Blog 7

I think the presentations definitely helped understand the main concepts of the theories and elaborated on what we had already been taught in class. The major points I learned from the Post Colonialism theory(also my group project) were that the theory it self consisted of many theories that focused on English Literature from different countries, it was also referred to as "third-world" literature, and the West was the colonizer and the "others" were the colonized. The "others" were considered inferior and equally "evil". The key terms mentioned were: Otherness/other, unhomeliness, double consciousness, and Orientalism. The powerpoint was a helpful visual aid, and the methodology was skillfully applied to the texts they presented. In both stories the protagonist characters tried to establish their own identity. The "overwhelming feeling of unhomeliness and perpetuation violence was like a "winding sheet".  I grasped the main ideas of the New Historicism  theory but not the terms that were used. New Historicism, history is subjective and admits its own prejudices. It states that nobody can escape both public and cultural prejudices. This group did a nice job presented the old historicism as well. They described old historicism as history being objective rather than subjective and history served as a background to literature. The text used in Old historicism  supposed to mirror the history of its time. History was written as the "truth". The queer theory was pretty straight forward (no pun intended). The Queer theory put focus both the area of gay and lesbian studies. The superstructure taught me about the foundation of society.The text used for this theory definitely fit with the major points made by the group. The two macho cowboys found it difficult to hide what they truly were, like other gays they just wanted to be accepted. I jotted down the term binary opposition in my notes but did not define it. The African American Criticism was shaped by enslavement of blacks in colonial America by white Western Europeans and suppression of the black race that follows . In the text Battle Royal the whites were considered the "others" and it was during the Harlem Renaissance which brought new voices to center stage. I think visual aids were most helpful, to me personally because I grasp things better that way.