AMST 210–Paper 2
Here are some prompts to help you think about your second paper. Each of them asks you to look in some detail at one or two of the texts or images assigned for the course. None of the prompts gives you an interpretive thesis. Be sure you have one and develop an argument grounded by detailed evidence. You may, of course, design your own topic, though I’d strongly urge you to talk to me if you do so. The essay is due Fri, April 26, by 11am. It should be 6-7 double-spaced pages.
1. Closely examine one or two photos taken by Arnold Genthe or Edward Curtis. Pay attention to details and explain what the photos tell us about the photographer who took them, his relationship to his subjects, and dominant ideas about race and nationhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. You’ll need to look carefully at the details of the photographs you choose and to place them in the context of the photographer’s broader work.
2. How does Roosevelt’s “The Strenuous Life” imagine the essential aspects of virtuous manhood? You might want to think especially about the way white manhood is contrasted with masculinity in colonized lands on the one hand or with white womanhood on the other. Again, you will need to cite details in these texts to support any broad observations.
3. Examine two paintings by Frederick Arthur Bridgman in light of Edward Said’s discussion of Orientalism and other materials we have read and discussed in class. What meanings does Bridgman appear to give to the so-called “Orient”? How are these meanings like or unlike those we might find in another Orientalist painter of the period? How does Bridgman’s Orient help American audiences define their own social, racial, and gender roles in the United States itself?
4. “Buffalo” Bill and Zitkala Sa both write about the American West, but, in many ways, it’s a very different place in the two works. What is the “West” for each of these writers? What do they share in their vision of it?
5. Uncle Remus came to be understood in the mid-to-late 20th century as a character embodying the worst of racist stereotypes. In many ways, this is an absolutely reasonable reading of Joel Chandler Harris’ collection of tales. Are “The Story of the Deluge” and “Why the Negro is Black” consistent with the idea of Remus as strictly a racist stereotype? In what ways do the stories and the framing device around them both support and, at least in small ways, challenge this idea of him?
Paper Prompts–Essay 1
The prompts below should spur your thinking for our first paper. They ask questions but don’t provide an interpretive thesis. You should be very sure you have one. Feel no obligation to address all of the questions in any prompt. They are only there to help you start thinking about your paper, not to structure its details.
You should be sure to abide by the college’s honor code and to cite properly any sources consulted.
The paper is due Fri, March 15 by 10am in the turn-in box in Axinn.
Prompts:
1) Clients often commissioned John Singer Sargent to paint portraits including more than one family member. In light of our class discussions, examine one such group portrait or compare and contrast two that we have not discussed in detail. It might help to gather some information about those sitting for the portrait from a reliable source. What is Sargent trying to say about the family and the individuals in the portrait(s) you examine? Are they close to one another? Happy? Troubled? Sad? Does he seem to admire the sitters or not? Are there objects in the image(s) that point to something important about the family or the individuals? You’ll have to pay attention to the details of how Sargent , through objects, his use of dark and light, the posture and expression of his subjects, etc, creates a particular image of them. Two possible portraits to consider are Mrs. Fiske Warren and Her Daughter (1903) and Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children (1893). If you gather outside information about any portraits, be sure it’s properly cited in your paper.
2) How does O. Henry see Coney Island in “Brickdust Row”? Is it a place of liberation, decadence, manipulation of the working class, or something else? What differentiates Coney Island from other parts of the city mentioned in the story: the ferry, the lawyer’s office, and Florence’s tenement? Does O. Henry seem sympathetic with the implied moral codes of Florence, Blinker, neither one, or both? What are those moral codes? It will help here, of course, to think about what Kasson has to say about Coney Island and the ways that O. Henry might (or might not) share Kasson’s assessment of the Coney experience.
3) Given that Cather’s “Paul’s Case” ends with the protagonist hurling himself in front of a train, it might be safe to think of the story as a critique of the social world that drove him to suicide. Alternatively, maybe Cather thinks there is something fundamentally wrong with Paul that won’t allow him to be happy with the options that the world presents to him. How do you read this story’s vision of middle-class life and the luxury that Paul idealizes? What seems to be Cather’s understanding of these two different realms? You’ll have to point to specific moments and language in the story to make your interpretation persuasive.
4) Like the murders of Mary Rogers and Helen Jewett, the murder of Sarah M. Cornell in Fall River, MA in 1832 created a sensation in the pre-civil-war press. You’ll find a very brief summary of what was generally known about the killing and some of the speculation surrounding it here. Even decades later, the Cornell murder seemed to offer lessons to thoughtful observers in The Terriible Haystack Murder, published in 1876. How does this account of Cornell’s killing continue to rely on the figures of the confidence man and the painted woman to offer moral stories to urban youth? What are the morals preached? What are the dangers of the city and how can young men and women protect themselves from them? In particular, you might focus on the ways that this book’s illustrations are similar to or different from the illustrations of the Rogers and Jewett murders that we discussed in class.