Mystory Proposal

Project Proposal: Mystory

Post on your blog; flexible deadline — tentatively due Friday. However, contact me if you need to post yours later; I will reply in order received.

Reminder: blog entry for this week (due class-time Fri) should address one of the CATTt-egories (for “recipe”) from Anzaldua, Cisneros, Kingston, Silko, or Momaday. Be sure to discuss specific lesson derived from their poetics, whether formal (stylistic/composition) or conceptual (content).

Proposal Guidelines and Qs — see below.

Project Proposal — Mystory

Note: Re-read / review excerpts from Ulmer on Mystory. (PDF on e-learning).

“mystery” + “history” = ___?

This week, begin thinking about the topic that you will address in your final project — a more specific focus and tentative topic will likely help make connections and preliminary ideas, as we continue developing the method (poetics) for composing a para-doxa Text (your Mystory). Our unconventional discourse will ideally fucntion as “para-doxa” in both senses: beyond/outside the doxa, and guarding against it (consensus, homogenization, stereotype, myth). So, in one sense, if we compose a stereotype or myth, we’ll be unsuccessful toward this end, (more on this later) — the first step might be an “insightful,” “creative,” or “unusual” topic choice.

 
As a general task, we seek to write and express a unique experience during “Cold War America” (1945-1990 = time + socio-geographic setting) — combining three levels of discourse: personal (autobiography), cultural (popular media, Literature), and expert (disciplinary knowledge).

 

There are two separate approaches* that you might choose:

EXP of specific Historical Situation, Event, or Issue

EXP of particular Identity
(entire “matrix”: race/ethnicity, sex/gender, sexuality, class, religion, age, etc.)

 
* Contact me if you’d like to try combining both categories, in a creative/alternative approach. (Please explain in proposal.)

 
 
 

Questions to answer in proposal: (brief and tentative responses)

1) Which of the two general approaches will you take?

2) What specific issue will you “take up” and “take responsibility for” ? (see Ulmer)
What is the relevance to you personally? (e.g. family history, major/career)
Who is the collectivity that you will “speak for” or “express”?

3) Briefly describe your issue within the doxa: what is the conventional, consensus, or mythological perspective or narrative? (think “popular opinion” or “dominant depiction”)

4) What are the “argumentative” positions? (e.g. if you were to write an academic essay, using conventional discourse) In contrast, what is the affective (subjective) state of this experience? (e.g mood, attitude, stance/disposition)

5) If possible, speculate at least one “blindspot” of historical discourse: what is conventionally forgotten or excluded about this experience? (Or, what is “filtered” by the homogenizing process of consensus?)
Why is it important to actively recall and inscribe this into writing and into memory?

(Note: this answer can be brief/speculative; recall examples: sexual desire in Doctorow and Ginsberg; guilt/responsibility in Roth; “genuine emotion” in Updike; female body in Plath & Cisneros; religion/belief in Malamud and O’Connor; “altered senses” in Pynchon and Ginsberg.)

6) List the “CATTt-egories” for a “Mystory recipe” that will be relevant for your poetics, as you’ve derived from our readings/classes thus far; need not provide rationale — more a starting point and inventory to develop later.
(Note, please list additional “recipe” poetics categories beyond simply my inventory of Roth’s poetics on the blog — review notes from 23-Mar to 3-Apr.)

7) At this time, what is a potential figure that you might employ, in a “re-fashioning” or “re-deploying”? (from history and/or culture)
e.g. historical characters in Doctorow and Roth; “La Llorona” (mythical woman) in Anzaldua and Cisneros; my proposed figure of the Fallschirmjäger.
Again, consider personal relevance, particularly from family history and/or heritage — the figure must resonate from your autobiography, at least partly, (with some creative license of course.)

8) Obstacles that you foresee with this choice/topic? “Traps” of writing in conventional discourse (thought+expression)?
Alternative experience(s) to take up, or questions for how to refine your tentative topic? (These concerns can be addressed specifically to me, for guidance/response.)

 
 
 
 

Notes toward selecting specific issue/topic:

1) Consider the specific experience “taken up” and expressed by the authors of our “Relay” texts: Doctorow? Roth? Anzaldua?

 

2) Examine Projects of grad students within another CATTt Experiment (currently with Prof. Ulmer).

These projects each have taken up a disaster, which each student is expressing through their writing. While we are not choosing a “disaster” necessarily, you might see the specificity required of your selection, by analogy.

 

General notes (review our “experiment” and method):

on experiment (13-Jan)

on “Premise(s)” (8-Jan)

on “Para-doxa” (15-Jan)

on Refashioning (Historical) Figure

CATTt (method)

Ragtime: Lessons

Roth: Poetics

 
More coming soon, both about concepts/content and composition/poetics.