EN372: All About Eve

Oral Presentations

At the last class meeting on Wednesday, May 4, each student will deliver an oral presentation. It should be about 5 minutes long; you may go as long as eight minutes but not longer.

Your presentation may be on any representation of Eve that you have found and consider interesting, in any medium, from any time period. Please feel free to make use of the audiovisual capabilities. Representations from art history are welcome, or from theology, or from literature, or from popular culture. In your presentation, try not only to describe this representation of Eve, but also to interpret it, offering some analysis of how it fits into the Eve tradition, what sort of interpretation of Genesis it represents, and what sort of view of woman it puts forward.

If you are unable to identify a version of Eve that you are interested in analyzing, consider reading one of these three books that I have placed on reserve in the library:

• Ann Chamberlin, Leaving Eden (1999). An "eco-feminist" novel in which Eve, Adam, and Lilith are all imagined in the context of a tribe of pre-historic hunter-gatherers, with competing feminist and masculinist visions of civilization, as well as conflicts between men and women.
• David Maine, Fallen (2006). A novel tracing the stories of the first human family, maintaining the essential elements of the Genesis narrative, though told in the manner of a realistic novel. It begins with Cain's narrative, then moves backwards to Abel's narrative, and then back to Adam's narrative, and finally back to Eve's narrative, which Maine imagines in ways that are both archetypal and very original.
• Paul Rudnick, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told: And Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach (1999). Two plays by humorist, screenwriter, and playwright Paul Rudnick. You would, naturally, be focusing on the first one, in which Rudnick presents a gay Genesis, via the story of Adam and Steve.

If you choose to present on one of these books, you must e-mail me with your decision by Tuesday, April 26. You will be expected to form "book groups" on the book of your choosing, meet as a group to discuss it (after having read it) and collectively present the group reactions to the rest of the class.