Below are the instructions from my professor, I have also attached a document with texts to choose from. The text used for assessment 1 have already been removed from the document, so youhave free range to choose from the others. The referencing option wasnt available to choose from, but it should be in MHRA
Please answer one question (there are 10 to choose from). In this assessment, you can write about ONE or TWO authors which you haven’t written about for Assessment One (Portfolio). You may not write about the same author and texts twice across the two pieces of assessment. You will not be disadvantaged by writing about only one text/author. This assessment tests your ability to construct a well-formed argument in response to an essay question and your use of detailed examples from the primary text to support your ideas.
QUESTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM:
1. Write an essay about how and why American writers depict country and/or homeland and/or nation in their works.
2. Explore the literary significance of one of the following in one or two American works: fragmentation, trauma, biopolitics, archive, empire, haunting, history, memory, space, truth, crisis and landscape.
3. Explore the literary significance of region or place to the construction of American mythologies.
4. Write an essay about how any one or two texts engage critically the idea of otherness and exchange at the level of content and form. Your answer should analyse the idea of the “other” in any way you find striking – the racial other, gender other, animal other etc.
5. Write an essay about the literary significance of religion and/or belief in American writing of the contemporary period.
6. Write an essay about any provocative treatment of gender and/or sexuality in one or two works of your choice. Your response should attend to both the form and function of literary representation.
7. How and why do American writers challenge foundational myths of America in their works?
8. Consider how and why contemporary writers explore the idea of being and/or becoming American in work(s) of your choice.
9. Write an essay about how work(s) on this module demonstrate a critical concern with language and its representational possibilities in form and content. Your answer should advance an understanding of how the politics of language use are connected to conceptual and/or thematic concerns of the writer.
10.
The promise of U.S. citizenship to deliver sovereignty to all its citizens has always been practiced unevenly, in contradiction with most understandings of democratic ideals (Rancière 1998). The historical conditions of legal and social belonging have been manipulated to serve the concentration of economic, racial, and sexual power in the society’s ruling blocs.
Lauren Berlant, “Citizenship” in Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 2nd edn, ed. by Bruce Burgett & Glenn Hendler (New York: New York University Press, 2014), p.41.
Using the quotation above as a starting point for your discussion, explore how text(s) studied on this module navigate the complexities of the “promise of U.S. citizenship”.
