Multiculturalism and Literature Term Paper

Description:
Attached are the guidelines to the assignment along with the rubic for evaluation and the course syllabus. Note there are two options, and each option pertains to the major literary readings for the class (Guillermo Verdecchia"s: Fronteras Americanas, Grujinder Basran"s: Everything was Goodbye, Rawi Hage"s: Cockroach, and Laila Halaby"s: Once in a Promise Land). Please let me know if you are familiar with these readings or if you have access to these readings. With that being said, the assignment also asks to include a reading from my course package as a source for the paper, so when you pick what option you want to do and the topic that follows, I will do my best to provide you with a reading from my course package that relates to the specified topic.

EN252: Multiculturalism and Literature Dr. M. Pirbhai / Winter 2017

OPTION 1: Literary Analysis

Evaluation 30% Due Date: Tuesday, March 28

Drawing from the list of suggested topics, this option invites students to provide a close textual analysis of a literary work in light of questions of diversity, citizenship, immigration and cultural or national identities in North America. (Possible topics provided below).

You must choose to write on the major work(s) identified in the suggested topic; if you wrote the first “short essay” on Fronteras Americanas, you must choose one of the other topics based on a different work. (Duplication will result in a failing grade.)

Length: approximately 2000 words or 6-8 pages; typed; double-spaced; Times New Roman 12 font; a cover page with course information and a bibliography page

Research component: provide a minimum of four “secondary sources,” one of which can be an essay or article (i.e., NON-literary) from the course-pack and three articles or essays that you select on your own (ie, to provide historical or other kinds background information, theorize or define terms and concepts, or to provide supporting analysis of a literary work in the form of literary criticism, etc.) Only officially regulated and updated on-line sources and databases may be utilized. Use quotes sparingly and judiciously, being careful to adequately contextualize them and to clearly explicate their relevance. Use MLA format for citations and bibliography.

Submission Policies:
ESSAYS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO MYLS. Emailed assignments will not be accepted. Essays will be penalized 2% per day up to one week, including weekends. Any essays handed in one week after the due date will not be accepted. Requests for extensions will only be considered if they are provided before the essay due-date, and these must be made in person (by appointment or by office hours). Medical reasons must be accompanied by formal documentation.

Suggested topics for Option 1:


• Guillermo Verdecchia’s Fronteras Americanas/American Borders makes an important statement about “ethnicity”—specifically in terms of what constitutes “ethnicity” or ethnic identities in Canada or North America. How does the play challenge the concept of ethnicity? Does the play propose alternate ways of understanding ethnicity?

• One might say that the central thesis of Guillermo Verdeccia Fronteras
Americanas/American Borders is found in the following statement: “And when I say America, I don’t mean a country. I mean a continent. Somos todos Americanos. We are all Americans.” Explain the significance of this statement and analyse the ways in which Verdecchia develops or illustrates his thesis regarding America throughout his play.

• Compare and contrast the narrator’s descriptions, in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, of his childhood in war-torn Beirut to his descriptions of his life as an émigré in Montreal. How does this juxtaposition challenge the view of the homeland left behind as a place
of violence and chaos versus the adopted land as a place of refuge and stability—i.e., as places of stark contrast?

• Analyse the significance of the “cockroach” as a metaphor for the “visible minority” in Rawi Hage’s Cockraoch. How does the narrator’s view of himself as a cockroach symbolize the dehumanization of the “other” or, indeed, celebrate the “other’s” agency in spite of such forms of dehumanization?

• Analyse the significance of “storytelling” as a central device in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land, considering the way Arab storytelling or folktales are used as an expression of resistance and/or a new way of thinking about cultural identity?

• How does Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land disrupt the myth of the “American Dream” for the Arab-American community? How is the American Dream represented as a “myth” rather than a reality? How does 9/11, in particular, shatter the illusions or assumptions associated with this myth?

• As the title suggests, in Gurjinder Basran’s Everything was Goodbye the protagonist Meena’s life is filled with “goodbyes” or acts of “letting go.” Explore this central trope of “letting go” or saying “goodbye” in light of Meena’s development as a “second generation” South Asian Canadian.

• Compare and contrast the central female characters of Meena in Gurjnder Basran’s Everything was Goodbye and Salwa in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land in light of the ways in which diasporic experience is always “gendered.” (Here you might consider such things as each characters’ experience of gendered violence, forms of exoticization, social, religious or cultural expectations and mores, self vs family, etc.)

• Both Rawi Hage’s Cockroach and Guillermo Verdeccia Fronteras
Americanas/American Borders have protagonists that are “split” personalities in unique kinds of ways (“Self/Cockroach” in Cockroach and “Wideload/Verdecchia” in Fronteras Americanas. Analyse the significance of the split identity as it pertains to the immigrant experience in each of these works.





OPTION 2: “Real-World Connections”

Evaluation 30% Due Date: Tuesday, March 28

This option invites students to approach the literary work as a kind of “case study” of a major issue facing first or second generation immigrants, making real-world connections between one of our major literary works (one novel or one play) and current affairs, national debates, or cultural and social issues pertaining to diversity, citizenship, migration, etc. Research should be drawn from news-based sources or academic studies that help establish and explain the central issue under analysis, and students should provide an analysis of the literary work insofar as it helps illustrate this central issue in interesting or significant ways. (Possible topics provided below).


Research component: provide a minimum of five “secondary sources,” one of which can be an essay or article (i.e., NON-literary) from the course-pack, and four that you will select on your own from news-based reportage (newspaper or new magazine articles), and/or relevant academic studies (e.g., sociological, psychological, political science, etc). Only officially regulated and updated online sources and databases may be utilized. Use quotes sparingly and judiciously, being careful to adequately contextualize them and to clearly explicate their relevance. Use MLA format for citations and bibliography.

Length: approximately 2000 words or 6-8 pages; typed; double-spaced; Times New Roman 12 font; a cover page with course information and a bibliography page


Submission Policies:
ESSAYS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO MYLS. Emailed assignments will not be accepted. Essays will be penalized 2% per day up to one week, including weekends. Any essays handed in one week after the due date will not be accepted. Requests for extensions will only be considered if they are provided before the essay due-date, and these must be made in person (by appointment or by office hours). Medical reasons must be accompanied by formal documentation.


Develop your analysis of one of the major literary readings for this class (i.e., Guillermo
Verdecchia’s Fronteras Americanas, Gurjinder Basran’s Everything Was Goodbye, Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, OR Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land), around one of the issuebased topics below. (You may come up with your own central “issue” with my approval.)

Note: if you wrote the first “short essay” (due in January) on Fronteras Americanas, you must choose a different major work (i.e., either Cockroach, Once in a Promised Land or Everything was Goodbye). (Duplication will result in a failing grade.)


Obstacles to employment
Religious Identity as a marker of difference
Islamophobia or other forms of xenophobia
Multiculturalism as an ongoing national debate
“Culture Clash” or Intergenerational conflicts Interracial marriage
9/11 and Arab-American or Muslim identities National or social constructions of “refugeehood”
Issues specific to the “second generation”
Isolation, Depression or Mental Illness and immigrant experience
Divided loyalties: political, racial or other
Forms of discrimination, racism, or prejudice
Issues specific to the “skilled” or professional immigrant
Class or gender as factors affecting the immigrant experience
Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism
Absence of Family or Community Kinship/Support
“Imperative Patriotism” (see Salaita article)