1. Choose one of the academic journal articles posted in connection with the texts. (You may also find an article of your own; please clear it with me at least 5 days before the due date.) Your essay will include a brief summary (3 4 sentences) of the article, but it will mostly be a response to the critics interpretation or analysis. Here you can take a couple of approaches:
a) To what extent do you agree with the authors interpretation?
b) How does this article change your reading of the text?
You will need a clear thesis and multiple supporting points. Use quotations from the original text as well as from the journal article to support your response. This kind of essay follows an approach described as They say, I say. (Theres a whole book on academic writing with this title.) Your essay is a conversation between you and the critic: what the critic says, what you say in response. Where you disagree, explain why. Where you agree (and this is harder), you have to do more than say, Yeah. What she said. You have to show what ELSE in the text makes you agree with the critics point.
2. Compare one of the texts we have studied this term to a modern retelling or interpretation. In your analysis, focus on how one aspect (scene, character, image, etc.) in the modern interpretation introduces or foregrounds a different perspective or value and explain how this new element speaks to a modern audience.
