This open-book take-home final exam is due Wednesday, December 16, 17:00.
Exam instructions: Answer two of the following questions, writing a 700-900-word essay for each. Choose your questions and texts so that, in the exam as a whole, you write about works from each of the three major author since the midterm: Anzaldúa, O’Brien, and Harjo. Each essay should include close analysis of at least 2 passages of approx. 2-3 lines long and use proper MLA format for in-text and final bibliographic citations. You may use a single bibliography for the whole exam.
Submit the exam on Blackboard by clicking the title of this assignment.
Critic Jake Adam York has argued that some writers seek to alter national culture by describing national “common places” (iconic places, events, monuments, people, etc.) in ways that reimagine their meaning. Analyze how two of the authors we have read since the midterm (Anzaldúa, O’Brien, and Harjo) write their marginalized experiences into iconic spaces or places in US culture to alter our understanding of that culture. Consider land- or cityscapes, monuments, cultural icons, documents, and even how these authors transform literary forms significant to the US’s cultural tradition.
O’Brien and Anzaldúa view the US from its borders, where it interacts with other cultures. How does this vantage point reinforce or alter the dominant culture’s perspective of itself? What motives or principles govern white US culture’s interaction with foreign cultures? How does this interaction relate to the democratic ideals we have studied? (Do these ideals clash, mesh, collaborate, etc. with the culture at this border?) Consider how O’Brien’s perspective growing up in relative privilege and Anzaldúa’s as member of a marginalized culture (at the time she writes, barely recognized) shape their view of the US’s image of and interaction with the other culture?
Anzaldúa and Harjo combine elements of Native American and European American cultures in their work. Compare and contrast how each portrays the position and role of Native American culture(s) in the United States. How does each use Native American images, stories, beliefs, deities, traditions, artforms, etc. to reimagine, critique, or transform US culture? In addition to considering the significance of the aspects of Native American culture they incorporate, how do they use the performative role of story-telling from oral culture?
