Summative Assignment #1 on “What is Cultural Memory?” 

Deadline: 12pm on Wednesday 24 January 2024

This assignment builds upon the assignments of the first term. Select one of the secondary essays from the current unit and show how this text informs a close reading of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. This assignment has two components, as it asks you to write a précis of a part of an essay and to analyze a part of the novel. We stress that these are “components,” and that you can arrange them in the manner that you think makes the most sense (should your précis come first? your reading of the novel? or does a back-and-forth comparison work better?).

Before you make your selection, it’s important to consider carefully what you want to write about. Developing a line of questioning will help you zoom in on a topic, as well as focus on the aspects of the essay and novel that you think can be productively linked together.

For example, you may be interested in Bruce Bechdel’s painstakingly preserved Victorian home and want to examine how it functions within the novel. If you want to explore how the novel invests historical significance in this site, then Pierre Nora’s essay, or the optional reading by Eric Hobsbawm (both from week 14), may prove valuable. What differences do you notice when you compare the historical meaning attached to the Bechdel home and what Nora says about how nations use particular places to memorialize the past? Or perhaps you want to investigate why the novel is called Fun Home even though the overwhelming majority of the action occurs not in the Bechdels’ place of business, but in their family home? In this case you may find an essay on trauma, mourning, or queer temporality informative. These are merely examples of how to brainstorm on a topic in order to narrow it down to something that really interests you. We encourage you to develop your own topic and to think independently.

 

The précis and the 'close reading'

Of the two components, you should have a good understanding of what a précis is by now (see formative assignment instructions from Term 1!). As for the second component, a close reading is a fundamental part of literary analysis, which analyses a very short segment of a text in order to reveal something essential about the text as a whole. We recommend watching this short video by Michael Meeuwis as an introduction to developing this skill. Your goal is to ‘unpack’ your chosen passage, unraveling how it uses literary strategies—such as style, tone, word order, or punctuation—in conjunction with the more obvious meanings of words and sentences. Your reading will cite internal evidence that reveals the short segment as a composition of tightly-knit relations that are connected with the themes and strategies of the text as a whole. Since Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is obviously a graphic novel, make sure to examine the relations between word and image.

 

Length: 500 words (excluding references)

Format: 12-point, double-spaced Times New Roman

Student ID#: At top of the page and in document name. E.G. 1771883 – Assessed Assignment 1.docx. Do not include your name.

Paragraphs. Use standard-length indents for paragraph breaks. No line breaks. Eliminate the extra spacing that Microsoft Word automatically inserts by going to “Format,” then “Paragraph.” Tick off the “Don’t add space between paragraphs” box.