Critical Essay I, Fall 2004

If you've come from the critical essays overview page, you'll know what the critical essays are and what they're for. This page gives the assignment sheet for the first critical essay.

Assignment Sheet

Due: Monday, October 18, 2004, at 5 pm, either in the envelope outside my office door (Fenton 240) or in my mailbox in the English Department office (Fenton 277).

Format: 4-6 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins (be warned that barely getting on to the fourth sheet of paper does not a four-page paper make!); title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; format, bibliography, and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations and examples of MLA style; the basic template is Author. "Title of Poem, or Essay, or Story." Title of Book from which It Comes. Editor of Book (if any), ed. Place of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication. Page Numbers.); proper quotation format in body of paper: "..." (Franklin 12). for quotations within a paragraph; blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer.

Criteria for Evaluation: No matter which option you choose for the critical essay, I will be grading your paper in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on textual and other analysis and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure in advancing your arguments, and the quality of your paper's prose (including grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as those who have taken and are taking this class; hence, you can assume that your readers have worked with the texts you're writing on and you don't have to include the kind of detailed background that someone not taking this course would need.

Draft/Rewrite Policy: I will not grade rewrites of the first critical essay, but I will comment on drafts if you get them to me a reasonable time before the essay is due.

Options: Here are your options for the first critical essay. In each of these options, your job is to come up with an argument that you seek to support by using textual and other evidence to persuade your readers of your position's validity.

• Reading Independence Day I: Using American Studies Methodologies. Consider your viewing(s) and our discussions of the film Independence Day, the essays from Week Two that identify concepts and use methodologies from cultural studies, critical theory, history, geography, anthropology, sociology, and psychology (all of which contribute to and have influenced American Studies), and the relations between what you viewed and what you read in the first two weeks of classes. Then write an analytical essay in which you interpret Independence Day using the American Studies methodologies from the first two weeks of classes that you believe best help you analyze the meaning, significance, and stakes of the film. Part of your job in this essay is to convince your audience of the relevance and utility of your chosen methodologies. The goals, arguments, and interpretive approaches of your essay are up to you, but you might consider focusing your analysis on the function of representations of American identity/identities, difference/otherness, or American mission in the film.
• Reading Independence Day II: Film as American Studies. Consider the film Independence Day not simply as a cultural "text" to be analyzed but as itself contributing to debates within American Studies that we've surveyed during the first unit of the course. Then write a comparative essay in which you situate the implicit and explicit assumptions, values, and arguments of Independence Day in the context of debates within American Studies over either (a) the meaning of "America" and "American" identity/identities, (b) the functions of difference/otherness in American culture, or (c) defining and debating a sense of American "mission." How, to what ends, and with what stakes is Independence Day participating in debates within American Studies.
• Reading America I: Contesting American Identities. Consider the ways in which the readings for Weeks 2 and 3 relate to each other on the question of national identity and identify for yourself some of the debates over American identity/identities that are being developed in and between these readings. Then choose one of these debates and write a persuasive essay in which you carefully identify and thoughtfully take a position on the debate (you might consider supporting one side or another, or showing how both "sides" are wrong and proposing a position not yet considered or articulated, or reframing or redefining the terms of the debate, or...).
• Reading America II: Contesting American Missions. Consider the ways in which the readings from Weeks 3 through 8 offer a selective history from colonial America to the emergence of the United States as a world power by the end of the nineteenth century, using the concepts of freedom and manifest destiny to organize our selections. Is America's sense of mission as it evolved between 1776 and 1898 best characterized as a flawed but praiseworthy commitment to political and economic freedom, a hypocritical but effective deployment of the rhetoric of freedom and manifest destiny to justify territorial expansion, or something else entirely? Develop and justify your argument, using evidence from the readings to help explain and support your points.
• Reading American History I: Connecting Past and Present. Consider the perspectives and debates we have examined thus far this semester on Indian removals and Indian wars, the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. Which of these debates provides the best framework for helping us gain a better understanding of what is at stake in the current debates over the war on and occupation of Iraq? Develop and justify your argument, using evidence from the readings to help explain and support your points.
• Reading American History II: Your Mission for America. Should America and Americans try to cultivate a sense of national mission? If not, why? If so, what do you think that sense of American mission should include and entail? Lay out your vision for America's mission, as creatively and persuasively as possible. Be sure to anticipate and forestall objections based on past and current debates over American mission.

ENGL 200/AMST 202: Introduction to American Studies, Fall 2004
Created: 9/30/04 8:00 pm
Last modified: 10/7/04 11:55 am