Thursday, April 18, 2013

Final Project Proposal -- RJ Sepich


RJ Sepich
Narrative & Technology
Final Project Proposal (For Grading)

             1.  Bibliography

Ball, David M., and Martha B. Kuhlman. The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is a Way of Thinking. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2010. Print.

Freyne, Patrick. "Chris Ware's Comic-book World." Review. The Irish Times [Dublin] 26 Sept. 2012: n. pag. LexisNexis Academic. 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.

Hamilton, Natalie. "The a-mazing house: the labyrinth as theme and form in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves." CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 50.1 (2008): 3+. Academic OneFile. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.

Toth, Josh. "Healing Postmodern America: Plasticity and Renewal in Danielewski's House of Leaves.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 54.2 (2013): 3+. Academic OneFile. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
2.      I think in this essay, by comparing the houses in both Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves and what it means about their views on what exactly the “home” is, I gave uncover a better understanding of how these books are related in main ideas despite their obvious differences. Although some critics might claim that it is a stretch to compare a graphic novel to a more traditional (although very unique itself) novel, I hope to prove that discussing similar aspects of these novels can be beneficial for readers.
3.      I believe that there is quite a bit of information in chapter 3 of Herbert Marcuse’s book One Dimensional Man that could help drive my paper’s ideas along. “The corrosion of privacy in massive apartment houses and suburban homes breaks the barrier which formerly separated the individual from the public existence and exposes more easily the attractive qualities of other wives and other husbands,” writes Marcuse. This is one example of how the existence of the “home” in modern society has been altered, and Marcuse seems to believe that increased sexuality and other aspects of society that focus on material goods over core beliefs is changing the way we live, which could fit perfectly into my paper somewhere.
4.      I plan on keeping most of what I wrote in the first draft because I feel like it laid the groundwork for a very good longer essay that delves more into the meaning of what the images of the disappearing houses in Ware’s and Danielewski’s books mean rather than just descriptions of them. I think the main purpose of this essay is to expand on what I think is a high-potential idea with more research and more analysis to see what I can come up with.


1 comment:

Adam said...

I think that the use of chapter 3 in Marcuse is a good idea, and I certainly approve of using the original draft. The bibliography is good. Note, though, that your argument as such hasn't developed here - you're explaining why a *subject* interests you and why it should interest us, but that doesn't yet give us an argument worth pursuing. Nor is a comparison yet an argument - a comparison might be the starting point for an argument (with the comparison itself being either in or out of the body of the essay itself).

You will probably have an argument when you can answer this question: what does it mean, or why does it matter, that I can read the house in JC and the house in HOL in a similar way, using chapter 3 of Marcuse? If you can explain why we need to care, then you've arrived.