CBU Literature Influences Essay

Overview

In these responses, I want to see you grappling with key course themes, issues, or questions. I also want to see you demonstrate your original critical and creative thinking about the texts we are reading, particularly as you interpret the literary works in their historical and cultural contexts. Your response should offer a thesis-driven argument about the text, and you should draw in key textual evidence to build your analysis. Although your response will likely build on content from course lectures and discussion, you should write with the goal of moving beyond what we have discussed in class to develop your own argument and interpretation. Response paper prompts this semester will vary in purpose and style. Some prompts will ask for more traditional close reading or historical research, while others may allow for more creative or non-traditional work. Others will explicitly ask you to synthesize readings of multiple works, including primary and secondary texts.

Your response should be well-written, organized into a short essay, and cited appropriately. Remember, for your first 3 responses, you will have a revise and resubmit option to improve your grade; however, this option requires that you (1) submit the initial response within its submission window and (2) schedule a virtual office hours appointment with me to discuss your work and ideas for improvement before you will be given a resubmission window on Canvas.

Guidelines

This response should be approximately 3-4 double-spaced pages (no less than 2.5 but no more than 5). Acceptable fonts include Times New Roman and Calibri (sizes 10-12). Your goal should be to write something of a promising quality; that is, it should be well-written, well-edited, and formal, but it might be the first draft of an idea that could be further explored in a longer project. Strong responses will make use of the reading(s); you should draw from the text(s) and quote specific textual examples. Please cite specific passages and examples in whatever option you choose, using parenthetical references and MLA or Chicago citation style. The best responses make clear use of the readings, analyze possible meanings, and respond to thoughtfully selected quotations and key ideas with interpretation.

The Resources for Writing about Literature module in Canvas offers support and for your written assignments.

Prompt Choices

Choose one of the following options. You should choose the option that you think will provide a spark for your thinking about the literary texts. Please be sure to reference and analyze specific passages from the literary work(s) in your response.

1) Enduring Themes and Novel Forms: George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo challenges us as readers by defying our expectations for narrative and genre, by drawing us into a ghostly and spiritual realm, and by positioning us in perhaps a more familiar moment in U.S. history in an unfamiliar position. Yet, at the same time, the novel is deeply human. The Man Booker Prize page describes the book as follows: “Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief, and the deeper meaning and possibilities of life.” Of his own work, George Saunders suggests the central question at the center of the novel is, “How do we continue to love in a world in which the objects of our love are so conditional?” What, in the end, stand out to you as the major theme(s) of the novel, and how does Saunders achieve a well-known and human theme, in the end, through such experimental form? How does the form of the novel help Saunders explore an enduring theme in a new way? And, importantly, how does using this real-life tragedy experienced by the Lincoln family and this historical setting allow Saunders to offer a critique of our current moment through the historical novel? Your response should be thesis-driven and built through the careful analysis of evidence selected from the text.

2) Reading the Double Lens: As a historical novel, Saunders's Lincoln and the Bardo has a double lens to its critique of society; that is, it can speak to both the time of its setting (1862) and the time of its publication (2017). In "Who are all these Trump Supporters?, (Links to an external site.)" an essay he wrote for the New Yorker (published July 11, 2016), Saunders surveys Trump rallies on the presidential campaign trail, thus offering us a rare glimpse into what he was thinking about and what his anxieties were in 2016. Find a key detail or two in Saunders's essay for the New Yorker that you think provide some insight into reading the double lens in Lincoln in the Bardo. Write a thesis-driven response in which you explain how we might read the double lens in the novel and better understand Saunders's ideas about the time of the novel's publication through details from his New Yorker essay. Your response should work with quoted examples from both the essay and the novel in building its critical analysis.

3) Applying a Methodology: In "Affective Economies," Sara Ahmed outlines a theory of how affect operates. In class, we have been discussing how literary research brings together the text, contexts, and theory/methodologies. Ahmed's piece is an example of the latter group. How can we apply Ahmed's ideas from "Affective Economies" to read Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo? For this response option, craft a thesis in which you explain how affect opens up our reading of Lincoln in the Bardo, and use concepts, language, and ideas from Ahmed to create a critical interpretation of the novel. Your essay should end up quoting both Ahmed's article and Saunders's novel. You might think of your essay as a response to this question: how can we see affective economies at work in Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo?