Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

Final Paper and Presentation Guidelines


Final Paper

 

The final paper (2 pp.; MLA format) is a way for you to engage thoughtfully with the issues and questions we have read about and discussed this semester and to bring together skills in reading, critical thinking, and writing that we have worked on these past few months. You will be working with your panel members to focus, strengthen, and fine tune each other's papers. Some final paper topics are suggested below for those who want some inspiration. In responding to the topic, you will need to narrow it down, giving it a focus, a stance, or an argument that becomes your thesis which you then elaborate on and support in your short paper. Give the paper a title. Please e-mail me your session and paper title if, after discussion amongst yourselves and polishing your work, you think another title is more appropriate. Hand in your work in class on Monday, September 17, 2012 and submit a digital copy on Turnitin.com.


Information for initial login to Turnitin.com:

 


Final Paper Topics

1.  Discuss how a seemingly irrelevant episode or scene in the text is in fact relevant or crucial to the work.

2.  Susan Glaspell’s a “Jury of Her Peers” is often analyzed in terms of its feminist message and portrayal of characters clearly categorized as men and women. Examine Glaspell’s handling of her male and female characters and discuss the ways in which they are reductive or sensitive, stereotypical or real, flat or multidimensional.

3.  Examine the internal plot strands that make up Bernard Malamud’s short story “The German Refugee.” Notice, for example, their structure, their thematic symmetry, balance, unity, interrelationship, and parallel or paradoxical trajectories or logic.

4.  Discuss the use of biblical, historical, or literary references or allusions in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In what ways does the novel highlight things differently or give new meanings to the same characters, events, or words, and thereby speaking back to or critiquing those texts as it tells its own story? How does this intertextuality relate to Atwood’s idea of speculative fiction?

5.  Discuss the use of color as motifs in a work we have read. You might consider, for example, the interplay between glimpses of light and of the variety of forbidding blackness (ex. “moist black velvet,” “eyelids”) in “The Most Dangerous Game,” or the function of multiple colors that paint the interior and exterior scenes in The Handmaid’s Tale. What purpose, connection or disconnection might there be in recurring color motifs like the blood red smile on the hooded corpses, the vivid red uniforms of handmaids, and the healing “wounds” of crimson tulips?

6.  How does mediation of information figure in a work of literature? Notice how information in the stories we have read is often filtered through varied forms of media. These can be a character’s limited voice and views in the telling of something, different forms in which information is presented such as spoken words, letters, songs, action/gestures, recordings, photographs or films, and the manner in which they are given. How is information distorted, enhanced, shaped and reshaped through such mediated channels? Why are the particular interventions or manipulations used appropriate or effective in the work?

7.  Examine the social and/or political roles of space in a work we have read. How do location, size, usage, and occupants affect the social or political meaning of the space? What is the purpose of a bed or bedroom as opposed to a kitchen or a chemistry lab and how do these areas designate social and political relationships, empower or limit individuals, or challenge ideologies and authorities? How might the toxicity of the Colonies’ open space make it an effective social regulatory and political management tool? What advantages or disadvantages might grafted, informal, or virtual spaces like a refugee camp, the black market, or “underground” railroads have in society? Aside from these, you might consider the Wall in Gilead, Yonkers or Scarsdale, the Onnut development community land (and how the value of this space can fluctuate), restaurants, or the sidewalk of a public street.

8.  Examine conformity and rebellion in a work we have read. What does conformity entail? What forces compel conformity? What ways, expected and unexpected, have characters found to rebel? Against what codes, institutions or individuals do they rebel? In Tamara Loos’s introduction to Cocktail, for example, what conforming stereotypes are implied when she says that the “Asian alpha female hero” is “something extremely rare,” not only in literary or theater arts but perhaps also in mainstream media and culture (xxv)? And, by contrast, what characteristics then become rebellious in the play?



Revision

Some things to keep in mind as you proofread and edit your work:

 


Final Presentation


Presentations of your final papers will take place on the last two days of class: Monday, September 17, 2012 and Wednesday, September 19, 2012. Each panel of papers will have ten to twenty minutes to present their work (five for each speaker). This will be followed by a ten-minute question and answer session. A moderator will be presiding over the presentations and discussion session of each panel, introducing the speakers, mediating the questions and responses, and making sure things stay on schedule.


A program of the final presentation schedule will be posted on our detailed schedule page once panel and paper titles, speakers and presiding are finalized. You are responsible for e-mailing me your working paper and panel titles and any revisions to them by Saturday, September 16, 2012.


Please inform me of any special equipment needs. Otherwise our usual computer (which uses Microsoft Office 2007) and LCD projector will be provided.



 



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Last updated September 25, 2012