Mid-Term Examination Topics

Make your choice between these two topics for your Mid-Term Examination. The comprehensive Examination details are in the Mid-Term Examination Detail post, below. Keep in mind that all of the material and ideas referenced by each of the two topics is directly and entirely from lecture.

Note that you are making a single unified argument, on the model described in lecture, under a single thesis statement: it is assumed that you already have functional understanding of the individual religious and civilisation concepts.

1. Use specific examples from Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood to explain how mujokan, wabi-sabi, and mono no aware are separate Japanese civilisation expressions of one and the same underlying Buddhist religious idea. 
2. Give an account of how Monica Ali uses a dialectic of setting in Brick Lane to engage with tenets of the Islamic religion under umbrella term Inshallah.