On Friday, August 12, 2022, author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage during a speaking engagement. While one of many of Rushdie’s articles was part of our assigned readings for this semester, his attack is noteworthy for many of the ways it intersects with our topics of study.
For your final assignment, use the research and analytical skills you have worked to master throughout this course to write an essay of 4-6 pages that examines his attack and the reasons it highlights the need for examining source types as we analyze literature.
To write this essay, you will need to complete some research. You will need to familiarize yourself with some basics about Rushdie’s history (see fatwa) and decide whether he champions free speech and expression. For this reason, you will need to gather a minimum of the following sources: two academic sources, three journalistic sources, and one general access source. There are no date ranges that these sources should be from – use a mix of older sources and sources that may be only days old.
With your research completed, answer the following questions in your essay:
• How does Rushdie’s attack speak to the importance of literature and literary expression?
• Why does Rushdie’s attack highlight the themes of perception, confinement, and identity we have studied in this course?
• Why does our focus on source types become important when looking at the attack? (For example, would it make a difference if you were reading an article from a noteable news source vs. a blog post written by an extremest group with a biased agenda?)
Your finished essay should address all three of these questions while following formal MLA standards for writing the 5-6 page essay. It should also follow proper grammatical and mechanical standards.
