CMCL MA exam questions 2011
4000-word question in Performance and Ethnography
Scholars of performance and ethnography have long been concerned with how communicative
forms and practices operate as modes of action or ways of accomplishing social ends. At the
same time, scholars have called attention to the constitutive role of reflexivity in performance:
that is, to the importance of the ways in which people self-consciously construe their own
interactions with the wider social orders in which they participate. Drawing on up to five
works from the performance/ethnography list, discuss how different scholars have construed
the relationship between communicative practice, social action, and reflexivity.
4000-word question in Film and Media Studies
Authorship has been one of the key critical/theoretical approaches in film and media studies
since the 1950s. What are the important positions and debates that have developed around
authorship in film and media studies? How has the concept of authorship been defined, revised,
and refined from the 1950s to the present? Why is the concept of authorship both central to
film and media studies yet also a contentious one within these fields? What are some of the
arguments against using authorship approaches in film and media studies?
4000-word question in Rhetoric and Public Culture
Rhetoric, understood as a transformative project, is committed to a more just democratic
world. As such, rhetoric’s role as an inventive process of judging and constituting reason has
been valued across numerous cultures and histories. Drawing on the exam reading list, discuss
the ways conceptions of “reason” have shifted over time within discourses about justice and
democracy. In your response, you should first consider how what is “reasonable” contrasts
with what is “rational.” Then, map the role of reason in producing more democratic human
relations in contemporary public culture by engaging one specific issue. Such issues might
include (but are not limited to) democratic dissent, questions of the body, public emotions,
and/or visual culture.
4000-word question in Performance and Ethnography
Scholars of performance and ethnography have long been concerned with how communicative
forms and practices operate as modes of action or ways of accomplishing social ends. At the
same time, scholars have called attention to the constitutive role of reflexivity in performance:
that is, to how people not only act, but also reflect upon the meanings of their actions, within the
larger social orders in which they participate. Drawing on up to five works from the
performance/ethnography list, discuss how different scholars have construed the relationship
between communicative practice, social action, and reflexivity. Please note that this question
does not ask you to discuss the ways ethnographic writing may be reflexive. Instead, focus your
essay on how communities and/or community members may be reflexive about their own social
actions in and through their communicative practices.
2000-word question in Film and Media Studies and Performance/Ethnography
Various notions of audience have been mobilized across these areas of study. Discuss some of
the compelling differences and similarities between the ways film/media studies conceives of
audience and the ways in which performance/ethnography understand audience—which
might be configured as spectators, viewers, participants, users, consumers, fans, etc.
2000-word question in Rhetoric and Public Culture and Film and Media Studies
Drawing from two readings found on the M. A. reading list (one from film/media studies and one
from rhetoric and public culture), develop an analysis in which you explain how film/media studies
might serve to enrich the study of rhetoric how the study of rhetoric might enrich the study of film
and media. Attend in particular to specific conceptual, theoretical, or methodological attributes that
you can argue are more or less unique to their particular disciplinary domain.