This comprehensive final exam invites you to move beyond textual analysis in order to develop arguments about the relationship between literature and the world. Drawing on your readings, discussions, video lectures, and the analytical skills you have developed with CRIT, develop thoughtful, reflective, and original arguments about your choice of literature that respond to each of the questions below. Each response should (1) demonstrate each step of the CRIT process for at least two texts, (2) compare and contrast both the textual and contextual elements of each text, and (3) develop an arguable thesis that answers the question using evidence from the text and context.
As with the midterm and your CRIT practice in general, no outside research is needed to respond to questions of context; instead, use the contexts provided in the video lectures for the course. If you are incorporating prior knowledge or information learned from other courses, please acknowledge the course name and/or text where you have learned this material. In order to meet the minimum standards for passing, you must incorporate direct, specific evidence from the text (in the form of quotations/strong lines or page/paragraph/line references) to support your claims; simple summaries, identification of themes, assumptions, or generalizations will not meet the standards for passing. Similarly, the arguments you develop should be original to you (i.e., representing your thinking and interpretation based on your reading) and should be arguable (i.e., a reasonable person can disagree with you).
Finally, responses do not necessarily need to be structured as essays or even in paragraphs. You can use a table or bulleted lists, for instance, for your comparative reading (CRIT) of the texts you select. You are free to number your responses following the numbering of the questions posed. As long as your response clearly answers the question, you may submit it in the form that works best for you, including a video or audio submission.
Question #1: Contemporary American Identities, Traditional American Literary Forms
Throughout the semester, we have discussed the relationship of literacy practices (reflect back on journals 1 and 2, for instance) and literary form to the worldview that they express. We have, for example, discussed the ways in which various texts have highlighted or problematized the internal contradictions within particular historical moments or sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on your understanding of the relationship between literacy/literary form and worldview/identity, answer the questions below to deepen critical thinking and reflection through comparative analysis.
Select two texts from the list below and explain how the literacy framework or formal literary elements of each perform, evoke, reflect, or otherwise complicate a particular worldview, identity, or way of knowing.
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”
Corky Gonzalez, “I Am Joaquín”
John Okada, from No No Boy
Sandra Cisneros, “Mericans”
Sherman Alexie, “Dear John Wayne”
Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter”
How does the depiction of identity in these texts compare/contrast with earlier representations of Americanness we have encountered in the course? How do they compare/contrast with earlier representations of American literary traditions? (Be sure to cite specific texts as examples and evidence.)
Question #2: Cultivating Superpowers: Contemporary American Literacies and Literary Forms
In the first module of this course, we examined the relationship between literacy and worldview by centering Mesoamerican performative and multimodal literacy practices. In reading journal 1, you were invited to reflect on your reading history and how you have engaged with forms of literacy beyond the silent, individual engagement with alphabetic texts. Incorporating graphic novels and comics into the last module of the course invites you to deepen your reflections on alternative forms of literacy and how these communicate worldview, consciousness, and identity. For this question, you will practice reading the graphic novel through the theoretical lens provided by Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of new mestiza consciousness. Please comprehensively answer the questions below with specific examples from the text to support your responses.
Describe your experience of reading the selections from Borderlands and the graphic novel/comic you selected for this reading journal. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? What was your approach to the graphic literature, and how did it compare or contrast to your approach to other genres we’ve encountered throughout the semester?
What is “new mestiza consciousness,” according to Gloria Anzaldúa? How does Anzaldúa’s aesthetic theory (as developed in chapter 6 of Borderlands) relate to her theory of new mestiza consciousness? What are some of the formal elements of Borderlands that convey or communicate these theories, and how specifically do they work to perform them?
Anzaldúa claims that new mestiza consciousness is able to balance contradiction, to make space for multiple, inclusive, and even oppositional ideas and ways of knowing. In what ways do the graphic novel/memoir you read balance image with text to convey specific worldviews or ways of knowing? How does this form of storytelling relate to other forms of narration we have encountered throughout the term? Focusing on the graphic novel/comic you read, describe the narrative and graphic elements that allow the story to convey a particular central idea. Articulate that central idea and explain how both the form and meaning may be interpreted through an Anzaldúan lens.
Question #3: Cumulative
Since the beginning of the term, you have been invited to reflect on your literacy practices and how they impact or represent your identities and ways of making sense of the world around you. Use your reflections on your reading process as well as your understanding of the various aesthetic theories we have encountered this term to explain how your understanding of literacy has evolved over the course of this term, the place of non-alphabetic literacies in your own practice, and how this impacts your understanding of yourself and your worldview.
In reading journal 1, you explained how your literacy practices relate to your worldview. Return to that response and explain how your understanding of the relationship between literacy and worldview has evolved over the course of the term.
Throughout the course, Dr. CdeBaca-Cruz has referenced schema, the structures our brain develops based on experiences that inform how we make sense of and respond to new information and experiences. Describe your schema for American literature at the beginning of the course and compare/contrast it to your schema for American literature now. Cite specific texts, lectures, and/or assignments that have contributed to this evolution, grounding your response in specific passages, moments, practices, or skills/knowledge. In short, tell us the story of how your schema for American literature has grown and developed over the course of this term.
Question #4: Cumulative
We have encountered three different aesthetic theories, each of which explore some aspect of American worldview and identity. Select either Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” W.E.B. DuBois’s “Of Our Spiritual Striving,” or James Baldwin’s “The Creative Process” and compare/contrast it to Gloria Anzaldúa’s “In Tlilli, In Tlipalli” and “New Mestiza Consciousness.”
What worldview does each work espouse? Draw on specific passages from each to support your response.
How do they relate to each other? Compare/contrast each theory and consider the impact of social, historical, cultural, and/or biographical context on the relationship between the two.
And what does each say about the relationship of this worldview to art? Cite specific passages to compare/contrast the relationship of worldview to art in each aesthetic theory.
