack the complexity of this psyche in his essay entitled "Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva"--in particular, Freud's essay gives us new ways to consider how ________________________________ factors into the imagination of a writer. In the paragraphs that follow, I
will attempt to apply adaptations of Freud's scribblings to Baldwin's essay. In particular, I hope to explore
how ______________________ ... Option 7. Allusions Allusions Allusions... In the first four weeks of this class, we have been drowned in literary and cinematic works that are filled with allusions and while Professor Nericcio has been scrupulous in his tracking down many of these significant allusions, he just does not have the time in 75 minutes with 224 students to really explore the down and dirty nitty gritty of some of the more curious allusions we have run across so far. In the paragraphs that follow, I will try to document some of the more compelling literary allusions we have run across that our good Professor failed to focus on in class... Option 8. Verisimilitude or The Play within the Play Many of the works that have happened our way this term are metatextual--that is, they are as likely to tell a compelling fictional tale as they are to tell a story about the nature of storytelling itself (in a sense, then, we can say that most of the mirrortextian works we have sampled this semester are allegorical). In critical writings, this practice goes by various names: self-referentiality, postmodernity, poststructuralism, and 'breaking the fourth wall'. Trapped in Love Library, I happened upon _________________________ written by ___________________________. His/Her writings on the nature of self-referentiality/postmodernity/poststructuralism/'breaking the fourth wall'/ metatextuality (PICK ONE) give us a better way to enter into a discussion of _____________________________ and _________________________ (pick two works we have worked on this semester). Using this critical work, I will attempt to show how_________________________________..... Option 9: Documentary Film and Cultural Critique The
language of documentary film and that of literary criticism and
cultural commentary are distinct and share unique histories. That said,
it can be argued that Raoul Peck's I Am Not Your Negro and William Nericcio's Tex[t]-Mex
share much in common--in particular when it comes to
__________________________ and ______________________________. In the
paragraphs that follow, I will explore the connection between Peck and
Nericcio, and, as well, the connection between documentary film and
expository cultural critique. In doing so I hope to
________________________... Option 10: Literary Criticism and Aura Encountering Carlos Fuentes's Aura,
readers trade in their average, everyday reading glasses for veritable
fun-house mirrors bursting with kaleidoscopic secondary meanings that
radiate from beneath the novel’s surface. Scholars such as
_____________ have examined the significance of Fuentes's
novel, and I will briefly expand upon _______________’s observations
and craft some of my own by putting my rad, analytical lenses on to
dive deeper into how the narrative structure of Aura creates __________________________. Option 11. Roll your own! Develop and refine your OWN independent fill in the blanks prompt--it must make use of at least two works from the required texts (books, film, graphic narrative, etc) we have and will peruse this term. You MUST bring your proposal to me, typed out on paper by the beginning of class Thursday, October 19, before OR after class, or email your proposal to me at memo@sdsu.edu--no emailed proposals will be considered after 12noon, Friday, October 20, 2017. You are also welcome to run it by me in person during office hours or by appointment. Have fun!
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| MODELS FOR GOOD LITERARY AND FILM CRITICISM |
| If you have never read a good piece of literary
criticism or film theory, it is probably a good idea to read some
BEFORE you tackle this writing assignment; below appear paragraphs and
a link to some good writing focused on literature and film. As you do
your research for your essay, pay attention not just to the ideas of
the critics you select to share in your essay as proof, pay attention
as well to the way they carefully craft these arguments. Edward Said, one of my stylistic mentors, on Joseph Conrad...  Edward Said, again, on Joseph Conrad (and Sigmund Freud)...  Helen Vendler on Criticism  and last, J. Hoberman (extra-cool film theorist)... (click image to see/read his full review)...  |
| urgent issues? email: memo@sdsu.edu |
| Back to your day to day diary! |
Write unto others as you would have them write for thee! 