Motif-Group Essay Questions

Below you'll find the essay prompts individual motif groups came up with in today's class. Feel free to borrow whole-cloth, elaborate on, tweak, or otherwise engage with these questions as you compose your own essay question for tonight's final paper prospectus.

Lightness Group:

--Can a motif be light? Be sure to supply Kundera's definition of "motif" and to track one motif associated with lightness.

--Compare and contrast the philosophies of lightness and weight in Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being and the film Up in the Air.

Weight:

--How does family fit into the lightness/weight dichotomy? Answer this question by considering family in the lives of multiple characters.

Body:

--Explore the relationship of the body to privacy.

...A variation of Marjorie E. Rhine's question, which is also a viable paper prompt: "What role does the body play in upholding a kind of sanctity of privacy?" (237)

Soul (in their words):

--In his search for "individuality" does Tomas attempt to separate body for soul or does he attempt to fuse the two? How does Tereza view "individuality"
--How do Tomas and Tereza distinguish between their private and public lives? How do they differ?
--Are dreams an extension of the soul or body. Use examples to justify your viewpoint. Explore the role of dreams according to the dichotomy of lightness and weight/body and soul.
--Role of mirrors. How do Tomas and Tereza view themselves. How do their views differ. How do they view themselves. How do they view their own souls.
How do mirrors reflect how the characters in the novel view their souls.

I encourage you to consider the metaliterary aspects of the novel, like the relationship of art and beauty to repetition; the different conceptions of art and beauty expressed by characters and the narrator in the book; the role of intertextuality and literary (or musical) allusions in the novel.

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_Day Five: Lightness and Weight, Part 2

Post your discussion questions here.

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_Day Four: Back to Soul and Body

Tereza's existential heading, "Body and Soul," returns with all its vertiginousness (a verifiable word) and weight. Please post your question on Book 4 here.

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_Day Three: Words Misunderstood

Thanks for a terrific set of presentations and a super-engaged class discussion today. You blew me away along with the visitor! I hope you continue to find the book as intellectually stimulating during these final days of summer R&C.

For tonight, please post a question about "Words Misunderstood," Book 3, which divides its sympathies between Franz, Sabina and the narrator. And make sure to keep up your motif log for group discussion. Tomorrow we'll also have a long-awaited conversation about the motif as a feature of literature and other arts in general, and in Kundera's book in particular.

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_Day Two: Soul and Body

In today's class, we explored the narrator's philosophical framing of the novel between Nietzsche, Parmenides, and Beethoven; chance, fate, and eternal recurrence; lightness and weight; emotional non-attachment and the ethical burden of the Other.

We also began to discuss eternal recurrence as a philosophical idea and as a structural principle of the novel...which brought us to the motif. Since tomorrow you'll be meeting for the first time in your motif groups, try creatively reappropriating tonight's blog entry to send messages to the other members of your "secret brotherhood" of the book (to borrow a turn-of-phrase from Kundera). Otherwise just use your question as usual.

Those of you who are doing a critical literature presentation or leading the class discussion are exempted from posting a regular discussion question tonight. If you can, please tell us what themes or passages to concentrate on for tomorrow's class conversation.

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_

Milan Kundera's novel is self-consciously constructed according to the presence of motifs, so feel free to start tracking some of them in Book 1, as we will do in groups for the rest of the session. Otherwise post discussion questions as usual. This book is rich not just in motifs but in metaphors and literary allusions, as well as ideas about art, history, and life. Enjoy!

_Angels in America_ Day Two (Act Three)

Tomorrow we're going to turn back to the big questions with a special emphasis on History. Post your own big (or not-so-big) questions below.

_Angels in America_ Day One

In _Millenium Approaches_, the first half of his two-part dramatic epic _Angels in America_, Tony Kushner poses what Russian thinkers have called "the accursed questions"--those big philosophical questions about the role of the nation, man's place in society, the social function of art, and so on. We will consider these accursed questions and the others you pose below in tomorrow's class. Those of you who are doing a critical literature presentation or leading the class discussion are exempted from posting tonight.

Hot off the presses! Film adaptation of _Queer_!

This is a repost from the following website: http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/05/12/steve-buscemi-directing-adaptation-of-william-s-burroughss-queer/

Steve Buscemi directing adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s Queer

"Now this is an interesting story. At the Sarasota Film Festival last week, Steve Buscemi lead a live stage reading of the script for his new project Queer, written by The Messenger director Oren Moverman based on the William S. Burroughs novel. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (via The Playlist) attended the event and provides a recap of the night. Apparently Buscemi is to direct the film, his fifth feature, and brought Stanley Tucci, Ben Foster, John Ventimiglia (The Funeral) and Lisa Joyce (The Messenger) in to read the script for the audience, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cast in this, although he’ll probably consider them."

The Last Day of _The Bell Jar_

For the final day of _Bell Jar_ , we will be taking up the themes of birth, rebirth and death, especially in light of "the baby" that appears on p. 3 only to disappear for the rest of the novel.
Finally, we will be considering the question Max posed on Monday, less loftily rephrased here: Is Esther crazy?
Post your discussion questions below.

Discussion Questions for Day Three of _The Bell Jar_

We'll be focusing on the theme of doubles tomorrow, both in terms of the Esther's internal doubling and the external doubles available to her as a Cold War woman.

Discussion Questions for Day Two of _The Bell Jar_

Let's keep Max's question in mind as we discuss Cold War womanhood in tomorrow's class. Consider the life paths open to a young (white) woman in early-1950s America. What adult examples are available to Esther as she envisions (or is forced to envision) a future for herself? How do gendered expectations shape not just her personal plans but also her relationships with men (like Lenny, Buddy, her father, et al.)?

