Essay #2: Application of Technical Terms and Analysis
Due Dates:
Rough Draft:
Final Draft:
5 page min.
Assignment:
Using Mary Louise Pratt’s transcribed lecture, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” carefully
compile definitions of the following terms: contact zones, autoethnographic texts,
transculturation, imagined communities (both Anderson’s definition as Pratt presents it as
well as her revised version that critiques it), and safe houses. Apply these various
definitions where appropriate to one or more of the essays we’ve read. Anzaldua,
Rodriguez, Freire, and Baldwin are all writers whose essays can be read according to the
terms Pratt generates.
Write an essay that applies these terms to the text you’ve selected as well as to some
experience in your own life. As we do not all have the same diversity of experience that
Pratt’s terminology would seem to apply to, I suggest you use the term “culture” rather
loosely. It does not have to apply only to national/ethnic/racial cultures. The term
culture and the idea of “contact zones” between them could also apply to geographic
cultures (small town vs. big city), gendered cultures (male & female), social cultures
(fraternities, political clubs, religious organizations, etc), or any kind of group affiliation
to which you might belong.
I suggest that you write this essay in at least 4 steps.
1) Write a précis of “Arts of the Contact Zone” where you trace not only the trajectory of
Pratt’s argument but also carefully note the definitions of the terms she employs.
2) Write an analysis of one of the other texts using Pratt’s language. For example, you
might consider the ways in which the experiences and language that James Baldwin uses
might be reframed according to Pratt’s terminology.
3) Write about your own experience in a “contact zone.”
4) Synthesize parts one, two, and three into a coherent essay whose argument evaluates
the utility of Pratt’s language.