English 111/002 In-Class Essay

English 111/002 – In-Class Essay Friday, November 8, 2013, 10:00am-10:50am, in your discussion groups

Write a well-argued, critically focused essay on ONE of the following topics. Do not repeat your essay topic from the previous in-class assignment. You may bring your textbooks and a printed copy of this topic sheet with you. You are allowed to write notes on this sheet, but you MUST write the essay itself in class, on the paper provided. Notes can include an outline, citations, key points, and other source material. You are not allowed to use any electronic devices (tablets, phones, laptops) while you write the in-class essay. Please be aware that you need to establish a clear critical argument for your essay: why does each author frame her ideas in the language and form she has chosen? How do elements of style, structure and form contribute to meaning?

1. Compare and contrast how Karen Blixen and Kathleen Jamie, OR how Karen Blixen and Marjane Satrapi, present the relationship(s) between place and voice. What are the connections between who they say they are and where they find themselves?

2. Compare and contrast the representation of the medical in Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Jamie's "Surgeon's Hall" or "Fever." What role does the language of medicine and/or the medicalization of bodies play in each author's narrative? How do medical spaces shape how Didion and Jamie experience themselves as subjects (writers, spouses, mothers)?

3. "I had noticed, more than noticed, the cobwebs, and the shoaling light, and the way the doctor listened, and the flecked tweed of her skirt, and the speckled bird and the sickle-cell man's slim feet. Isn't that a kind of prayer? The care and maintenance of the web of our noticing, the paying heed?" (Kathleen Jamie, “Fever”) Compare and contrast the ways in which the texts of TWO of the writers on the course syllabus engage with the idea of deliberate attention? How do these writers relate the intensifying of "the web of our noticing" with literary practice?

4. Compare and contrast the connections made between gender and power (or gender and disempowerment) in the work of TWO of the writers on the course syllabus. How does Jamie, Greenlaw, Satrapi, Didion or Blixen understand the challenges presented to her by the social and cultural roles associated with women’s lives?