II. Essay Questions (Choose 3; one answered orally with your group in class. 25% + 25% +20%)

A. Subjectivity
1. How does a baby develop its sexuality and desire according to Freud? And how does Lacan modify Freud's view?

2. Contemporary critical theories no longer view human subjects as autonomous and unified as liberal humanism does. Pick up one theory to analyze its views of human subject and then relate it to one literary or cultural example.

B. Language and Society
3. A child's entry into society, for Lacan, entry into "the Symbolic Order." Please use either Roland Barthes' semiotics or Michel Foucault to explain why and how we enter society and get controlled by it through languages.

4. How does Marx analyze capitalism, its commodification and its relations of production? Use either a cultural or literary text(s) to illustrate your points.

5. How does the idea of "control by consent" apply to both Althusser's theory of ideology and Gramscian hegemony? Give one example to show how this works.

C. Literature, Consumer Culture and Ways of Reception
6. How does Freud and Marx explain fetishism respectively? Give two examples (one each) to illustrate their points.

7. So far you have been exposed to different ways of reading, reception or consumption. Choose a text (literary or cultural) and give two readings (or ways of consuming) it.

8. In class we 'touched on' several examples of Taiwan's cultural phenomena (e.g. clothing fashion, collection of Hello Kitty, positions of foreign laborers, Taiwanese' faddism, Taiwanese interest in others' cultures). Pick up one and provide two examples (texts) to analyze and comment on.

D. Love Stories and New Criticism
9. This semester we have read the following literary and filmic texts which are to do with love (love between a couple). Choose one to do a new critical reading, compare it with another one, and then make sense of your comparison by contextualizing them (putting them in their own context or the context of your reading them).

16th century -- Shakespeare's love sonnets,
19th century -- "Snowed Up" by Richard Jeffries, Poe's stories, E. Barret Browning and Robert Browing love Poems;
modern -- "Eveline" by James Joyce; The Great Gatsby; "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock";
1950's - 60's -- "Faces of Madness"; "Morning"; 瓊瑤﹔
contemporary -- 〈城市飛行〉《我的野蠻女友》﹔Mulholland Dr.

* Possible topics:
1. gender: idealization of one's lovers (women), gender difference, stereotype, inequality;
2. views of love shown through
-- treatment of endings; love and death;
-- views of self -- love as fusion, love against self-preservation, love as self-projection, a way to fill up the lack;
-- marriage (as economic exchange, as continuation of one's fantasies),
-- language and emplotment (e.g. of Romantic love, of poetry, of opera)
-- etc. etc.

or think harder!