I have given you some general topics or issues that may help you to formulate ideas for your paper. Keep in mind that even as specific as some of the ideas below are, they are still broad enough that you will need to narrow your focus down in order to develop an effective essay. If you already know what you want to write on, then don't worry about these topics. But, if you are not sure exactly how to get started these questions are a starting point for thinking about some of the issues and ideas we have looked at thus far.

Some Possible Topics:


1. For many years, our understanding of Modern American Poetry was heavily influenced by the ideals of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Works such as Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" or Pound's "A Retrospect" were seen as statements about what Modern Poetry was and how it should be evaluated. The end result of this influence, for most of this century (and it still holds true to a certain extent today), was to relegate many of the American women writers and African-American writers to a more marginalized role or to grant them the status of minor or lesser poets than many of their male contemporaries, such as Eliot, Pound, Williams and Stevens. Even those writers such as H.D., Lowell, and Moore who were active in the same poetic communities as these other writers, their importance to the period has for the most part been obscured. Discuss the work one or more of these poets and their place within our understanding of Modern Poetry. What does their work contribute to our understanding of Modern Poetry? In what way are they similar/different from the male poets who have more traditionally been deemed as the great poets of the modern period?


2. In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison describes her own reading background, including writers like Dostoevsky, Faulkner, James, Flaubert, Melville and Mary Shelley, in order to explain what it is that interests her both about her own writing and her reading experience; she says,

I am in interested in what prompts and makes possible this process of entering what one is estranged from-- and in what disables the foray, for the purposes of fiction, into corners of consciousness held off and away from the reach of the writer's imagination. My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world. To think about (and wrestle with) the full implications of my situation leads me to consider what happens when other writers work in a highly and historically racialized society. For them, as for me, imagining is not merely looking or looking at; nor is it taking oneself intact into the other. It is, for the purposes of the work, becoming. (4)

Discuss Morrison view about the implications of a "highly and historically racialized society." How does Morrison's work reflect her views? You might compare Morrison's notion of the use of the personal with another writer we have read this semester. (for instance, you might look at the use of the personal in "confessional" poetry or in the view of art presented in Rich and the idea that the "Personal is Political.")

3. In Postmodernist Fiction, Brian McHale describes the "dominant" of modern fiction as "epistemological" and the "dominant" of postmodern fiction as "ontological." What he means by this is that the difference between modern and postmodern fiction is the type of questions it raises. Modern fiction asks questions about knowledge-- for instance, "What is there to be known? Who knows it? How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?" etc. (9). But Postmodern fiction asks questions not about knowing but about "modes of being." For instance, rather than asking what we can know postmodern fiction asks questions like "Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?" as well as questions about how literary texts interact with the "worlds" they "project"-- such as "What happens when different kind of world are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated? What is the mode of existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?" (10). Using McHale's definition discuss whether or not one of the works we have read should be considered postmodern. Another possible use of McHale's definition is to provide you with a different way of thinking about the texts that we have read. What kind of questions does the text raise? What insight does this give us into what is happening in the work? This might be particular helpful for thinking about whether a writer is postmodern or not-- something at issue with writers like Morrison or Naylor, or for coming to terms with some of the writers we will read in the next few weeks.

4. Although many of the stories and/or novels we have read recently are narrated in the third person, they limit their perspective through one of the characters (or through several characters, one at a time). Discuss the author's choice of narrative perspective. How does this perspective effect our understanding of the characters and/or events in the novel or story? How does the author use this limited perspective to reveal important insights into the characters or into the theme(s) of the work itself? Discuss the narrative voice in the text and what role that voice or voices play in the construction of the text. What qualities does this voice have? What does this tell us about the work itself? This question also becomes important in other works we have read recently as well. What kind of narrator does the text have? Does it have multiple narrators? Is the narrator omniscient or limited? Reliable or unreliable? What does the narrator tell us? What role does the "not-said" play in the construction of the text?

5. One of the qualities of modern and postmodern texts, especially those by women, is an increasingly explicit discussion of sexuality. While we have been looking at gender issues since the beginning, sexuality prior to the modern period is often dealt with indirectly, or metaphorically. How is sexuality presented and/or conceived in the works we have looked at recently? What role does sexuality play in the novel? What is the connection between sexuality and some of the concepts and ideas we have looked at throughout the semester-- such as class, gender, power relations, marriage, etc.

6. While we often spend class discussions focusing on the main characters in a novel or story, the minor characters often play important roles in the construction of the work as a whole. They may parallel or contrast the main characters; they may provide important background information or insight into the events in the novel, or they may serve to develop related or seemingly unrelated elements and/or issues in the work. Discuss a minor character and their significance to the work as a whole.

7. You might look at one of the concepts associated with Late 19th or early 20th century works, such as the Cult of True Womanhood and see how this concept fits in with a more contemporary work and/or author.

