HUM 221 hints: 'What's on the final?'

I'm posting here an email message I got from a student, whom I won't embarrass by identifying, because her question ... and my answer ... should be of interest to others in Native American Cultural Expressions (Humanities 221). First, the question:

> Do you have any idea what you are going to have us do for our final in Hum. 221? I am just trying to get an idea of what I will need to do since it is a little over a week away.  If we have an A do we have to take the final, is it like Eng 111?? I was just curious! If you could either, email me back or mention this in class Friday I would appreciate it. Thanks
>

And then my answer:

Hi _____, thanks for asking. No, you'll need to write a final even if you've got an A ... It'll be a lot like the midterm, a 50-point essay maybe 3-4 pages long and a couple of 25-point brief (2- to 3-page) essays.

I haven't made out the exam yet, but I can practically guarantee the 50-point question will deal with how Native American people are adapting their cultural heritage today to art forms like literature (storytelling, poetry, etc.), music and dance, and film. One of the 25-point essays will be be one of those reflective essays I like so much, and one of them will probably be a reader response essay on a poem that I choose. It'll be take-home, open-book and it'll be due at the scheduled time for our final, which is Monday, May 1, at 10:30 a.m.

Next question?

A couple of further hints:

• Look for commodification (or commercialization) and expropriation to appear somewhere on the final. Here's why: We live in a market economy, for better or worse, and it can be argued that art forms that don't have commercial value won't survive. So the question might read like this: How have Native Americans maintained traditional cultural means of expression -- like storytelling, dance, etc. -- in mass market American society?
  
• We've been reading stories and poetry, and we watched a video about pow wow dancing this week. Next week I'm almost certain, barring technical difficulties beyond my control, to be screening an indie movie called Kusah Hakwaan that builds on the storytelling tradition of the Tlingit (pronounced KLINK-it) people of Alaska. And I'll also be asking about verbal arts, dance and film.

See where we're headed with this? This whole question of how cultural traditions adapt to survive in a modern world with a market economy is central to the course.