Call and Response is

THE CALL: The call will take the form of a literary argument about one of the texts assigned for the week.  The group will post a complete thesis and offer at least three specific textual examples to support the thesis on Canvas. The group should present one of the examples and explain how the example supports the thesis.  Your thesis must include the following elements:what=topic• how=attention to language, theme, and/or form• why=the significance of the argument• why should we care=how your reading increases our understanding of the passage/work

• Example Thesis (from one of Prof. Benavidez’slectures): Rosa’s physical encounter with Clytie, her mixed-race niece, forces Rosa to wake up to the reality that the ideals of the South, which were mostly defined by racial and gender hierarchies, are no longer at play and that she (Rosa) is not the same as Clytie despite their relationship (topic). Rosa faces questions about what it means to be a “Southern woman” in the New South (attention to language/theme) which is now represented by Clytie, a mixed-race woman (significance of the argument). This reading reflects the conflict between a deeply rooted sense of Southern identity and the sacred female body defined by old Southern ideals (why should we care).

• Example Support: o 1)  The first example of the conflict is the actual encounter between Rosa and Clytie on the stairsthat shows the separation between the two women when Rosa says “the single word spoken…had already broken and parted us before it (my body) had even paused” (111).o 2)  The second example of the conflict is demonstrated by Rosa’s interpretation of the touch as something “which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious channels of decorous ordering…” that makes “enemies and lovers” of the people touching (112).

o 3) The third example of the conflict culminates in the moment when Rosa is “waking into reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and unaltered old time…” but “to what cannot, what must not, be.”