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

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 : 2. (a) Critically analyse with reference to the context: Spinning my body Brings some sort of harmony to my thoughts So that I can centrifuge away all the black thoughts I realise that the faster I spin The faster I drive away the black (b) Discuss how different disabilities are compared to each other as better or worse, with reference to Hayleigh Barclay's short story "Happy Birth-day". 3. (a) With reference to context, critically comment on he following: "At what point would the writers responsible for these descriptions, or the announcers who read them, begin to gag on their words? Will actors and directors begin to imagine other ways to represent blindness? Will screenwriters rethink their facile assumptions about blindness when they imagine an audience with first-hand experience of it? Will blind audiences start boycotting certain films, exerting economic pressure to enact social change?" (b) Discuss the title of Georgina Kleege's memoir, Sight Unseen. 4. (a) Write a detailed critical note on Firdaus Kanga's representation of his religious community and class identity in Trying to Grow. (b) Discuss the significance of the title of Firdaus Kanga's novel, Trying to 5. (a) Georgina Kleege's Sight Unseen gives non-disabled people tools for imagining and understanding the experience of blindness. Discuss with reference to the text. (b) Georgina Kleege's Sight Unseen, critically reimagines how the female disabled body, especially the blind female body, can be represented. Discuss with close reference to the text. 6. (a) Discuss the use of symbolism to portray the thoughts and experiences of a person with autism in Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhya's poems. (b) Anne Finger critically comments on the representation of disabled people in Hollywood films in her short story "Helen and Frida". Do you agree? Discuss with reference to the text. 7. (a) Is the study of writing by disabled writers important in creating understanding of disability? Give a reasoned answer with the help of any two texts you have studied as part of the course. (b) Pleasure and insight are as much part of the disabled experience as are pain and dissatisfaction with bodily, social and infrastructural limitations. Do you agree? Discuss with reference to any two texts from the course.