ENGL 2112

Summer 2007

Take Home Essay Examination #1

Directions:  Please read these instructions carefully before beginning and follow them closely.  Failure to do so may be costly.    Choose two of the following questions and construct three to five BODY paragraph essays which answer each question.  Your essay should be fully developed.  Be sure to use quotations from the literature (properly cited) in your body paragraphs, as evidence to support your argument.  Feel free to use external research to support your argument; however, this research MUST be properly cited.  Any indication of plagiarism will result in, at the least, a failing grade for the examination. 

The draft that you turn in should be typed.  Be sure to save a “soft” copy in case you are permitted to do revisions.  You may do a “combined” works-cited page in which you list the works cited for both essays; however, it is critical that you properly cite all textual references in the body of your essay (you may use MLA, APA, or whatever citation style is appropriate for your chosen field as long as you are correct and consistent).

Be sure that you fully develop arguments within the body of the essay.  Remember that you are writing for a reader who cannot read your mind.  If I can ask you, “why,” after a sentence, then you need to tell me in your paper.  Support your arguments with textual evidence from the literature we have read by inserting appropriate quotations.  This not only proves you actually read the material; it helps to prove your case.  That’s your goal here, to prove to me that your thesis is correct.  There are no wrong answers, only poorly supported or poorly argued ones.

Finally, don’t be afraid to come and ask me questions.  People who do poorly on this make two mistakes:

1.      They guess instead of asking and

2.      They put this off to the last minute and try to write it the night before it is due.

Neither of these tactics are smart nor will they get you far.  Start now.  Ask me, either by email or drop by the office.  Read the literature.  Do some external research.  Think.  Write.

---Keith

Topics

1. The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan and the writings of Sayid Qutb both portray Islamic scholars who have, after their travels, developed a negative view of the West.  Yet, as we can see, until recently, the West, as exemplified by Coleridge’s Kubla Kahn, has pictured the Islamic world as an exotic, almost erotic, land filled with rivers of “milk and honey.”  Using the literature as a guide, how can you account for such differing world views?

2. In Fadwa Tuqan’s, Song of Becoming, and Mahfouz's, Zaabalawi, the reader is shown tales which offer different views of the impact of Islam on its followers.  In both pieces, the narrator mourns for the loss of an important part of their culture while seeming to celebrate the gain of another more elusive aspect.  What is it that the authors see as lost and gained and what is the unspoken role of religion, which they both only hint at, in these gains and losses?

3.  Why is the battle between the Genesis creation story and the story of creation as outline in Darwin’s Origin of Species such a bloody fight in classrooms and courtrooms in America today?  What is the role of such battling symbols as the tree and the differing emphasis on struggle?