Midterm Assignment

Spring 2014 English 281 Midterm Essay

Due 3/20/14, 11:59 P.M; send in Word file attachment to gmajer@stevenson.edu.

Drafts read up to 3/17/14.

1500 words minimum; 1800 words maximum.

Times New Roman 12 font, double spaced.

All quotes and citations use MLA or APA format.

This essay uses a 3-part structure to develop analysis of the zombie-figure and zombie-narrative from course readings and viewings (and additional cases if you would like to incorporate these).  The best structure is to move through the essay case by case, covering the 3 parts for one case, then moving on to the next, and so on through your cases.   Note that you are allowed to uses cases/texts/films from outside the course readings/films as long as they are clearly on topic.

Simply:

For each example/case, use the 3 parts as follows:

1. Horror-engineering, employing Carroll's 9 horror-effects as relevant (if you like, you also can include refs to Freud, Kristeva, Lacan, or Zizek).

2.  Social attitudes--ideas, fears, stereotypes, phobias, fantasies of various kinds registering social attitudes.  Be sure to have a sense of the historical-cultural context of your example (research online can help you, say, with things like 1930s America).

toward nation/empire
toward race or ethnicity
toward social-class
toward feminine, masculine, and gay/queer gender roles/identities
toward capitalism, labor, and economics
toward modern"biopower" and the human/"posthuman"
and toward other specific aspects of the text/film historical-social context (1890s Egypt/Suez Canal;, 1930s Haiti/American invasion; 1980s gay issues, Reaganomics; 2000s 9/11 terrorism, war, bioterror, economic crisis, globaliszation, etc.)

3.  Possible social critique, commentary, satire--highlighting of social inequities, failures, hypocrisies, double-standards, rigid roles, "normative" categorizations.


Your intro paragraph should not be a long account of what you will be doing.  Just announce that you are going to explore your given texts/films in light of the 3 parts and that will be enough.