Literature and Disability — DU B. A. (Hons) English Previous Year Question Papers

Major in English 3. Candidates have to answer ALL the questions in Part A and ANY THREE questions in Part B. 4. Questions in Part A carry 10 marks each and questions in Part B carry 20 marks each. 1. Write a short note on any one of the following : (b) Madam Manekshaw 2. (a) Write a short note on the portrayal of Helen Keller in Anne Finger's "Helen and Frida" (b) Critically analyse with reference to the context: I think about the times when I chango the Environment around me With the help of my imagination I can go places that do not exist And they are like beautiful dreams. 3. (a) With reference to context, critically comment on the following: "Oedipus tears out his eyes even if another organ might seem more appropriate, given his crime. His act not only symbolizes castration but makes it unnecessary. What you can't see, you can't want". (b) Discuss Georgina Kleege's experiences as a blind researcher. 4. (a) "Are you happy in spite of everything? Only, the pain you've been through should've been enough to put you off life forever." Discuss, in context of Kanga's Trying to Grow, the implications and effect of this intersection of pain and joy. (b) Discuss the role of Brit's family in his negotiations between physical disability and the assertion of an autonomous subjectivity. 5. (a) "On some level all movies are about seeing, which is why I can see better at the movies than in real life. The filmmaker shows me what to see and teaches me how to understand it". Discuss Georgina Kleege's critique of the representation of disability in cinema. (b) Does a renegotiation of and with blindness lead to an attendant renegotiation of the act of "reading"? Critically comment with reference to Georgina Kleege's Sight Unseen. 6. (a) Discuss how Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay draws close attention to mental processes in his poems. (b) Discuss how Hayleigh Barclay challenges the medical and religious models of disability in her short story "Happy Birth-day". (a) Studying writing by disabled writers intervenes in the dominant social discourses about disability rights by transferring narrative authority to the disabled subject. Do you agree? Discuss with the help of any two texts from this course. (b) Discourses of ability and disability are socially constructed and not always scientific, objective or final. Do you agree? Discuss using two texts you have studied as part of this course.