Assignments/Exercises
Paper 1
5 pgs
2 copies
due February 18th
*Select 1 poem & 1 visual image that connect for you within a focused discussion of a single aspect re: the cityscape/urbanity.
In addition to your two primary works under analysis, your essay should integrate the ideas of:
a) 1 essayist from the 1st week of the semester (1/16) + any other pertinent class material
b) 2 critical articles – 1 re: the poem & 1 re: the image (choose articles relevant to your argument) The essay should be 5 pages double-spaced or I will not accept it. All texts should be properly cited using the MLA parenthetical citation, and a list of works cited should be included at the back of the essay. (The poem should be from the coursereader, the visual image should be something well-known enough to have incited critical response in articles.)
**********************************
Some Tips to Remember:
-Do not use generalizations in your analysis of the poem – lines should not go unnoticed. This is a close reading. You must address major themes in the poem as well as other elements of particular relevance, including: tone, sound/rhythm, images, speaker, style, line-breaks, nuances of language, form, role of flaneur, role of body, role of city, poem as body, context, etc.
-For the selected visual image, consider significant elements such as composition, style, form, color, etc. *Staple a copy of the image at the back of your paper, after the works cited list.
-Make sure there is a clear thesis that you support through your close readings of the poem & visual piece.
-Use substantial quotations, cited properly, from the poem, from critical articles. Be sure to introduce quotations and provide your analysis surrounding them – no floaters. When integrating lines from poems, be sure to use a “/” to indicate line-breaks where necessary.
-You must make clear and significant connections between the poem & visual piece, and find criticism that supports your reading/analysis of each piece individually.
-See HACKER [page 46] for help with the format for comparison in an essay – I do not want to see a couple of paragraphs about the poem + a couple of paragraphs about the visual piece with an intro & conclusion tacked onto either end – you must blend them under various angles/topics through which you’re exploring in each paragraph. See Hacker or me with questions about this.
-Remember when discussing poetry to refer to the speaking subject as the “speaker” (not narrator or author)
-feel free to use a poem from O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (though we’ve yet to read that as a class), as his work was quite directly influenced by the visual artists of the time, all of whom comprised “The New York School” (an abundance of outside critical sources here); O’Hara was trying to do on the page what Pollack was doing on the canvas
-Have Fun
Weekly Blog Responsibilities:
1. 1 Post on your page
2. 1 Comment anywhere (on main page or peer page)
3. optional: comment on my posts (on main page)
4. sign-up: 1 post on main page that begins a discussion
Blog Posts:
Sense of Place
Defining the Urban
Response on The Cruise
In-Class Writing Tour (write your “cruise” of your hometown)
Research/Image Assignment (on syllabus, due 1/30)
Response to Photography lecture/class (due 1/30)
-discuss 1 image or idea you found compelling re: photography & the city
Neighborhood project (due 2/4) -
-look up murmurtoronto.ca
-go to a neighbhorhood (preferably one you haven’t been to yet) & walk around; write the story of your experience there (ala Whitehead); then research 1 event/building/person/marker/story from that neighborhood & discuss it
Reading Response to 1 poem (due 2/4)
In-Class, 1st week:
-describe your initial experience of nyc when you first arrived in sensory detail
-describe your life in nyc, present-day
103:
Paper 2 – Dubliners, James Joyce
3-5 pages
2 copies
In 1904, James Joyce wrote: “I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.”
Discuss the role of the city – as a geographical subject, character, site, metaphor, or symbol of national (or personal) identity – in 1 story, especially for how it illustrates the ways in which that story achieves Joyce’s goal or enacts what he envisioned (in above quote). Perform a close-reading of the story, citing specific passages to support your ideas. Integrate 2 outside critical sources that relate. Include an MLA works cited.
*In preparation, make sure you consider central themes & tropes & symbols that appear throughout the stories. The function of the epiphany as it counteracts or reiterates Joyce’s critique of individual & national paralysis is important, and may help you narrow your argument. You may examine a single character, event, narrative description, stylistic device, or any other element in your discussion of the city. Stay focused, specific, and clear.
Other Quotes from Joyce:
“The Dublin papers will object to my stories as to a caricature of Dublin life… At times the spirit directing my pen seems to me so plainly mischievous that I am almost prepared to let the Dublin critics have their way.” –July 1905
“I think people might be willing to pay for the special odour of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories.” –Oct 1905
“I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness…” –May 1906
“I believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country.” –May 1906
110:
Paper 2
5 pages
2 copies
In many of the works we’ve encountered this semester, the city has functioned as a geographical subject, a living character, and/or a metaphor/symbol. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa says, “I love walking in London,” and for the duration of the novel, she embodies the flaneur, absorbing the sensory phenomena & spatial patterns of the city as a participant & an outsider during a single day. In many ways, one could argue that the street scenes in Woolf’s novel serve a specific narrative function. Write a paper that examines some aspect of this in relation to urbanism (place/space). Integrate at least 2 outside critical articles to support your analysis.
(You may explore a variety of ideas re: body, identity, interior/exterior, textual space, individual/universal, language, prose style, etc)
Paper 3
4-5 pages
Take 1 central concept about place/space/the city as it relates to gender or sexuality in Jeanette Winterson’s novel The Passion or Clarice Lispector’s novel The Hour of the Star and construct a specific, focused argument for your analysis of the novel.
Use the critical essays by Lawrence Knopp, Linda McDowell, Elizabeth Grosz, and Judith Butler to both refine and support your topic/argument. Your paper must include quotes from Winterson, and at least 2 theorists [Knopp, McDowell, Grosz, Butler].
READINGS — BARTHES & FOUCAULT on AUTHOR:
