Spring 2003
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Paper Assignment #1
General Instructions
Choose one or two texts and write a carefully argued and clearly written
4-6-page essay. Your final paper should offer a complete and detailed
literary analysis of the works you choose to investigate. Be sure to focus
your analysis around a specific thesis, appropriate to the final page
length. You should derive your analysis from your own reading of the works;
consulting outside sources or secondary materials is neither required
nor recommended for this paper. Keep in mind that your audience is familiar
with the works on which you will be writing, so there is no need to include
lengthy summaries of the works in your analysis. Please use MLA style
when citing page numbers. Papers are due at the beginning of class, Wednesday,
March 12. You will lose one letter grade if your paper is late. Please
note that if you anticipate turning in a late paper, you must consult
with me before the due date.
Note: If you do not know what a literary analysis is, you may want to
look the term up in the Handbook to Literature. Similarly, if you are
not familiar with MLA style, you will want to obtain a copy of the MLA
Style Manual.
Essay Topics
1. Using one or two of the texts, analyze the writer's or narrator's perception on one or more of the following issues: race, gender, class, religion, sexuality, patriarchy, family and self-expression.
2. Choose one or two books and answer: How and why does authenticity become an important issue in reading slave narratives? What kinds of "selves" do the writers or narrators create and present? What does the writer or narrator gain or lose in the process of writing/dictating her narrative?
3. In the readings, to what extent do white Americans who see themselves as Abolitionists, sympathizers with African Americans actually understand African Americans as slaves? Also consider Harriet Beecher Stowe's paternalism toward Sojourner Truth and African Americans and her tendency to stereotype them. How do Stowe stereotype blacks? Does she do this intentionally? What does this say about the attitudes in general in that time period?
4. Discuss the role of black mothers, fathers, or other relatives in slave narratives.
5. Examine how female slave narratives retrieve a distorted or erased history of black women.
6. How do the narratives represent "resistance"? What kinds of resistance do the narrative depict?
7. Discuss the role of the following concepts/terms/issues play in one or two texts, and what relationships do they have to each other: manners, education, class, race, gender, freedom, voice, silence, identity, and virtue.
8. What is the "true woman"? How is it defined? How it is racialized? Who creates it, and how? To what extent is this question important in any of the texts?
9. Choose your own topic.