Category: Literature

Readings: All assigned readings from the New World Reader Amy Tan Mother Tongue Ch 4-2 Ana Menendez The Bilingual Imagination Ch 4-3 Chang-rae Lee Mute in an English-only World, Ch 4-4 Jhumpa Lahiri My Two Lives Ch 4-5 The stories in this section from the Reader are narratives on people who have multiple identities shaped by their familys roots in different countries and their struggles to adjust to American culture. In a reflective essay please explain how you define identity? Is it formed primarily by family, environment, or by other factors? How is the identity of these authors shaped by different experiences? Finally, describe an experience or your relationship with someone that helped shape your identity from childhood to now and how does it define you as a person? You can connect to any story in this section through quotes and examples (at least one quote from one story) and make sure you cite the stories in the text and add a works cited page (see in course resources). Please remember that this is a narrative and your main focus should be on telling a story that brings the memory alive to the readers. There should also be a purpose, a central point or lesson that you want to get across to your readers made clear in the thesis. Also, make sure your essay conforms to the following rules that apply to reflective writing and adheres to the respective due dates. ***Paper length: 2-3 pages, typed, double-spaced in Times New Roman with name, class, section and paper number on upper left-hand side. Should also have a title in the center.

Readings: All assigned readings from the New World Reader Amy Tan Mother Tongue Ch 4-2 Ana Menendez The Bilingual Imagination Ch 4-3 Chang-rae Lee Mute in an English-only World, Ch 4-4 Jhumpa Lahiri My Two Lives Ch 4-5 The stories in this section from the Reader are narratives on people who have multiple identities shaped by their familys roots in different countries and their struggles to adjust to American culture. In a reflective essay please explain how you define identity? Is it formed primarily by family, environment, or by other factors? How is the identity of these authors shaped by different experiences? Finally, describe an experience or your relationship with someone that helped shape your identity from childhood to now and how does it define you as a person? You can connect to any story in this section through quotes and examples (at least one quote from one story) and make sure you cite the stories in the text and add a works cited page (see in course resources). Please remember that this is a narrative and your main focus should be on telling a story that brings the memory alive to the readers. There should also be a purpose, a central point or lesson that you want to get across to your readers made clear in the thesis. Also, make sure your essay conforms to the following rules that apply to reflective writing and adheres to the respective due dates. ***Paper length: 2-3 pages, typed, double-spaced in Times New Roman with name, class, section and paper number on upper left-hand side. Should also have a title in the center.

Planning Your Work

Epics are known for richness and detail of the worlds they depict, and Gilgamesh is no exception. Imagine you are tasked with providing a service or creating a business or organization in the world of Gilgamesh using skills and knowledge from your field of study, current or previous job, extracurriculars, or volunteer work. What need would you address or what problem would you solve within the epic’s world and in Uruk, in particular? How would you go about doing so? Choose one of the following that you can connect to the epic of Gilgamesh in some way:

• Your actual major or a field of study you’re considering
• A job you currently have or previously had
• An extracurricular activity you take part in (volunteer work, a sport, a hobby, a social or religious group, etc.)

Part One

Write a letter to King Gilgamesh proposing the business, service unit, or organization you would like to create. This should be based on and relate to your actual life, skills, and/or interests that you chose from in the planning stage above. Provide and cite evidence from the text showing that your venture is needed; specify the resources you will contribute and those the city must supply; and showcase your credentials to lead this project. Keep your audience in mind to get your project approved!

Part Two

Write a brief paragraph of 3-4 sentences reflecting upon your likelihood of success in convincing King Gilgamesh to support your endeavor.

Part Three

Support your claims with quotations from the course materials. Use in-text citations in MLA format for the quotations, and be sure to include page numbers from the text included in this course. Remember to include a Works Cited page.

For this assignment, you will evaluate characters from The Shahnameh, Sundiata, and The Popul Vuh and then write an essay with a minimum of 1000 words (see specific topic below) arguing for and supporting your conclusions. This assignment will build your writing, analytical, and evaluative skills.

