Choose one of the following questions to create an answer. Do not try to answer the questions within the question you choose one-by-one; instead, use your critical thinking/interpretation skills to create an essay structure with an opening paragraph, strong body in which you use close reading techniques to cite any passages (be brief here—use only what you need, and remain analytic about the brief passages you chose to support your own position), and a well-crafted conclusion. Avoid weak transitions like “in conclusion,” “because,” “as I wrote earlier,”etc. We can talk more about this in class if you want.

Length: 750 words

Due: November 10

Times New Roman 12-point font

Margins: 1” all sides

1. What stereotypes were called-up around the phenomena of the recent Las Vegas shootings; how did the media portray the individual who had carried out the shooting in relation to media portrayals of other incidents of mass violence (protests, police treatment of different ethnicities, etc.)? How could ideas that emerge around acts of mass violence make non-violent journeys ethnically and / or racially-inflected? Finally, what might the telling of "stories" of heroism be written in Beowulf tell us about current versions of hero and anti-hero stories that are emerging in our own media-saturated times?

2. Based on the evidence in the Beowulf story, and in Chaucer's "Wife of Baths Tale," use close reading techniques to understand the role of women in the culture depicted in  Beowulf . Does this represent an empowerment of female power? What kind of power do females seem to have in the story? Or is this representation a culturally-specific silencing of women's stories? Or do the tropes of "women" in  Beowulf , and later in Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale," signal something more universally produced-a set of figures adopted across cultures and times-for women's roles in society?

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