I consider it the writer's responsibility, and no one else's, to come up with her own topic or question. At the end of this document, I list some thoughts about various possible topics, but any one of them would have to be further refined and focused before it would be serviceable. You can ignore this list altogether, if you wish, and start from scratch.

In my experience, it works better if you come up with a research question, rather than a topic. And the clearer and more focused your question, the better off you will be as you begin to do your research.

Whether you do a more traditional or a more experimental paper, both will require you to do considerable research, to integrate the results into your own argument or 'meditations', and to document them properly, using the MLA style of documentation.

The primary differences between traditional and experimental critical writing are in how you develop your argument and in the range of materials you can draw upon as outside sources. The argument in a traditional critical essay develops in a more or less straightforward (linear) fashion. You start with a thesis, present one main point after another to advance the thesis, provide support for your main points, create smooth transitions from point to point, and march us steadily towards your conclusion (which essentially extends your thesis or reflects upon its larger implications). There should be a logical (sometimes chronological) progression from point to point or a dramatic progression (from your least compelling point to the real clincher, also known as the strategy of saving-your-best-for-last).

In experimental critical writing, this linear organization of the argument is disrupted. Instead, the argument is more seemingly digressive. The techniques and effects of collage and montage may provide the best analogy for this kind of writing. Implicit relations between juxtaposed elements provide a thread of connection that wends its way through the essay.

The 'logic' behind the succession of paragraphs in an experimental critical piece tends to be associative or poetic (or oneiric, that is, 'dreamlike'). The structure or logic of the usual straightforward argument yields to one that often seems more meditative than argumentive, one that may keep circling around certain questions, approaching them from different angles, with different means, and resisting closure. (As Gertrude Stein says, "Shuttters shut." She herself is definitely not a "shutter.") This kind of writing has a more exploratory or open-ended and improvisational feel to it.

Sometimes if you are doing experimental critical writing you can draw upon various "voices" you have developed, your 'academic' voice, yes, but also perhaps your poet's voice, your reporter's voice, your street-smart voice, your down-home voice, your 'womanly' voice, your 'personal' voice, and so on. (Gloria Anzaldua's essays mentioned below are a good example of critical writing that allows the writer to use several 'voices.')

Also, in experimental critical writing the materials drawn upon and introduced as 'evidence' or support often are not exclusively textual (or verbal). They can be, for example, photos, drawings, graphs, and pictures (or audiofiles and videoclips), prints and other cultural artifacts. Even the materials that are textual often are not limited to critical, discursive prose. They can be interviews, anecdotes, accounts of personal experiences, newspaper clippings, political speeches, poems, ads, songs, folktales, letters, diary extracts, etc.

Though it is not like traditional critical writing that explicitly announces its thesis and flows smoothly and logically from introduction to conclusion, experimental critical writing is careful, thoughtful, and controlled. There has to be a thread of connection as we move through the various sections or juxtaposed 'fragments', though again, the connection may be more associative or poetic in nature.

Despite the difference in method, the primary focus still has to be on illuminating the work(s) from class that you have chosen to consider.

As examples of experimental critical writing, I would suggest the pieces by Gloria Anzaldua, Paul Auster, and Susan Griffin in the Ways of Reading anthology. I haven't decided whether to put this anthology on reserve in the Library or to keep it in my office. It depends on how many people want to consider doing this kind of research paper. I will provide one other example in class, Susan Howe's "Incloser." This is not necessarily the best example, but it is the shortest.

The items that follow are not topics per se or research questions. They're just thoughts about possible topics that, if investigated, might lead to good research questions.

•Myth and China Men

•Exploring in more depth the history of Chinese immigration into US at the turn of the century and early 20the century and connections to China Men

•The (changing?) reception of China Men by the critical establishment, the wider reading public, by Asian-American writers and scholars…

•"The anthropological meaning of lynching" — Ralph Ellison's reflections on this form of ritualized violence and, more generally, on growing up in the 30s in the South (in his "Extravagance of Laughter" in Ways of Reading, esp. 273-78) -- connections with Faulkner's Light in August

•Scapegoat theory in Rene Girard's Violence and the Sacred; connections to Faulkner, O'Connor (connections between Rachel Carroll's argument re "Displaced Person" and what goes on in Light in August)

•The concept of the grotesque in Sherwood Anderson, Frost, Faulkner, O'Connor (could also extend to various painters)

•Cold War ideology and Frost's popularity in the 50s and 60s

• Malcolm X, the movie - Spike Lee's vision/version vs. Alex Haley's? — reception of the film by critics, African-American literature/history scholars, popular audience; comparisons with the Autobiography

•Don DeLillo's Jack Ruby (in Libra) vs. 'nonfictional' studies — what's imaginary (and why?), what has a basis in historical 'fact'?

•Ditto with DeLillo's depiction of the Bay of Pigs disaster and theory of CIA plot

•Is Howl of merely historical interest by now? If so, is its historical interest sufficient to merit it a place on a (crowded!) American lit. syllabus? If it has other kinds of merit, in addition to historical interest, what are they, and are they of sufficient quality to secure Howl its place?

•Other Ginsberg greats and their connections to his life and times

•Crowds, mobs, herd mentality — in Anderson, Frost, Faulkner, O'Connor, Ginsberg, DeLillo

•The idea of the hero or of heroism -- DeLillo, Hong-Kingston. Malcolm X

•Women in Anderson and Faulkner

•The media and Malcolm; the media in Libra

•Notes towards a "thick description" of the setting in Light in August:
What did a small town like the fictive "Mottstown" look like in the 30's South? Or "Jefferson" (modeled on Faulkner's own Oxford, I think)? What did typical inhabitants of the small Southern towns look like then? What kind of car did Joe Brown drive, in all likelihood? Was bootlegging a big business? What's the history of incursions of Yankee abolitionists into northern Mississippi? What kinds of people settled there? How did they survive? Were there traveling circuses through the South around the turn of the century, when Joe Christmas was 'born' (around 1896, if Faulkner intends us to read the 'present time' of the narrative as roughly the 'present time' of its publication in 1932)? What figures can you find on the numbers of lynchings and mob murders of blacks in Mississippi in the 30s? How active was the KKK there and then? If you were filming Light in August and wanted to get it 'right' in terms of period detail, what all would you need in terms of the sets, props, costumes, and so on?