INSTRUCTIONS for my exam
This is a 2-hour examination, but I can use the full 3 hours
Below, please find three prompts. When I arrive to the exam, I will be given two of these. I have to answer ONE of the two I am are given.
to prepare for this exam I would like you to give me a full outline for 2 of these 3 prompts to write about 1000 words so I can study and prepare to write about them in class. once you have accepted this task and send me the two prompts you seem fit I will give you the necessary documents to create an outline for them.
prompts;
1. How has exile defined the US South?
Flannery O’Connor said “To know oneself is to know one’s region. It is also to know the world, and it is also, paradoxically, a form of exile from that world.” Discuss the U.S. South in terms of exile. To what extent does an idea of southern identity rest on connection to place? To what extent does disconnection define what it is to be a southerner? Provide at least one literary example and at least two musical examples of southern exile to make your argument. Be sure to incorporate specific historical material to support your answers.
2. Can literature or music be defined as “southern”?
What exactly is the genre of “southern music”? What is the genre of “southern literature”? Basing your argument of discussions of at least one literary example and at least two musical examples, discuss the ways in which the U.S. South defines (or does not) the cultural expressions that emerge from it. What does it mean to say that a piece of literature is “southern”? Is there something essential about the connection between the land and the cultural expression emerging out of it? Or not? Be sure to base your answers on at least two crucial historical points.
3. Is southern identity contradictory by definition?
Basing your argument on at least one literary example and at least two musical examples, make an analysis of the idea that southern identity is an essentially contradictory category. You may wish to include ideas about who qualifies as possessing “southern” identity, and who has been excluded from that designation. Make sure to bring in key historical information, particularly taking into account the “repeated disruptive change in the history of the South” (Brundage 2023, x).
