Short Paper on Sor Juana

NOTE: All written assignments, including your papers and the written portion of your presentations, should be submitted to me by email (frierspr@whitman.edu) in .doc or .docx format. If neither of those formats works for you, you can send .pdfs. Do not send googledocs. You must include your first and last name as the first terms in the filename, and the rest of the filename should make clear what assignment you are turning in. (So, for instance, when Jane Doe turns in her Descartes paper, she should save the paper under the filename “jane doe descartes paper.doc”.)

Your Sor Juana exegetical paper should be at least 1500 words and no more than 2500 words.

For this paper, you should start with a philosophical question of interest to you. The question can be something like “Are human beings free?” or “How should a just society respond to racism?” or “What is the nature of forgiveness?” or “Does God exist?” You should then look for areas in Sor Juana’s philosophy where she offers philosophical resources to help address that question. In some cases, these will be obvious, in others not. Read those parts of Sor Juana carefully to figure out what her view is or might be on your topic, and why she holds that view. Then look for difficulties, apparent contradictions, or ambiguities in her presentation of this view. Move from your philosophical question to an exegetical or interpretive question about Sor Juana’s text, that is, a question that asks something like “What does Sor Juana mean when she says ___?” or “How can Sor Juana say ___ when she also says ___?” or “How does the metaphor of ___ work in the context of Sor Juana’s overall point that ___?” Then answer that exegetical question. If the answer turns out to be too obvious, then look for a harder exegetical question. In the end, you should have a thesis that develops an interpretation of Sor Juana in a way that provides insight into her texts and also philosophical insight into the problem that initiated your inquiry. Your thesis should refer to Sor Juana and her views, but the reader should leave your paper with a better perspective on the philosophical issue at hand. Note that you should not weigh in with your own opinions or arguments about the underlying philosophical issues; the paper should focus on defending a thesis about what Sor Juana’s views are. (So something like, “While it might seem like Sor Juana is critical of the pursuit of knowledge, in fact her reference to ___ shows that she actually thinks that we can be happy through the pursuit of knowledge” would be a good exegetical thesis. Something like, “Sor Juana is critical of the pursuit of knowledge, but she just doesn’t recognize that knowledge is really essential for a happy life” would not be an exegetical thesis.) 

For an example of an exegetical paper of this kind (though longer and focused on Descartes rather than Sor Juana), see “Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes” (and forgive the shameless self-promotion).