For my presentation, I plan on looking at The Scarlet Letter for the most part. My main idea connects to my group in the sense that I talk about how human rights are given or withheld based on how a being fits into the majority definition of what a human is. Examples of this include: … [Read more…]
What is it saying generally? What specific phrases or ideas do you need to focus on? How does it connect to surrounding passages, or to the broader point of the essay? What interpretive questions does it raise for you? How would you present “the work” of this passage to another reader? The passage I … [Read more…]
The artifact I ended up going with from the MWWC was a very old edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book itself looked really run down and used and the cover was really cracked. It stood out to me that the pages looked either warn, ripped and uneven. So finding specific … [Read more…]
Prompt: Compare O’Connor’s reading of the play to your own and assess its uses and limits. What is useful about her analysis that you would forward (and how)? What are some of its limits, in your view, and how would you counter them? You might also consider how Parks herself forwards or counters Hawthorne’s representation … [Read more…]
To begin my search for articles on the MLA bibliography, I thought about a possible topic I may be exploring with my midterm and ultimately my final presentation. The Scarlet Letter is the book that we’ve talked about that has stood out to me the most, so that’s where I started. Then I wanted to … [Read more…]
Literature has certainly been a medium in which people hide political or social agendas behind the imagery. Look at Thomas Moore’s Utopia for example. Moore lived in an influential position that gained his status with his peers. However, he was fairly unhappy with the political power and the function of the state in England at that time. … [Read more…]
With her essay, Murphy hopes to draw a close connection between literature and scientific debate. She brings Heart and Science up as a point of reference when talking about how literature can help readers understand one side of an argument. In her conclusion, Murphy says Heart and Science, “[seeks] to negotiate a way between the polarities of ‘heart’ … [Read more…]
Works of literature have always been powerful tools in shaping reader understanding of societal issues. An author may find themselves playing with their own thoughts about an issue arising around them. To inspire Collins to create the world of Heart and Science, something around the topic of animal testing had to be bothering him. Otis … [Read more…]
Prompt: Allen Smith’s essay is explicitly concerned with the “terms of contemporaneous racial discourse” (564) that he holds should inform our reading of Victor but which have not factored in some of the novel’s most recent criticism. What have been the dominant terms of those other readings? How does Smith change or add to them … [Read more…]
Prompt: Compare your own prior reading of Frankenstein to the Critical History. How have you interpreted the novel? Where might you position yourself within the critical history? Do you seem to follow one perspective or to work among many critical approaches? Is there anything in the history that surprises you? Response: In my history as a student, … [Read more…]
