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Engl 549 Imagination Challenge Numero Dos
What are the scary, unreasonable requirements for your dystopia-laced assignment?
Your essays will run anywhere from 3 to 8 pages (tops); it will be cleverly titled, double-spaced, have 1-inch margins top and sides and be carefully proofread; additionally, it will be chock-full of active verbs and, in general, have syntactic variety so as to avoid the dangers of the IS VIRUS; use MLA or University of Chicago-style works cited pages. Your works of genius are due Monday, April 26, 2010 at noon, outside my door at the end of the hallway, 273 Arts and Letters.
Late papers will not be accepted. Early papers, in most cases, will be cherished lovingly. All A-level critical speculations will integrate carefully selected direct quotations from the primary texts and will avoid ALL of the quicksand-like bad habits noted here on the gradesheet to your right--click it to make it readable. gradesheet. They will, additionally, include researched material from THREE separate research resources found in LOVE LIBRARY stacks--YES, the "stacks, " "stacks (storage space in a library consisting of an extensive arrangement of bookshelves where most of the books are stored)." While you are welcome and even encouraged to make use of material from JSTOR or PROJECTMUSE located in the ONLINE VERSION of LOVE LIBRARY, I also expect you to spend sometime spelunking the stacks in search of published scholary materials that either support your argument or, even more exciting, that your utterly disagree with. One last bit of advice, do NOT plagiarize ANY material from the internet; unCITED material = PLAGIARISM; also, if you are going to "quote" a passage from an illustrated text, go to the bother of xeroxing the image and incorporating it INTO your essay.Where are these prompts that you promised us in class?
Here they are!
Dystopic Prompt Number One:
What is the relationship between humans and machines, what I have called at another time and in another place, the ersatz human? Create a dynamic response to this prompt using TWO or THREE of the following works: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP; CRASH; WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME; CHILDREN OF MEN.
Dystopic Prompt Number Two:
Alfonso Cuarón and J.G. Ballard author unique visions of our present and our future; contrast the peculiar and particular predilections of these distinctive 20th/21st century storytellers. Don't be afraid to pursue biographical information (properly cited) as you bring CHILDREN OF MEN and CRASH into contact/conflict/crisis.
Dystopic Prompt Number Three:
Salvador Plascencia's PEOPLE OF PAPER introduces us to an iconoclastic fantasyland of invention, pain, and loss--in this vein, Plascencia emerges simultaneously as a bibliophile and a dystopian. Contrast the representation
of literature (of any form of textuality) in PEOPLE OF PAPER with one or two other works we have encountered this semester--do NOT focus on a work you addressed in your Imagination Challenge number one.
Dystopic Prompt Number Four:
Adapt the methology used in Tex[t]-Mex and author an addendum chapter to the book focused on the work of Ballard and/or Cuarón.
Dystopic Prompt Number Five:
Invent your own thesis; email me or present to me in class a written proposal for an independent thesis based on at least two of the works we have encountered since late February (this include Marge Piercy's WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME if you did not use it for paper one). This proposal is (at the latest) IN CLASS or AFTER CLASS, Thursday April 15, 2010.
