Blog Post Seven

When it comes to group presentations I usually roll my eyes and just hope that its over quickly. These presentations were different though, not only did I enjoy them but I actually learned something. I think what made these presentations so different from others was that they were all covering different topics. Not only that but I was unfamiliar with almost all of the literary topics that were covered so each one was new to me. The two that I found the most interesting were Post Colonialism and Queer Theory. All the topics were interesting but these were the two that stuck with me. 

Post Colonialism is great because its a totally different take on topics historically. As students we are always looking at information from the point of view of the colonizer and rarely the colonized. I like that Post Colonialism is made up of many theories, all focussed on English literature from different countries. The text that was covered yesterday was a excerpt from a book by Richard Rodriguez, it was called “Aria”. The piece brought up many different terms that were new to me. The most interesting ones were The “Other,” which is essentially what it sounds like, to become different from. Another was orientalism, a creation of non European stereotypes that negatively depict asians. The idea that I think is the most unique is the term of unhomeliness, the idea that a person can be caught between two cultures and not feel a sense of belonging to either. The power point presentation that both groups did were great, I was glad that we covered this topic twice, it was very interesting. 

The topic of Queer Theory is another one that I found very interesting. One of the things that I liked most about this topic is how new it is compared to the others. I also liked the progressive nature of the topic in general. The group presented the theory using an excerpt from Brokeback Mountain and enhanced their presentation with a lot of video. Usually I don’t enjoy a lot of video use but in this case it really illustrated the points that they were making. The main point being the challenge to the homosexual stereotype of the feminine male. Many of the terms that came up in their discussion were ones that also applied to ours, we did African American Criticism. The discussion on sex and gender, and the differences between them was very well done. I thought it was one of the strongest discussions that were presented. 

I enjoyed these presentations on the various literary criticisms very much. I fell like I got a lot more out of the topics with presentations than I would have without them. It was a great way to end the semester in my opinion, I thought every did an outstanding job.