Sunday, May 26, 2013

Here is your Final Reflective Essay for The Woman Writer: Due June 5--No Exceptions


ENG 247.18014
The Woman Writer
Spring 2013
Dr. Van Slyck
Final Reflective Essay

On page 3 of your coursepak I have listed some of the major themes we have discussed in this course on The Woman Writer.  We will review these themes again in the next two weeks and you will choose one theme and two texts to compare and contrast in the way they explore, illuminate that theme.  You must choose texts you have not already written about!

Possible themes and suggested directions:

1.     women’s ways of knowing; women’s strategies for self-expression, self-knowledge: hidden insights, hidden powers, tearing down the wallpaper
2.     women and the use of material culture: from quilts to dolls to ironing
3.     gender ideology: how it is developed and maintained; how women collaborate; how they resist: setting horses free, setting selves free
4.     how women speak back to patriarchy: from murder to seizing the vibrator
5.     women and magical powers: crying madonnas, flying women in flames, dolls that express women’s oppression
6.     language and women’s voices: race and culture—claiming voice, redefining voice, embracing hybridity

Your essay should be 600 to 800 words.  It should be typed, double-spaced, using 12pt font, Times New Roman.  It should have a title of your own that reflects your argument.  You should quote from each poem 2-3 times.  Be sure to integrate the quotations carefully, comment fully on each and use line numbers in parentheses.  Do not use overly long quotations.  Use an ellipsis (. . .) if you are leaving out some of the words and be sure to mark line breaks and capitals for the beginnings of each line: “You may write me down in history/With your bitter, twisted lies. . .”

Please remember to put a heading in the upper left corner of your essay with the course, section number and your name as well as mine!  This is the only essay you may not revise and it must be returned to me.  Due Date: June 5.   You may review this essay at our final class meeting and celebration on Tuesday, June 11.

3 comments:

  1. Do we need a works cited page? I cannot find the original published text from Zora and Alvarez online. I also used the page numbers from our coursepak if that's okay :-/

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  2. Here is the Hurston:

    Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road [in italics]. New York: Harper, 1991. [pages should be in coursepak]

    The Alvarez poems I found online so you should be able to google the poem(s) and use that source.

    thanks for thinking of this Brianna

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  3. Thank you. Do we need background info on the authors? lol sorry to bug you on your weekend!

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