Select a topic of particular interest to you using at least one of the works we have covered in class so far. This should be a topic with some relation to themes important to the texts we have read. Consider revising a response paper. Look back over our reading questions.

On the first day of class we watched a scene from Modern Times that demonstrated a 1936 look at the relationship between human beings and technology (informed by the assembly line, mechanization, and Taylorization). Many of the other works we have read have also offered commentary on how human beings in different times and locations have understood, questioned, or refashioned their relationship to technology (consider, particularly "The Cyborg Manifesto," "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," Frankenstein, etc.). Select at least one of the works we have read so far and examine how they present our relationship to technology and what this relationship might mean.

The works we have read contain many characters who are somehow "other." These "others" can take many forms (Frankenstein's creature, robots, cyborgs, women). Their "otherness" often has its basis in race, class, or gender, as well as more extreme physical difference. What function does the other serve? How might the other define or impact the center? Can the other speak? Is the other non-human? Does the other serve to define the human? Can an "other" be a hero?

Representation of desire in relation to technology has certainly been a theme in many of the works we have read (the creature, Helen O'Loy, P. Burke, the Patchwork Girl). Examine sex and sexuality in one of our works in terms of technology. Are love, sex, and desire represented as aligned with or anathematic to technology? What about desire for the technological? What might any of this mean?

In several texts nature is presented in contrast to science or civilization (consider Frankenstein, Songs of Innocence and Experience, etc). What does it mean to understand the world in these different ways? What does each philosophy offer? How do the natural and the technological interact? What is the location of the human in all of this? Is there a divine presence? How is respect for or domination over nature represented in these texts? Why?

Consider the relation of any of our texts to their particular historical moment (Patchwork Girl in terms of 1995, Blake's poetry and the Romantic period, etc.) Why were these stories told at these particular times? What lessons did they have for their audience? What anxieties do they reflect? How are these texts rooted in history? Are they applicable to any time period? How?

Consider an adaptation of one of our texts. You may choose a direct or indirect adaptation (a film of Frankenstein, a cyborg story, etc.). Examine the adaptation in relation to the original. How are the tellings different? What cultural and historical difference might these changes demonstrate? What decisions are being made?

Consider the relationship between a text's message or meaning and its format. Some examples of this might be examining the impact of the epistolary style Frankenstein, the use of hypertext in Patchwork Girl, the role played by illustration in Songs of Innocence and Experience, or the use of shape and sound in the experimental poetry. How does what it is change or influence what it says? What layers of meaning are added?