Seminar on Language and Literature-Title Submission

As agreed, this week you will submit your topic for your thesis proposal. If you have a couple of topics in mind, but are not sure which one is the most interesting and workable, you may submit 2-3 topics. To do this, just click comment !

END-OF-TERM EXAM, PMA CLASS

Answer the following questions in at least 200 words each. Do NOT copy the words from the references. Instead, use your own words to show your understanding of the issues.

Work individually. Any similar answers may cause failure in PMA class.

1. The Hollywood actor Will Smith suggests that American movies are significant in revealing multiculturalism by stating that each movie tells the world that America is a country that evolves through social and political and religious differences. Explain what he means by using three examples of movie titles.
2. What American values are reflected in American sports movies?
3. How is multiculturalism in America reflected in Indigenous or East-Asian literature?
4. How does American government manage to give social safety to its people in terms of health?

Possible references:

1. Articles in the CD
2. Two e-journals found in the links in the previous post
3. Other printed/internet sources

Due on Friday, June 12, 2009; 1 p.m. (handwriting or print-out accepted)

AMERICAN SOCIETY (PMA) CLASS

Follow the links to get to two e-journal articles on American movie business and Multiculturalism in American Literature. While it would be very interesting to read the whole parts of the articles for your knowledge, it would be wise to focus on some chapters to get prepared for the Final Exam.

American Movie Business
http://www.america.gov/media/pdf/ejs/0607.pdf#popup

Assigned sections:
What’s American about American Movies?
Field Dreams:American Sports Movies

Multiculturalism in American Literature
http://www.america.gov/media/pdf/ejs/0209.pdf#popup

Assigned sections:
We are a Nation of Many Voices
Indigenous Americans
East-Asian Americans

Besides the above reading assignments, chapters 9-12 of the Portrait of the USA (CD materials)will also be parts of materials for the Final Exam.

Good luck with the reading!

Themes to explore for Final Paper (LA Prose and Theory of Literature I)

Please find the following themes to write a paper of about 8-10 pages. The topic you choose should be different from the one you used for your group presentations (both for The Scarlet Letter and The Bluest Eye). Otherwise, you will be penalized.

The paper should be written using A4-sized paper, Times New Roman 12, 1.5-spaced. The due date is June 19, 2009 (print-out and soft copy, please).

Well, have fun researching!

Daisy Miller

1. Value Differentiation
2. Freedom versus repression
3. Social class
4. Social status
5. Self-actualization


The Scarlet Letter

1. Alienation
2. Breaking Society's Rules
3. Appearance vs Reality
4. Love Triangles
5. Religious Communities
6. The Nature of Evil
7. Identity and Society

The Bluest Eye

1. White Beauty Standard
2. Sexual Initiation and Abuse
3. The Power of Seeing and Being Seen
4. Parenthood
5. The Effect of White Cultural Values on Black Culture
6. Satisfying Appetites vs Suppressing them
7. Acceptance of Anger within Oneself
8. Self-Hatred
9. Self-esteem/self-concept

Theory Literature I Midterm Test

Instructions:

Click the above title to go to the National Geographics site, then do the following:

1. "Read" the picture shown in the site using a semiotic perspective.
2. Read the article following the picture and attempt to make a summary of various signs of beauty.
3. Use your summary as the source of a semiotic analysis.

Due date : Friday, May 1, 2009, 15.00

Themes to explore in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Discuss one of the following themes found in The Bluest Eye to get prepared for next week's presentation. This time, let's do something more challenging. Find some theoretical explanations to support the theme, and, as usual, relate the extrinsic elements to the intrinsic ones (characterization, setting, motifs, symbols, etc.)

Here is a list of interesting themes in the novel:

1. White Beauty Standard
2. Sexual Initiation and Abuse
3. The Power of Seeing and Being Seen
4. Parenthood
5. The Effect of White Cultural Values on Black Culture
6. Satisfying Appetites vs Suppressing them
7. Acceptance of Anger within Oneself
8. Self-Hatred

Also, read the following summary of motifs that frequently occur in the novel and see how these motifs help reveal the theme.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes.

The Dick-and-Jane Narrative

The novel opens with a narrative from a Dick-and-Jane reading primer, a narrative that is distorted when Morrison runs its sentences and then its words together. The gap between the idealized, sanitized, upper-middle-class world of Dick and Jane (who we assume to be white, though we are never told so) and the often dark and ugly world of the novel is emphasized by the chapter headings excerpted from the primer. But Morrison does not mean for us to think that the Dick-and-Jane world is better—in fact, it is largely because the black characters have internalized white Dick-and-Jane values that they are unhappy. In this way, the Dick and Jane narrative and the novel provide ironic commentary on each other.

The Seasons and Nature

The novel is divided into the four seasons, but it pointedly refuses to meet the expectations of these seasons. For example, spring, the traditional time of rebirth and renewal, reminds Claudia of being whipped with new switches, and it is the season when Pecola's is raped. Pecola's baby dies in autumn, the season of harvesting. Morrison uses natural cycles to underline the unnaturalness and misery of her characters' experiences. To some degree, she also questions the benevolence of nature, as when Claudia wonders whether “the earth itself might have been unyielding” to someone like Pecola.

Whiteness and Color

In the novel, whiteness is associated with beauty and cleanliness (particularly according to Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove), but also with sterility. In contrast, color is associated with happiness, most clearly in the rainbow of yellow, green, and purple memories Pauline Breedlove sees when making love with Cholly. Morrison uses this imagery to emphasize the destructiveness of the black community's privileging of whiteness and to suggest that vibrant color, rather than the pure absence of color, is a stronger image of happiness and freedom.

Eyes and Vision

Pecola is obsessed with having blue eyes because she believes that this mark of conventional, white beauty will change the way that she is seen and therefore the way that she sees the world. There are continual references to other characters' eyes as well—for example, Mr. Yacobowski's hostility to Pecola resides in the blankness in his own eyes, as well as in his inability to see a black girl. This motif underlines the novel's repeated concern for the difference between how we see and how we are seen, and the difference between superficial sight and true insight.

Dirtiness and Cleanliness

The black characters in the novel who have internalized white, -middle-class values are obsessed with cleanliness. Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove are excessively concerned with housecleaning—though Mrs. Breedlove cleans only the house of her white employers, as if the Breedlove apartment is beyond her help. This fixation on cleanliness extends into the women's moral and emotional quests for purity, but the obsession with domestic and moral sanitation leads them to cruel coldness. In contrast, one mark of Claudia's strength of character is her pleasure in her own dirt, a pleasure that represents self-confidence and a correct understanding of the nature of happiness.

It's The Scarlet Letter Time!

The Scarlet Letter is one of the best works of American Literature, and it's really worth reading. As the first novel to be discussed in our LA Prose class, it's a good idea to focus on several themes. These are some common themes that appear in The Scarlet Letter:

1. Alienation
2. Breaking Society's Rules
3. Appearance vs Reality
4. Love Triangles
5. Religious Communities
6. The Nature of Evil
7. Identity and Society

Work in groups of four, and select one of the above themes and specify your topic for next week's presentation. Use powerpoint slides, and as always, use some quotations from the novel to support your analysis. Well, good luck researching!