English 398: Assignment for Paper 3
(Due Tuesday, November 15)

Using the search techniques covered in the library skills instructional session led by Kathy Dean of OSU Libraries on Tuesday, November 1, identify two contrasting interpretations of any of the following works:

• Wolfe, The Colored Museum
• Wright, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"
• Ortiz, "And there is always one more story"
• Silko, "The Storyteller's Escape"
• Momaday, "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee"

Please follow the guidelines for research outlined by Lynn in chapter 9 of Texts and Contexts and make sure that the critical sources you discuss are indeed legitimate and credible ones. In particular, aim for sources that have been published in bonafide scholarly venues. (Let me know if you have any questions about the legitimacy of specific critical studies you have identified.)

In an essay of 1,250 words (again, the +/- 10% rule is in effect), identify the critical orientation of each of the two studies you find. In other words, read through the studies and determine whether the critics’ orientation is feminist, deconstructive, New Critical, historical, psychological, postcolonialist, cultural studies, etc. (Note, a given study may draw on more than one critical approach.) Explain why you have identified the two critics’ orientations or approaches in the way you have. Then compare and contrast how the critics draw on their respective approaches to engage in particular kinds of interpretations of the work they are discussing. Can you point to ways in which the critics’ interpretations of particular aspects of the work flow directly from the framework or approach in which they are working? Do the critics’ interpretations converge in any way, or do they offer radically different readings of the text on which they are both focusing? What aspects of the text come into view in each of the studies, and does one critic discuss aspects of the text ignored by the other (and vice versa)? Is there any way to synthesize the two critical studies into a single, integrated account of the text, or does the critics’ use of contrasting frameworks make their interpretations of the text truly incompatible?