"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." -B. F. Skinner

Contemporary Canadian Literature and Film:
Nation, Race and Gender

Final Draft 2003/6/9

* Do not use the same text in answering different questions.
I. Identification and Interpretation 30%
(Choose 2;
-- each with one paragraph interpreting the meanings and the techniques, and one explaining the excerpt/stills' significance to its text as a whole;
-- at least one on a literary text.)

II. Essay Questions (Choose 3; one has to be about one of the three novels, and one answered orally in class. 25% + 25% +20%)

A. Nation and Global Culture
1. How is Canada presented in two of the following texts? (By drawing boundaries or showing the lack of them? By defining certain Canadian character? Presenting an allegory of its relations with the U.S. in terms of gender relations? Or by showing the various people in it?)

Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire (1986); M. Atwood "Tricks with Mirror";
Earle Birney's "Can. Lit."; Ray Smith's "Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada."

2. How do the following two films present and comment on global cultures (supermodel + media, advertisement and Disney)? What roles do Canadian artists play in the films?

Denys Arcand's Stardom (2000); Jill Sharpe's Culture Jam

B. Life: its Stages and Survival
3. Survival --For Margaret Atwood, survival of the victims is one theme typical of Canadian literature and culture. How is this theme treated in the following texts? Choose two to compare. (For example: what ordeals or traumas they experience and how/whether they survive them, and how they heal/support themselves or each other.)

Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient; Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses and Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter; Helen Lee's "Prey"; Clement Virgo's Rude; Austin Clarke's"Canadian Experience."

4. Stages in Life -- The following texts, in one way or another, deal with different stages of human life (beginnings, initiation, endings) on a realistic level as well as symbolically. Choose two to discuss how they present one stage of life realistically as well as symbolically. (Pay close attention to the techniques--e.g. narrative perspectives, camera angles, etc.--they use too.)

Cynthia Scott's The Company of Strangers, Don McKellar's Last Night; Alice Munro's "The Found Boat" Jeremy Podeswa The Five Senses

C. Race and Gender, Body and Language

5. Body, Race and Gender -- Why does Eisha Marjara refuse to eat in "Desperately Seeking Helen"? And how about Marian in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman? Compare their reasons and their ways of overcoming their food rejection.

6. Language and Racial Identity-- The issues of language concern minority writers/filmmakers a lot; for instance, they or their characters have to struggle between their mother tongue(s) and English, over their lack of either one, as well as through the difficulties in speech, communication and the necessity of silence. Frequently these conflicts influence their sense of identity and their social positions. Choose two of the following texts and discuss the language issues they deal with.

Joy Kogawa's Obasan; Helen Lee's "Prey"; Mina Shum's Double Happiness; M. Nourbese Philip's "Discourse on the Logic of Language," "Universal Grammar"; Laiwan's "The Imperialism of Syntax"

Good luck and enjoy!!!