final essay topics
amlit338
English 338
April 11, 2006
Susan M. Schultz
Final Essay: Due Last Day of Class
This essay will be 6-8 pages, double-spaced lidat. These are prompts: the actual focus and trajectory of your essay is up to you. Stay focused. Write a cogent argument. Please feel free to come see me with ideas, or a draft.
1. Read Alani Apio’s Kamau A`e (xerox my copy) and write an essay in which you analyze at least one element (or two interlocking elements) in the play: the characters’ uses of language(s); how ethical issues are treated; why the play ends as it does. You may choose your own preoccupation, but be sure to use a lot of evidence from the text in support of your argument.
2. Write an alternative ending to Kamau, then at least 3 pages of analysis. What is it in Apio’s play that would lead to this ending, as opposed to the one we read? How does your ending solve, or fail to solve, the issues raised in the play.
3. Check out Andy Bumatai’s video, All in the Ohana (1980). Write an essay in which you compare and contrast Bumatai’s treatment of the lease-hold and land issue with that of Alani Apio in Kamau.
4. [If you didn’t choose this one the first time; and don’t write on the same author twice in the semester.] Write a dialogue between two of the authors we’ve read this semester, in which they discuss at least one of the major issues raised by their books. They may exchange small talk, jokes, but keep these to a minimum. This dialogue must do the work of an essay (analysis, evidence that you’ve understood the texts, and so on).
5. Write an essay in which you explain one scene in a local play to someone from somewhere else (Kansas, say), who knows nothing of local culture. Your explanations need to be thorough, and relevant to a good interpretation of the play.
6. As several of you have noted, there has been a great deal of violence in the books we’ve read, from the violence of war (Dispatches, Dien Cai Dau), to violence within communities (“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Jazz). Write an essay in which you discuss violence in Barbara Jane Reyes’s Poeta en San Francisco. What are the effects of war, colonialism, and violence against women on the streets of Reyes’s city?
English 338
April 11, 2006
Susan M. Schultz
Final Essay: Due Last Day of Class
This essay will be 6-8 pages, double-spaced lidat. These are prompts: the actual focus and trajectory of your essay is up to you. Stay focused. Write a cogent argument. Please feel free to come see me with ideas, or a draft.
1. Read Alani Apio’s Kamau A`e (xerox my copy) and write an essay in which you analyze at least one element (or two interlocking elements) in the play: the characters’ uses of language(s); how ethical issues are treated; why the play ends as it does. You may choose your own preoccupation, but be sure to use a lot of evidence from the text in support of your argument.
2. Write an alternative ending to Kamau, then at least 3 pages of analysis. What is it in Apio’s play that would lead to this ending, as opposed to the one we read? How does your ending solve, or fail to solve, the issues raised in the play.
3. Check out Andy Bumatai’s video, All in the Ohana (1980). Write an essay in which you compare and contrast Bumatai’s treatment of the lease-hold and land issue with that of Alani Apio in Kamau.
4. [If you didn’t choose this one the first time; and don’t write on the same author twice in the semester.] Write a dialogue between two of the authors we’ve read this semester, in which they discuss at least one of the major issues raised by their books. They may exchange small talk, jokes, but keep these to a minimum. This dialogue must do the work of an essay (analysis, evidence that you’ve understood the texts, and so on).
5. Write an essay in which you explain one scene in a local play to someone from somewhere else (Kansas, say), who knows nothing of local culture. Your explanations need to be thorough, and relevant to a good interpretation of the play.
6. As several of you have noted, there has been a great deal of violence in the books we’ve read, from the violence of war (Dispatches, Dien Cai Dau), to violence within communities (“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Jazz). Write an essay in which you discuss violence in Barbara Jane Reyes’s Poeta en San Francisco. What are the effects of war, colonialism, and violence against women on the streets of Reyes’s city?
posted by Susan at 11:15 AM
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