A. For your final, 1500 word, paper, you will choose an author we have discussed in class and research his or her biography. Develop and prove how or why the author's biography influenced his or her writing. Demonstrate how the economic, social, political or familial world the in which the author lived is reflected in the style, setting, language symbolism, characters and tone of his or her written work. The focus should be on the work and showing how this biographical material is demonstrated there; just providing a biographical is not adequate for this assignment.
If you choose a playwright, limit yourself to applying the biographical material to the one play we read.

If you choose a short story writer, you must use the story from class but may also apply the biographical material to one or two other stories the author has written. If you choose a poet, use the poem or poems we read in class but also find other poems by this poet, either in your anthology or in a separate collection, that demonstrate the biographical influence. As with your first paper, in this paper you are required to do research and to provide correct in-text citations and a work-cited page. Three sources are the minimum required for this assignment.

B. The second half of this course focused on Postmodernism and postmodern literature. For your final, 1500 word, paper, choose a postmodern writer we read in class. Read at least three additional texts by this writer, other than the text required for class. Prove how/why your chosen writer is a postmodernist and how his/her works reflect Postmodern ideology. What topics/subjects presented and what techniques used classify the writer as a postmodernist?