Dept. of English

ENG 610 The Language of Love, Sex, and Gender Winter 2016

TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM

Due date: Monday, April 18, 2016Time: must be submitted online no later than 3:00pm (see link on D2L Brightspace in

Assignments, Dropbox)

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS:

This is a take-home exercise that should take approximately 1.5 to 2 hours to complete In composing your responses, please make use of whatever textual resources at your disposal

that you deem relevant – this is NOT a closed-book exercise. Take the time to read over all the questions before you begin Proofread your work before you submit the completed exam. All answers should be double-spaced. Make sure your first and last name and your student ID number appear on the first page of your

submitted work. This exam is worth 30% of your final mark for ENG 610.

YOU CANNOT DUPLICATE YOUR WORK FROM EITHER OF THE TWO ESSAYS THAT YOU HAVE SUBMITTED THIS SEMESTER. IF YOU WRITE ON A TOPIC THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY COVERED, YOU MUST DO SO IN THE CONTEXT OF A DIFFERENT LITERARY TEXT. IF YOU USE A LITERARY TEXT THAT YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED, YOU MUST COVER A DIFFERENT TOPIC.

PART ONE: SHORT ANSWER (40%)

INSTRUCTIONS

Choose ONE of the following quotes, taken from the texts on the course syllabus, and write a 2-page essay in response to it (double-spaced). Your response should be written as a short, formal analytic essay with AN UNDERLINED THESIS STATEMENT and a conclusion. In composing your answer, you are required to analyse the significance of the passage in question and contextualize it by discussing its significance in relation to the text as a whole (i.e., how does the passage relate to the text in which it appears?).

1. “He thought about the bridges the train would cross, and bridges that had not yet been envisioned. He knew now that there were schools where you learned how to design bridges that would be built, bridges that were beautiful. This was what he wanted to do. In his pocket lay the Labrador Credit Union bank book containing the record of his father’s gold. He knew on the train that in his thinking he was not so different from his father. His father would, this coming winter,

walk his trapline towards unnamed places, and Wayne would finally be on his way to a landscape that was for him as magnetic and as big as Labrador” (Winter, Annabel 456-57).

2. “Who were these kids? What right had they to be born into a world where they were taught to look endlessly into themselves, to ask how the texture of a mushroom made them feel? To ask themselves, and not be told, whether they were boys or girls? You eat what’s there or you starve” (Fu, For Today I Am a Boy 218).

3. “In 1994, Rolake’s younger brother had died of sickle cell anemia, and her community had come together to mourn him. Now, suddenly, friends and relatives were pouring into the house again, holding out their arms and tear-stained cheeks to her mother. Rolake found herself being waked, just like her brother had been. ‘Watching people come to mourn when you are still alive – it wasn’t a very good feeling. My father had to ask, “Exactly what is the problem now? Have you seen this Rolake you are crying over? She’s okay, she’s fine, she hasn’t changed.”’ He dispatched the would-be mourners. But she couldn’t understand the shock and dismay: it wasn’t just that she was infected, it was the implication. ‘Our kind of people don’t get HIV: my cousin, my brother, my sister can’t get HIV. People like us don’t get HIV – middle-class university graduates. This three million you’re talking about’ – the number of people then infected in Nigeria – ‘they’re not real’” (Nolen, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa 316).

PART TWO: COMPARATIVE ESSAY (60%)

INSTRUCTIONS

Choose ONE of the following topics and write a comparison-contrast essay (double-spaced) using at least two of the texts covered this semester. Note that at least one of those texts must be one of the longer works on the syllabus – i.e., Winterson’s Written on the Body, Winter’s Annabel, Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy, or Nolen’s 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa. For your second text, you may choose another of these longer texts or, instead, use any of the poems or other works (films) covered in class. In constructing an argument, be sure that your thesis statement articulates a clear, logical connection between the two texts you have selected so that you are not simply arguing two parallel theses with limited or arbitrary points of contact. Finally, while you may write on a text that you have previously used in either of the research papers (or in Part One of this exam), you may not duplicate your work. That is to say, you must present wholly original material for this essay and not repeat previous thesis statements or arguments regarding the selected texts. UNDERLINE YOUR THESIS STATEMENT AND THE TOPIC SENTENCES IN EACH OF YOUR PARAGRAPHS.

These extremely general topics are starting points, not actual thesis statements. You will need to transform one of them into an argument. You can start by considering what role the topic plays in the texts, how it is used or ‘deployed’ in the texts, and ultimately what its significance is in helping you to formulate an answer to the question “Therefore what?”.

Take the time to outline your thesis before you write. Your essay will be graded on the quality of your argument and its development, as well as on your mastery of the form of the essay and English syntax and grammar.

LENGTH: 4-5 pages, double-spaced

TOPICS

1. Alterity (Otherness) and/or Difference 2. Liminality or so-called In-between/third spaces 3. Marginalization4. Monsters, the monstrous.5. Performance6. Silence

It’s been a pleasure working with you this semester! Enjoy your break and good luck with the rest of your exams.