Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu

The Literature of Identity: The Novel of Minorities in the USA

MA in English Language and Literature
Course convenor: Ana-Karina Schneider, PhD

Take-home exam:

Theoretician Renato Rosaldo alleges:

“Cultural citizenship operates in an uneven field of structural inequalities where the dominant
claims of universal citizenship assume a propertied white male subject and usually blind
themselves to their exclusions and marginalizations of people who differ in gender, race,
sexuality and age. Cultural citizenship [should attend], not only to dominant exclusions and
marginalizations, but also to subordinate aspirations for and definitions of enfranchisement.”
(“Cultural citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism” 1997: 37, my emphasis)

Where culture is generally defined as “the way in which subjective experience is organised”
(Henry Nash Smith), how do the writers we have studied this semester participate in and
represent their cultural appurtenance to the USA? In other words, how do they assert their
“subordinate aspirations for and definitions of enfranchisement”?

Write a 2,000-word argumentative essay in which you explain, in view of the quote and
questions above, the relevance to American culture of the literature of women writers
belonging to various ethnic and/ or gender minorities. Feel free to make frequent reference to
the critical texts we have read this semester and to illustrate with reference to at least two
literary texts.

Remember: An essay is an informed, logical demonstration of a thesis which is clearly

announced in the introductory paragraph of the essay and pursued consistently and
argumentatively throughout.

Things I will look for in evaluating your essays:

1. the correctness and sophistication of your English;

2. the logical argumentation of your thesis;
3. the structure of your essay;
4. comparative approach;
5. your understanding of critical schools and approaches;
6. your understanding of issues such as marginalisation, race, class, gender, identity etc.;
7. your critical understanding of the theoretical texts;
8. originality.

Please submit your essay as a hard copy rather than via email. Thank you and good luck!
Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu
The Literature of Identity: The Novel of Minorities in the USA
MA in English Language and Literature
Course convenor: Ana-Karina Schneider, PhD

Take-home assignment for students who have not attended the seminar:

America’s rainbow diversity has resulted not only from immigration, but also from the
unwilling Middle Passage of the slave trade and, as with Chicanos and Native Americans and
in fact Anglo women as well, by incorporating, and sometimes acculturating, assimilating or
silencing categories of people who were already there. As a young Chicano poet has aptly put
it, with the latter it was a case of “Yo no crucé la frontera, la frontera me cruzó a mí” (I did
not cross the border; the border crossed me). Choose one of these three sources of diversity
and discuss the way in which they participate in American culture, illustrating with quotes
from and references to at least two literary texts.1 Also, feel free to make frequent and ample
reference to the critical texts we have read as part of the lecture course this semester. Write a
750-1,000-word comparative response paper in which you do this.

Remember: An essay (or response paper) is an informed, logical demonstration of a thesis

which is clearly announced in the introductory paragraph of the essay and pursued
consistently and argumentatively throughout.

Things I will look for in evaluating your essays:

1. the correctness and sophistication of your English;

2. the logical argumentation of your thesis;
3. the structure of your essay;
4. your understanding of critical schools and approaches;
5. your understanding of issues such as marginalisation, race, class, gender, identity etc.;
6. your critical understanding of the theoretical texts;
7. originality/ personal interpretation.

Deadline: 27 January 2011.

Please submit your response paper as a hard copy rather than via email. Thank you.

1
Different from the ones you will refer to in the final paper.