You may be able to further develop ideas you have already submitted in our discussions. However, be careful not to plagiarize your classmates’ submissions. You are encouraged to use the material in the course to further develop your own original interpretations and arguments; researching other secondary sources is not required for this assignment, and plagiarism of other sources and AI use will not be tolerated. If you use sources beyond the primary texts (the epics), be sure to include citations for those secondary sources along with your citations for the epics. Both MLA in-text citations and a Works Cited page are required for this assignment.

All semester, we have discussed the ways in which epics enable a community to share and reinforce strongly held cultural values. Heroes, in particular, are models of ethics and behavior, yet heroes are not static characters; they grow and develop during their journeys, shaped by the people they encounter and their experiences.

For this assignment, pretend that the heroes of our last three epics–Rustem, Sundiata, and the Hero Twins have the ability and desire to read about each other in The Shahnameh, Sundiata, and The Popul Vuh. Explain the most significant lesson each character would learn from each of the other two epics (that is, two lessons total for each character) and how that might shape their growth as heroes and leaders. For the sake of this assignment, consider the Hero Twins together, not as two separate characters.

Strong assignments will demonstrate awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of each hero, as well as the potential lessons to be drawn from the other two texts each hero will be reading. As always, support your arguments with detailed and specific evidence, particularly quotations. Use MLA format for in-text citations and the Works Cited.

Write an essay of about eight paragraphs presenting your argument. Be sure to include quotations from the texts as well as additional details that illustrate and enhance the points you are making. Use the following outline:

1. Your first paragraph should be an engaging introduction with a clear thesis that brings all three epics and epic heroes together. Structure your essay as you choose, but the writing should be organized. Perhaps focus on one character at a time, or focus on one text at a time. Be sure your thesis provides a strong argument and forecasts the structure you will be using in the essay.
2. Give specific examples and quotes from the texts to support your analyses. Use in-text citations in MLA format for the quotations, and be sure to include page numbers from the texts included in this course.
3. The last paragraph should be your conclusion. What do these three heroes (and, more broadly, these cultures) have to learn from each other? What have you learned from this creative exercise? Answer the question, “So what?” What should you and your reader do with the information and claims you’ve provided?
4. Your final page should be your Works Cited page, in MLA format. It should include the three literary texts (our epics), as well as any content pages from the course material to which you may have referred.

Instructions and an example are attached. The following link is where to find the corresponding lecture:

youtube.com/watch?v=e5K9oT5lIhs&feature=youtu.be

This link will take you to the reading, the password is GGU2026: https://ggu.libguides.com/er.php?course_id=122233

Consider the definitions for ecocriticism and origin stories discussed in this week’s lecture. What origin story is most familiar to you, and how has it shaped how you see the role of humans in nature? Does Silent Spring express a failure in that human role?

No instructions provided

No instructions provided

Our professor is a heavy grader. Make sure to follow the instructions and grading rubric. I got these feedback on my last essay. Make sure your essay fulfills all these requirements.

Each Unit of this course includes one critical article about one of the literary works covered in the Unit. For Unit #1, the work discussed in the article is Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave. The article by Cynthia Richards (“Interrogating Oroonoko”) follows this page.

To complete the assignment, please follow these steps:

• Read the article, while utilizing active reading techniques.
• Open word processor and create new file.
• Following Annotated Bibliography format, begin document with an MLA Style Heading at the top left of the page and a Header with last name and page number at top right (Header should appear on each page).
• Be sure to format document in keeping with MLA Style formatting for MLA Annotations found here:
• In roughly 500 words, summarize the major points of the article, utilizing at least three direct quotes.
• In an additional 100+ words, offer a unique analysis of the article. Which points do you find most interesting? Which point illuminated the text for your? Which passage from the article did you find to be most difficult to understand? Explain any additional research that helped to explain this passage?