colt writing essay -01

Optional Response Questions, choose any 2 of these questions to write about, total word count: 300

1. Does one of Cahun’s photographs move you or provoke you? Explain and discuss. Include
details of the photograph in your response, and refer at least briefly to Solomon-Godeau’s essay.

2. Choose a self-portrait by Cahun that you find especially surreal. Describe the photograph and
what it does. Is the self-portrait more surreal because it’s a photograph rather than a painting?
Why or why not?

3. Choose 2-3 of Cahun’s self-portraits. Who or what is the ‘subject’ of these self-portraits, in
Eribon’s sense of the ‘subject’? How do these photographs produce and/or disrupt the
‘subject’? Draw from Solomon-Godeau’s essay in your response.

4. Write an essay prompt that critically engages at least two of the following: Claude Cahun’s
photography, Solomon-Godeau’s article, one key term, a work from a previous week, a question
from our lecture slides. How might you respond to your essay prompt? Begin to think through a
possible response.

5. Unpack “Eve the Too Incredulous,” which opens Cahun’s Heroines. What story does “Eve
the Too Incredulous” retell? What does this retelling do? Refer to at least one key term in your
response.

6. Read “Delilah, Woman Among Women” in Cahun’s Heroines against the quotation from
Judges 16 that serves as its epigraph. What does Cahun’s retelling of this Biblical account do?
Refer to at least one key term in your response.