8. In "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision," Adrienne Rich says

Re-vision- the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction- is or us more than a chapter in cultural history; it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. (999)

Kathy Acker, a postmodern critic and novelist points to a similar problem when she begins the second part of her novel Don Quixote by saying (in all caps.) "Being born into a male world, she had no speech of her own. All she could do was read male texts that weren't hers" (39). While Don Quixote can only read "male texts that weren't hers," Acker is performing the kind of "revision" that Rich calls for by rewriting and reimagining this classic piece of literature. Do any of the authors we have read perform some kind of "looking back?" If so, then examine what is seen through the "fresh eyes" of the writers doing the re-vision. Do these works help us understand assumptions or perform a rereading of our cultural history? Why or why not?

9. In "`A Spectator Watching My Life': Adrienne Kennedy's A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White," Deborah R. Geis says that when Clara asks

"Each day I wonder with what or with whom can I coexist in a true union," (Movie Star 82), her words represent the position of the "alienated subject," which seeks to re-inscribe itself as the ego ideal, but which can only do so at the imperfect level of identification with an object. Clara's longing is marked with an intrinsic awareness that the "true union" she desires is as unlikely as the possibility that she could "become" her Bette Davis/Jean Peters persona. (174)

Consider Clara's question and Geis's claims. What view does this work or any other of our readings have about "true union[s]? Do you agree with Geis's view that the play presents Clara's longing as "unlikely"? How is this theme presented in other works? Do they also present such longings as "unlikely"? If they do, then think about what the works are saying about such longings and why they may be impossible to fulfill? If they do not, then what do they reveal about the longing for a "true union" or what it takes to find such fulfillment?

10. We began our discussion of the work of women writers with a discussion of the Puritan understanding of suffering and its importance in the construction of women's spiritual identity. With advances in our understanding of infection, reproduction, and even medical technology, the likelihood that a woman would die in childbirth greatly decreased. Our understanding of women's suffering has changed as well. How is suffering imagined or viewed in modern and/or contemporary works? Is suffering still physical, or has it become more psychological since the beginning of the 20th Century? How are women's bodies connected to or removed from our understanding of suffering in the works we have read recently? You might consider, for instance, how views of the body in writers such as Larsen, Naylor and Kennedy revise or revisit notions of suffering prior to the 20th Century?

11. In "`Making Generations in Jacobs, Larsen, and Hurston: a Genealogy of Black Women's Writing," Patricia Felisa Barbeito discusses the history of slavery and its connection with gender roles. She claims that Larsen's works emphasized the "enslaving effects of race on sexuality" (370). Barbara Johnson, in The Feminist Difference, describes Larsen's presentation of this in one of her novels, Quicksand, as follows:

...it is not Helga's sexuality that has trapped her but rather her attempts to disavow it- her own and society's contradictory responses to it. To be respectable as a "lady" is to have no sexuality; to have sexuality is to be a jungle creature, an exotic primitive, or an oppressed wife and mother. (40)

Does this response describe the presentation of sexuality in writers such as Fauset or Naylor? While this quote applies specifically to the works of Larsen and the sexuality of her African-American characters, you can look at the relationship between society's "contradictory" responses to female sexuality in general. Discuss how any of the writers that we have looked at reflect the contradiction between their characters sexuality and society's view of sexuality?


12. The friendships among women are often emphasized in literary criticism on the works we have read. While such friendships are often seen as revealing essentialist connections among women, many of the works we have read since the last exam illustrate the complicated nature of relationships/friendships between women. Discuss three works that provide insights into the relationships/ friendships between women. How are these friendships presented in the works? What does this reveal about the theme(s) of the individual works?

13. In class, we discussed the way that Mary McCarthy's The Group looks back to the 1930's to make a statement about the 1960's. Choose one of the elements of the novel that you think does this– such as her treatment of sexuality, motherhood and/or child-rearing, politics, women's work, or the domestic realm– and discuss what you think McCarthy is saying about the state of women's lives through her presentation of this element in the novel.

14. In "Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Café," Maxine Montgomery claims

In what is part of her ongoing search for an authorial voice with which to tell- or, rather, retell- the experiences of women of color, Naylor chooses to locate her fourth novel within a specifically cultured and gendered context where voice and all of its associations are directed toward subverting the myriad forms of authority patriarchy legitimizes and constructing a new world order among partially dispossessed women world-wide." (27)

Do you agree with this claim? Does it hold true for other novels we have read, such as Morrison's Paradise? Choose one novel and/or one character within a novel and discuss this idea and how it works (or not) in that novel. You might also consider how novels such as Fauset's There is Confusion or Allison's The Bastard Out of Carolina present dispossessed characters, or you can consider how other novels, such as McCarthy's The Group, present differently "cultured" and "gendered" contexts, and whether or not they are also challenging or subverting the "authority patriarchy legitimizes"?