PLAGIARISM DECLARATION FORM
ENGLISH 465 MIDTERM EXAM
State University of New York-Oswego
Department of English
Dr. Neelika Jayawardane
303E Poucher Hall
Sharing intellectual property, rather than hording ideas and thoughts, is one of the best
things about an academic environment: it provides a space for an ongoing, engaging, and
ethical conversation. While I encourage you to discuss how to articulate arguments in a
research paper, or the questions in an exam (and possible strategies for answering the
questions) please do not share your written answers, nor tell anyone how/what to
write. And certainly: do not copy or download a paper from the Internet; get a paper from
a “paper bank”; or have someone else do your work for you. I’ve seen some Internet
papers, and they are simply dreadful.
My class policy is clear: if you are found to have engaged in academic dishonesty, or
plagiarism, these actions will result not only in failing that particular assignment, but
also an automatic failure of the class. Please check the student handbook for what
academic dishonesty will entail, and the correct procedures one may follow in order to
avoid such a charge.
I take academic dishonesty seriously; and I make no exceptions.
PLEASE READ, SIGN AND DATE THE FOLLOWING:
I know what academic dishonesty and plagiarism means/what it entails. I know that if I
engage in academic dishonesty, I will fail the assignment, and fail the class automatically.
Although I know that I am encouraged to discuss how to best articulate arguments in a
research paper, or talk about the questions in a take-home exam (and possible strategies
for answering the questions) I will not share written answers, nor directly tell anyone
how/what to write via “traditional” nor “non-traditional” means: text, IM, or email. I will
not copy or download a paper from the Internet; get a paper from a “paper bank”; or have
someone else do my work for me. I did not share written answers, nor tell anyone
how/what to write. I know that all parties (including me) with suspiciously similar
answers fail the exam, as well as the class.
I’m smarter than that, prepared for intellectual engagement, and write well-articulated
papers than those atrocities on the Internet.
________________________
NAME (PLEASE PRINT)
_________________________
SIGNATURE
____/____/_____
DATE
ENGLISH 465: MIDTERM EXAM (20 points/20% of grade)
PLAN to address 1 Questions/night. If you’ve read all the material carefully, attended class, taken notes,
and participated actively in discussion, the exam should not reduce you to tears – but will still take time.
Proofread and write complete, grammatically correct sentences with your own analysis, so that I can give
you the grade you deserve.
DIRECTIONS:
1. Please type answers, number the answers, and use: 12 Point Times Font 1 ½ Line Spacing
2. Due: THURSDAY, 21st October. Bring your exam TO CLASS time (we discuss the PROPOSAL for
the Final Paper assignment on that day). Do not provide me with the “printer died”/etc. stories on
the due date/time. I will have you sign a sheet of paper, so there will be no confusion over lost exams.
Late exams will not be accepted.
3. Sign/date the Plagiarism Declaration Form (first page), and attach it to the front of the exam.
4. Questions are worth 2 points (exam is worth 20 points altogether). Answer intelligently and clearly,
incorporating the texts we read (Conrad, Turnbull, Levi-Strauss, Kaplan, and the articles) and class
discussion. Providing details and evidence from the text(s) is a really good way to get both points. On
p. 3-4, there is a sample Question&Answer,
so you can check that to see how to go about writing yr own answers.)
5. Using direct quotes: make sure you use quotation marks, and MLA citation rules (see also sample Q and
A). Introduce the point and conclude in yr OWN words. Use quotes ONLY to support (not as a
substitution).
Example: Sherman Alexie does not hide that it might be fun for “Indians” to (sometimes) take
advantage of stereotypes that “dominant” culture cultivates in order to benefit in small ways; he jokes,
“When highly attractive German women show up on the reservation, Indian men suddenly become
shamans” (NPR interview). However, according to Tom Jones, in “Is Alexie Talking Rubbish?”,
Indians only “continue to disadvantage themselves and ruin their image by playing along with
stereotypes, no matter how fun” (233). This is because...(continue your reasoning, and conclude).
Conrad, Turnbull, Kaplan, Levi-Strauss, and the articles critiquing anthropology
A. “The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Govermentality” by
Peter Pels
B. “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology: A Philological Exploration of Anthropology’s Heart of Darknes” by
Andrew Apter
C. “The Hall of Mirrors: Orientalism, Anthropology, and the Other” by William S. Sax
D. “Edward Said and Anthropology” by Nicholas B. Dirks
1. Almayer is looking for “escape” – his current life offers the tantalising possibility of fortune, but it is also a
place of entrapment. In your answers to the questions below, refer to specifics in Conrad’s descriptions,
class discussion, and make your own, well-reasoned argument.
a) Where is his dystopia/Hell, and to what utopia/Heaven does Almayer hope to “transport” himself?
