FINAL EXAM SAMPLE

For your final exam you will be asked to write a well-developed essay (4-6 pages) discussing the nature, significance, and contributions of the Native American literature we studied this semester (i.e. Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, N. Scott Momaday). In your essay you will be asked to explore one or more of the following topics and to support your ideas and observations with evidence, details, and specific examples from the texts:

• how Native American literature offers unique perspectives
• how it addresses or criticizes the problems of the cultures where it is produced
• how it critically engages the problems of white Western cultures
• how it critically engages the problems of Native American cultures
• how it celebrates and affirms certain aspects of Native American culture
• how it participates in and is influenced by certain aspects of white Western culture
• how it relates to historical and cultural contexts
• how it relates (similarities or differences) to other works from different cultures and time periods studied this semester
• what white Western culture might be able to learn from Native American culture and literature
• what Native American cultures might be able to learn from white Western cultures
• what messages, ideas, or themes Native American literature emphasizes and conveys
• what solutions it offers or suggests to the various human, social, cultural, economic, and political problems it deals with
• how it treats or deals with issues of gender (male/female roles and identities, patriarchy/matriarchy, relations between the sexes, etc.)
• how the historical experiences of Native Americans may determine or inform the nature and content of their writings
• literary forms, genres, language, styles, mythology, folklore, or traditions featured in works by Native Americans
• religion and religious ideas featured in works by Native Americans and their relations to Christianity and religion in Western cultures
• the ways in which Native American literature deals with the problems of power, oppression, and violence
• the ways in which Native American literature deals with the issues of human sexuality, desire, pleasure, and the human body
• the representation and treatment of nature and the relations of human beings to the natural world in works by Native American authors
• the ways in which the insights of Native American authors could be useful in the articulation of the values of a new, global culture