Faculty of Arts
ESSAY TOPICS
Essay 1: For Chris Arkinstall.
Comparison of García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba and Rodoreda’s La plaza del Diamante.
Due Date: Friday, 16 April, by 5p.m (N.B.: Friday of the first week on the Easter break).
You may submit the final version of your essay to Turnitin (see below) and your teacher from 2 April onwards.
NB: When you submit an essay for this course, you will first need to use Turnitin (see pages 8-10). Once you have followed the procedure for this, please place your essay in the essay box on the 6th Floor, Arts 1 Building, outside the Secretary's office (Room 612), from where it will be collected and stamped with the date received. With your essay you will need to submit an Assignment Cover Sheet, available from the SELL Office (Room 612).
Note that e-mailed essays will not be accepted; if you wish to submit an essay from outside of Auckland, you should ensure that a hard copy arrives by mail by the due date. Please keep a photocopy of your essay, as well as the electronic version.
Percentage of Total Mark: 20%.
Please observe the requirements regarding “Plagiarism” and "Essay Writing and Presentation," as provided in this handout, pages 11-15. Your essay may be in either English or Spanish.
Length: 2000 words (No marks will be given for a longer essay. You should aim for synthesis and clarity of expression).
Bearing in mind the social and historical contexts of the texts, choose ONE of the following topics and develop with regard to García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba and Rodoreda’s La plaza del Diamante, referring closely to these works:
1. “Being positioned on the margin of the dominant discourse seems to express itself in a preoccupation with boundaries, space and occupation. . . . boundaries are both actual and psychological. . . . [There are] two kinds of boundaries: those effected by society, often through the law, as walls of resistance to women’s equality or power and those less obvious, but more insidiously powerful boundaries, which lie within the female psyche as a result of her socialisation. . . . [These] may be likened to the ha-ha, a boundary to a garden or park so designed that it does not interrupt the view because it exists as a sunken wall, fence or trench.” (“Introduction,” Landscapes of Desire. Metaphors in Modern Women’s Fiction, Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik [NY/London: Harvester, 1990, 6-12)
2. For Mary Douglas, “[t]he body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious. . . . [T]he body [is] a symbol of society, and . . . the powers and dangers credited to social structure [are] reproduced in small on the human body.” (Purity and Danger 115)
3. “Since political structures and political ideas shape and set the boundaries of public discourse and of all aspects of life, even those excluded from participation in politics are defined by them. 'Non-actors,' to use Mason's term, are acting according to rules established in political realms; the private sphere is a public creation; those absent from official accounts partook nonetheless in the making of history; those who are silent speak eloquently about the meanings of power and the uses of political authority." (Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History 24)
Essay 2: For Wendy-Llyn Zaza.
Comparison of Paloma Pedrero’s La isla amarilla and Eva Hibernia’s Los días perdidos.
Due Date: Tuesday, 25 May, by 5p.m (Tuesday of Week 11).
You may submit the final version of your essay to Turnitin (see below) and your teacher from 14 May onwards.
NB: When you submit an essay for this course, you will first need to use Turnitin (see pages 8-10). Once you have followed the procedure for this, please place your essay in the essay box on the 6th Floor, Arts 1 Building, outside the Secretary's office (Room 612), from where it will be collected and stamped with the date received. With your essay you will need to submit an Assignment Cover Sheet, available from the SELL Office (Room 612).
Note that e-mailed essays will not be accepted; if you wish to submit an essay from outside of Auckland, you should ensure that a hard copy arrives by mail by the due date. Please keep a photocopy of your essay, as well as the electronic version.
Percentage of Total Mark: 20%.
Please observe the requirements regarding “Plagiarism” and “Essay Writing and Presentation,” as provided in this handout, pages 11-15. Your essay may be in either English or Spanish.
Length: 2000 words (No marks will be given for a longer essay. You should aim for synthesis and clarity of expression).
Develop ONE of the following topics with close reference to La isla amarilla by Paloma Pedrero and Los días perdidos by Eva Hibernia, and drawing on relevant theory.
1. “El drama histórico español . . . muestra que todo drama histórico es ‘abierto’, no ‘cerrado,’ pues es de naturaleza interrogativo, no resolutivo.” Francisco Ruiz Ramón, Celebración y catarsis. (Leer el teatro español). Murcia: U de Murcia, 1988, 173.
2. “Recent postmodern and postcolonial theories have stressed that the construction of knowledge depends on one’s speaking position. According to these theories, culture and knowledge are no longer seen as universal but local, tied to their historical, socio-political and ethnic contexts.” Stewart King, “Catalanes en Madrid y castellanos en Barcelona: Language, Culture and Identity in Castilian-Language Writing from Catalonia” (unpublished), 14.
“Speculation on culture cannot be disengaged from evaluation of the technologies of power and the mechanisms of discipline (Foucault) and control (Deleuze) that direct, govern, and shape both past and present forms of subjectivation.” Cristina Moreiras-Menor, in “Critical interventions on violence: An introduction.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 3.1 (2002): 5.