Describe why each location is imagined as either “utopia” or “dystopia” – using Almayer’s thoughts, rants,
dreams and hopes.
b) In class, we discussed the more complex (but logical) relationship between “power” and “escape” (both
literally, and figuratively). How would “power” provide Almayer the possibility of “escape”? Map out the
complex relationship between his desire for power (via making a fortune) and escape (from hell to heaven).
2. The manner in which the romance between Dain (the Rescue Prince) and Nina (Almayer’s daughter) is
described – and the specific words used to describe how they behave in love – tells us a lot about the way
many Europeans (or Conrad) saw the people in their colonies (the “natives”).
Q. What do the specific words used to describe Dain, and Nina (“torn” between being civilised/ savage) tell
us about the way the “native” (the “savage”) is associated with “passion” (giving into emotion), while the
European (the “civilised”) is associated with “Reason” (suppressing passion)? Use very specific references in
Almayer’s Folly – quote Conrad appropriately from a number of places in Folly – to illustrate the point.
3. An easy one: in class, we discussed how our modern addictions to certain bizarrely addictive products
drove the processes of conquest, forced labour, and the massive transportation of people for the purposes of
cheaply producing these products.
a) Describe/list some of those products, for which the Dutch/English/Portuguese sent their soldiers, sailors,
trades-people and warships – products for which entire people’s lands (and lives) were taken over.
b) Almayer spends much of his time hoping to map out the entire area of islands, sea routes, and river route
that will get him to his mythical pot of gold. What’s the relationship between map-making and conquest?
4. Pels, Apter, and Dirks illustrate that anthropology – and the scholarly study Other people/civilisations/their
culture – was intrinsically tied to colonialism (the conquest of those Other people/lands, and their resources).
Peter Pels begins by illustrating that “anthropology” was intrinsically tied to “statecraft” (165-7). Andrew
Apter, too, points out that anthropology in/of Africa is “historically associated” with colonialism, and that
there is an “awkward” relationship between anthro and the “Politics/culture of empire” (Apter 578).
Q. How was anthroplogy, and the scholarship/study of “others” and their culture, texts, and civilisation
useful to colonial conquests according to Pels/Apter/Dirks (or other scholars/articles we’ve read)? Use
specific, appropriate quotes form the articles we’ve read to support your answer.
5. Edward Said called attention to the problems of studying the Other, by stating that in order to study Others,
we must essentialise them, leading to “hostilities” (Sax 293). William Sax offers a possible opposing view to
the damnation of all anthopologists, stating that that the process of “difference making” does not “always
or necessarily involve the inferiorization of the Other (294).
a) First, describe briefly what it means to “essentialise” a group, using any of the texts we’ve read.
b) Explain what Sax means when he claims that the “hostility” we might feel towards an Other is, in fact,
pointing towards the things which we dislike about ourselves and our past (294).
6. We see from reading Turnbull that it’s not simply the “bad Europeans” who create “essentialised”
versions of the Other, and therefore demeaned the Other. Creating Other/Self is part of negotiating power
and vying for resources within any system. Those who may be seen as “oppressed” are often complicit in
power structures; they resist, and play along with power – and those who are “in power” often do not
completely “win”.
Q. How does Turnbull describe their relationship between the “forest-Africans” (BaMbuti) and the various
other “village-Africans”? How do they “essentialise” each other, and often reduce each other’s humanity –
but do so without great harm coming to either? Use specific accounts/descriptions/reflections from
Turnbull to support your answer.
7. The Missions and missionaries that we read about in the last chapters of Turnbull are vastly different
in their approaches (243-258). Though we may think that the Bible – or any religious book – contains One
True Meaning, there was/is a lot of “liberty” taken with the “meaning” of Christianity.
a) FIRST, why does Pels claim that were missions/missionaries were so intrinsic to colonisation (think
language/teaching/learning about the Other in order to best communicate your cultural stuff/religion to them)?