Please post a question of your own to consider from tonight's reading.

Discussion Questions for Day One of _The Bell Jar_

I'd like you to focus on visions and the visual in this first installment of _The Bell Jar_. Feel free to ask questions relating to this topic, or on a subject of your choosing.

"The Oven" by Yevgeny Kharitonov

Post your reading questions for "The Oven" below.
Thanks,
AK

Discussion Questions for Third and Final Day of _Queer_

- What is yage? Why is important to Lee?

- What does Lee have to say about queerness and the Cold War?

Post yours below, please.

Discussion Questions for Day Two of _Queer_

- How does Lee characterize the queer cast of characters at the Ship Ahoy? How does he define “queer”?

- Who is Bobo? What’s his lesson for Lee?

- Who is Allerton and why is he like a fish? Try tracing fish imagery from this point on.

- What is the routine?

Post your questions below!

Discussion Questions for Day One of _Queer_

Here re some discussion questions for _Queer_. Please add yours to the list below. And remember, we will be returning to "Pkhentz" at the beginning of class, so feel free to add to or modify the questions you posted on Thursday.

- How does Burroughs distinguish himself as author from the somewhat autobiographical hero of his novel? (xii-xvi)

- What is the unmentioned event that “[motivates] and [forms]” Queer? (xviii) How does it seep into the text?

-What is the nature of time in Queer? Close-read pp. 18-19.

- What is the role of the “exotic” and how does it bind desire to racial alterity or otherness?

"Art as Device" and "Pkhentz" Discussion Questions

Here are some discussion questions for the Shklovsky and Sinyavsky readings (to be completed for class on Thursday, July 8). Please tack yours on below!

- What does Shklovsky define as the purpose of art and the task of the artist? Against what extant definitions is he working?

- How is art a device? What does it do and how?

- Is “Pkhentz” an allegory? Of what?

- What is the role of reading, writing and words in “Pkhentz”? Mark all the places texts appear in the story.

- How might we compare the description and function of the sexual grotesque in Sinyavsky’s and Baldwin’s stories?

_Circus_ Exploratory Writing Questions

--How are Americans and America depicted? How are Soviets and the Soviet Union depicted? How are Germans depicted?

--What kinds of oppositions—moral and ideological—separate the US and the USSR in the film? How does the film shore up these oppositions with black-and-white/light-and-dark imagery?

--How does the film demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism?

--According to the film, what are the US’s and USSR’s attitudes about race?

--What are the USSR’s attitudes about gender? For instance, who are the new Soviet man and woman? What are their psychological and physical attributes?

--How does the film handle the issues of marriage and romantic love? (Think not only of Marion and Martynov but also of Raika and Skameikin.)

--Is this film propaganda, art, entertainment or some combination of the three?

--Why does this ideological struggle take place in the circus? What is the significance of Marion’s “Flight to the Moon” and Martynov’s “Flight to the Stratosphere” acts?

--The dominant metaphor of the film is that the USSR is one big, happy family. Do you agree or disagree? Support your answer.

--What can this film accomplish—artistically and politically—because it is a musical?

--The concept of genre is crucial to the analysis of an artistic text. Circus is not just a musical comedy but also a melodrama. What kinds of emotions does it attempt to invoke in its viewer, how, and to what end?

--What kind of viewer does this film assume? How does it embed these assumptions into its structure?

--How does the film use language—proper and improper Russian as well as non-Russian languages—to convey its ideological message?

For many of these topics, I encourage you to perform a close-reading of the film’s musical refrain, “Broad is my native land.” The lyrics are pasted below:

Broad is my native land,

Many forests, fields and rivers!

I know of no other land

Where man can breathe so freely!

From Moscow to our furthest outposts,

The southern mountains to the northern seas,

Man walks as the master of

His own vast native land!

The Cold War Gets Hot!

Welcome to the class blog for the Slavic Summer D Session Reading and Composition course, "The Cold War Gets Hot: Sex and Gender in First and Second World Literatures"! Here's what you signed up for...

“In our country there is no sex.”

These words, uttered by a female bureaucrat from Leningrad during the first US-Soviet telebridge in 1987, struck a chord with viewers on either side of the ideological divide. The readings for this class tell a different story, peeling back the Iron Curtain to reveal the steamier scenes of the Cold War: both the passions of late-capitalism in the West, and the hot-cha in the dacha of the communist East. Keeping in mind the historical contexts in which these works by Russian, Czechoslovakian, and American authors were produced, this course aims to map out the manifold relationships between intimacy and ideology, sex and poetics, which took shape during the atomic age. In these readings, we will pay special mind to how certain bodies—sexual, textual, and political—acquired additional resonance as suspicious or perverse. Though we will search for the pleasure in the text, we will not lose sight of the pleasure of the text, as we consider how desire operates on multiple, intersecting planes: between characters; between readers and writers; and between the First and Second Worlds.

The abbreviated summer session aims for an intense reading experience, and will require of its participants rigorous exercises in writing. As our syllabus travels between geopolitical hot spots, we will likewise move among different generic spaces, from narrative prose of varying length to dramatic plays, critical essays, and film.

We will be using multiple digital media this summer, as befits the technophilic time period under our consideration. In addition to the class blog where we will post daily discussion questions; engage in web chats over material; and link to critical and interesting resources for writing, reading, and thinking about our syllabus and Cold War culture more broadly; the class will find primary documents, a maintained syllabus, and a gradebook on the Berkeley-only bspace page.

You can email any questions to the class instructor, Anastasia Kayiatos, at akayiatos@berkeley.edu .

The class email (not yet active) is coldwargetshots@bspace.berkeley.edu .