Midterm exam

Study Guide for the Midterm Exam
Exam Date: Thursday, March 8, 2018

This exam accounts for 20% of the class’s total grade.

Section I.

Answer five (5) of seven (7) questions(50% of the exam’s total grade) based on the following material:

Films:

Madeinusa (Claudia Llosa, Film Movement, 2007)

Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, (1959). New York: Criterion Collection, 1999)

White Elephant (Pablo Trapero, Strand Releasing, 2013)

Men with Guns, (John Sayles, 1997).
Novel:

Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban.

HOW TO PREPARE:

Films:

Review the questions in the film’s study guides provided for each film:

http://www.medina502.com/classes/faith_lac/readings/madeinusa_English.pdf
http://www.medina502.com/classes/faith_lac/readings/White_Elephant_Faith_English_Spring_2018.pdf
http://www.medina502.com/classes/faith_lac/readings/Black_Orpheus_Faith_English_Spring_2018.pdf
http://www.medina502.com/classes/faith_lac/readings/men-with-guns_border_english.pdf

Dreaming in Cuban:

Provide answers to the following questions:

  1. Is this an autobiographical text? If so, defend your answer.

  2. Explain the role of chronology and/or spatial fragmentation.

  3. Whose story is it?

  4. What are the characteristics of the narrative voice(s)?

  5. Who is the Focalizer (the eye who sees)?

  6. How does the text present religion or the faith process?

  7. Explore how the text portrays religious topics, such as redemption?

  8. Why did the author write the novel or short story?

  9. What is the social-cultural-political or historical context of the novel?

  10. How are sexual/gender roles assigned?

  11. How does the novel or short story deal with issues of nationalism and identity?

  12. What is the ideology of the text?



Section II. Write an essay (worth 50% of the exam’s total grade)

Write an essay using a traditional format (introduction where you present a thesis statement, arguments where you defend or defend your thesis statement and a conclusion, where you summarize your essay’s or thesis statement’s main idea)

Possible topics: (I will select the one of the list to be expanded in the test)

The manifestations of Syncretism in Latin American Religion providing sample arguments from the articles read. It must include at least two geographical areas (out of the Andes, Mexico, Cuba and Brasil).

Religion as a social construct in at least two of the texts studied so far (four films and one novel).

Redemption as the moving force in at least two of the films studied in class.

Gender roles in Latin American, using examples from the texts studied in class as textual evidence.

The representation of syncretism in the texts we have studied in class until right before the exam. I will pick the novel and/or films.



Articles:

Berger, Peter L. "1. Religion and World-Construction" The Sacred Canopy; Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.,: Doubleday, 1967, pp. 3-28. (pdf)

Justo L.González. "A Shifting Landscape: Latin America." In Story of Christianity, Volume II. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publications, 2010, pp. 363-73. (pdf)

Stewart-Gambino., H. "Religion in Latin America." Understanding Contemporary Latin America. Eds. Hillman, Richard S. and Thomas J. D'Agostino. 4th ed. Boulder, Colo. (pdf)

Mills, Kenneth. "The Limits of Religious Coercion in Mid-Colonial Peru." Past & Present, no. 145, 1994, pp. 84-121, http://www.jstor.org/stable/651246.

Medina, Néstor. "The Future of US Latino/a Theology " Mestizaje : (Re)Mapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/O Catholicism. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009, pp. 119-30. (pdf)

Phillip Berryman. "Introduction" Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Religious Movement in Latin America and Beyond. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987, pp. 1-28. (pdf)

Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony M. "The Contribution of Catholic Orthodoxy to Caribbean Syncretism: The Case of la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in Cuba ". Archives De Sciences Sociales Des Religions, vol. 117, no. 117, 2002, pp. 37-58., doi:10.4000/assr.2477. (PDF) (pdf)

Bastide, Roger. "Chapter 12 : Problems of Religious Syncretism." The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. pp. 260-84. (pdf)

Jensen, Tina Gudrun. "Discourses on Afro-Brazilian Religion from de Africanization to Re-Africanization." in Smith, Christian and Joshua Prokopy. Latin American Religion in Motion. Routledge, 1999, pp. 275-94. (pdf)