(See Pels 171-172). How can Christianity be tied up with the process of conquest?
b) Use the examples of the different missions to which Turnbull takes Kenge to illustrate how differently
the message was communicated and interpreted – some are obviously a turnoff, while others are beautiful.
8. Though we’ve been told that race does not exist, biologically, Victorian obsessions – linking skull
size/shape to “race”/to people’s intelligence levels (using simplistic/moronic versions of Darwin and
Linneaus’ writing on evolution and taxonomy for support) – are still very much with us. Apter discusses how
anthropologists, along with colonists, “invented” the concept of African “tribes” based on their own
understanding of how European nations were made (582-on).
a) How did anthropologists, informed by their European understanding of “nations”, “ethnicity”, and “race”
help “invent” the “tribes” of Africa, according to Apter? More problematically, how did modern
obsessions with documenting people “fix” their identity/category, thereby allowing no room for
movement or change (Caren Kaplan discusses this, too)?
b) In Chapter 9 (“World of the Village”, Turnbull), we see some instances of just how silly people in this
region regarded Belgian attempts to categorise them neatly into specific “tribes”. Describe that small, but
significant example that helps us have a clue into what’s going on (A BIG HINT: it’s on page 170)!
9. Often, we create “myths of rescue” to justify conquest (I think they are the stories we need to tell ourselves if
we go to take over some Other people and their resources). Colonial enterprises included: social improvement
of villages, the development of colonial policing, our understanding of public/private, the reordering of public
space via town planning/architecture, displays of salvation, sanitation, and a whole slew of other things all
become controlled by the colonial mission – itself informed by the “evangelical models of bodily and
household reform”, states Apter (589). Sadly, our sense of superiority gets linked to well-meaning projects
essential to colonisation of Others.
Q. What are some of the myths of rescue and improvement – education, sanitation, town/city planning,
rights for women, religion, etc. – that we construct? How Why are these myths useful to conquest?
10. Towards the end of the book, we see how the Belgians (as an outside power), misunderstand how the
village/forest people have worked out a complex relationship with each other. In fact, one well-meaning
moron really damages the BaMbuti (Turnbull 259).
a) How the complex relationship between two groups (forest/village people) worked out (Ch. 9-13)?
How do they regard each other/trick each other/play with each other’s notions of the “other”?
b) How does one Belgian (Ch. 14) impose his own understanding of how the BaMbuti must live (thusly
destroying their lives without realising it)?
SAMPLE QUESTION AND ANSWER:
Q. Look at some of the specific sequences that Jennifer Worth discuses. What does a comic format
allow a writer/artist to do, that a traditional narrative (writing) or a memoir does not, making the
audience “participants” in the storytelling? What do these images/captions/spaces between the frames
allow a writer to convey?
A. Jennifer Worth uses the sequences involving Marjanne’s embarrassing/mysterious/unplanned body
changes in puberty to illustrate – comically – the discomforts of adolescence, taking “a break from the
forward thrust of her narrative to illustrate these physical changes point by point across several panels”
(Worth 150, 151): here, the panels allow us to stop and reflect, rather than be driven by the plot [you
see that the main point is introduced/concluded by YOU, and augmented/supported by the quote – the
quote is no substitute for your own words]. Worth points out that in illustrating how Marjane grows up
and changes “physically from a child into a woman over the course of fourteen years,” she links “her
physical experiences to mental and emotional transformations”(146). While it’s all very funny, these
frames also highlight the way in which Satrapi’s “external changes” are reflective of more internal/
philosophical/ political/ social changes (150). [here, you see: effective use of quotes to support your
answer – the quote is actually relevant to the point, not just some random quote you’ve dumped in]
In the sequence where her friend falls to his death, we get the fear/adrenaline of the chase, the
hope for a getaway, and the horror of the watching friends – the spaces between the frames
substituting for the passing of time, allowing us to stop, absorb, and connect to the next event. We see
that even as the young man is falling, his hands reach out for the moon – an ideal for which he died.
These things may be possible to convey with words (both adolescent discomfort and the horror of
watching a friend plunge to his death), but with these sequences of drawings, we see it all as a
performance – and are able to participate visually, intellectually, and emotionally, replacing “missing”
words with a story that arrives in our own minds. In this way, the readers are far more involved in the
telling of the story; we are participants who absorb the story better.
[here, you conclude in your own words, after checking that your answer actually addresses what the
question asks – you may say something brilliant, but if it isn’t what the Q. asks, it will be a sad day…]