ASSIGNMENT 1
1. [3 points] Using at least ONE specific example from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “Race,” clearly and precisely explain the difference between “racism” and “racialism.” Be as precise and explicit as possible.
2. [3 points] Using at least ONE specific example from Bennett and Royle’s essay on “Racial difference,” clearly and precisely explain how Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre “articulates how racial otherness is constituted.”
3. [4 points]
A) Using at least ONE specific example from Nealon’s and Giroux’s thirteenth chapter (“Agency”), clearly and precisely answer the following question: “[If] we are all subject to social contexts… why and how does anyone ever resist or remake dominant norms?”
B) Using at least ONE specific example from Nealon’s and Giroux’s thirteenth chapter, clearly and precisely answer the following question: How does power “produce” things as well as repress things?
ASSIGNMENT 2
1. [4 points]
A) Using at least ONE specific example from (exclusively) Slavoj Žižek’s How to Read Lacan, explain Lacan’s concept of the “big Other” as precisely and explicitly as possible.
B) Why, according to (exclusively) Slavoj Žižek’s How to Read Lacan, should there be a “return to Freud,” and what does such a return entail for Lacan? Be as precise and specific as possible.
2. [3 points] Choose ONE of the following theorists discussed in Nealon’s and Giroux’s twelfth chapter (“Nature”): Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, or Thomas Malthus. THEN, using at least ONE specific example from N&G’s twelfth chapter (exclusively), clearly and precisely discuss how this individual’s theories of “nature” have influenced or might help explain aspects of modern society.
3. [3 points] As Nealon and Giroux argue in their twelfth chapter, “with rare [exceptions], animals are defined in terms of their perceived intellectual impoverishment, incompetence, and imbecility; they are ‘without consciousness.’” Using at least ONE specific example from their twelfth chapter (exclusively), explain why the above “anthropocentric assumptions” limit our engagement with the moral and ethical “question of the animal.”
Imagine that you are a teacher and that you have assigned two readings for your Theory class: Bennett & Royle on “Eco” and Bennett & Royle on “Animals.” However, you want to make sure that your students have done the reading rigorously, so you create a four-minute quiz for your class, a quiz that enables you to learn the extent to which each student read each piece.
CREATE THAT QUIZ
Create one great (serious/worthy/valuable) question on Bennett & Royle’s “Eco” and one great (serious/worthy/valuable) question on Bennett & Royle’s “Animals”, and then answer your own great questions with great responses.
[2 points] [example:] In Bennett & Royle’s “Eco” …………
using at least ONE specific example from this chapter ONLY, explain how………
[2 points] [example:] In their chapter “Animals,” Bennett and Royle …………
using at least ONE specific example from this chapter ONLY, explain how………
