• write a 3 page, typed, double-spaced paper
  explaining your choices.

You could also consider comparing and contrasting two specific simulations to make a point. As long as you perceptively bring into play the details of the simulation, virtually anything is fair game.

"Sexism is a lot more difficult to deal with than race. It's much harder to get down to the real isses."

As a facilitator, he separates the men and women in each encounter group. He asks the men to draw up a list of eight ways they have practiced sexual discrimination in the recent past. The women are told to list eight kinds of sexual discrimination they have suffered. When the lists are finished about wo minutes later, the men and women get back together and compare their work. According to the article, that's when the trouble starts. Typically, the men list such grave gender transgressions as opening a door for a woman, or insisting on paying the bill at a restaurant. In contrast, the women--and these are women who have risen to the equivalent rank of staff sergeant or better in the Army, Air Force, Marines, or Navy, aren't buying it. Their list, which has 10 items instead of the requested eight, deals with much more serious issues of sexism such as being passed over for a promotion or kept out of the a military career field such as flying or infantry training.

This alone might be cause for commotion, but when one of the men points out that the women can't even stick to the requested eight points of discussion and another jokes about woman "acting weird at that time of the month," all hell breaks loose.

Lanham reiterates his point, arguing:

"When they (the encounter group participants) were talking about racial discrimination last week it was deadly serious. Nobody was playing games. People got down to the real issues. Sexism is going to be much harder to eradicate."

Write a position paper defending or rejecting Lanham's point of view that sexism is harder to deal with than racism. Whenever possible bring into discussion plays we have read this semsester to highlight your arguments.

• In America it has been said that men and women communicate differently; men talk to complete, whereas women talk to connect.

  Women talk toward interdependence, whereas mem talk toward independence.

• Women talk cooperatively, men talk comparatively.

Are these just outrageous stereotypes, or is there some level of truth to them? Are such differences applicable to gender relationships outside of America as well? Does this delineation of male-female differences in communicating parallel what happens in cross-cultural interactions?

• The IK
• The Golden Age
• "Before We Knew Nothing"

• Compare the cultural issues inherent in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club *with one of the plays that we didn't read from the Between Worlds Anthology.

• Compare and contrast the film Zan Boko *with one or both of the South African plays we have read.

• How can you tell that Master Harold and the Boys and Sizwe Bonsi is Dead *are works by the same writer?

• How can you tell that Dream on Monkey Mountain and Pantomime *were both created by Derek Walcott?

• Compare and contrast David Henry Hwang's As the Crow Flies with his M. Butterfly.

• Compare and contrast Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys with The Piano Lesson.

• Compare and contrast the film The World of Apu *with Naga-Mandala.

Two Paper possibilties:

• Compare and contrast how two or three different plays we have read this semester have dealt with the concept of the American Dream.

• Or pick a play to write about which in your opinion has effectively dramatized a particular way of thinking about or relating to the American Dream. You may very likely opt to discuss only a particular facet of the American Dream, rather than attempt to encompass all its many associative issues. Although your discussion should be focused on a single play, feel free to bring into discussion other plays that we have read this semester to support your ideas.