Essay Three
Draft Due April 26
Final Due May 8
5-7 Pages
During the course of this class, you’ve studied how 20th century war presents numerous challenges for people trying to represent the causes, effects, consequences, and meaning of it. On your own and as a class, we’ve studied different parts of World War I, World II, the Holocaust, Vietnam, Bosnia, and the past two Gulf wars (1991 and present). We’ve also tried to understand war through a variety of textual approaches: the photograph, the newspaper article, the film, the essay, the novel, the memoir, and the internet. Throughout our studies, we’ve tried to keep both war and its aftermath, its memories, in constant tension. We’ve tried to view the shock of conflict through the retroactive lens of later knowledge. This has been our privilege and our curse as contemporary scholars.
Your final long essay will be primarily reflect on three texts from the class: Man’s Search for Meaning, Slaughter-House Five, and Maus. For the essay, you will approach the three texts using whatever frame or thesis you believe best explains how you think these different texts work together, or how they create meaningful differences in their perspectives, approaches, points of view, or reflections on war and its aftermath.
In order to contextualize how these authors frame, report, and represent their content, you should consult and apply the theories of Chris Hedges’ in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. You may also apply any other resource you find useful, including any hand-outs, articles, or class notes we read or discussed. The course website may prove useful to you for this. You may also ask me to recommend you sources, if necessary. This essay requires you to consult at least 5 scholarly sources and to create an annotated bibliography due with the draft.
Getting Started
The most difficult part of this essay will be organizing and framing what you want to focus on. You will have to both develop and identity common or productive themes that you then employ to form an argument, position, or thesis. Finding a productive thesis is difficult, but you are free to choose any position or examine whatever aspects of the texts. You will have to make an argument by proving an interesting and original perspective about the relationship between the texts.
Verifying a Thesis
You should have a working thesis (that you may alter) by spring break (April 12th), and should email me your idea by that date. Students that do not verify their approach or idea waive their rights to contest my judgment if I later determine their thesis, and by extension their entire draft, is unoriginal or uninteresting.
Annotated Bibliography
The annotated bibliography is a description of the outside sources you consult for your essay. See the sample below:
Rogers-Cooper, Justin. Shock and Knowledge. Queens College: Jrc Press, 2006.
In his rambling but nonetheless provocative notes on the representations of war and its aftermath, Rogers-Cooper asserts that the experience of war is so horrific that the human mind cannot readily put into language the manifold effects of its traumas, and that literature alone is capable of synthesizing the surreal terrain of its terror and meaning. He focuses on Vonnegut, Frankl, Speigelman, and Hedges.
Final Due May 8
5-7 Pages
During the course of this class, you’ve studied how 20th century war presents numerous challenges for people trying to represent the causes, effects, consequences, and meaning of it. On your own and as a class, we’ve studied different parts of World War I, World II, the Holocaust, Vietnam, Bosnia, and the past two Gulf wars (1991 and present). We’ve also tried to understand war through a variety of textual approaches: the photograph, the newspaper article, the film, the essay, the novel, the memoir, and the internet. Throughout our studies, we’ve tried to keep both war and its aftermath, its memories, in constant tension. We’ve tried to view the shock of conflict through the retroactive lens of later knowledge. This has been our privilege and our curse as contemporary scholars.
Your final long essay will be primarily reflect on three texts from the class: Man’s Search for Meaning, Slaughter-House Five, and Maus. For the essay, you will approach the three texts using whatever frame or thesis you believe best explains how you think these different texts work together, or how they create meaningful differences in their perspectives, approaches, points of view, or reflections on war and its aftermath.
In order to contextualize how these authors frame, report, and represent their content, you should consult and apply the theories of Chris Hedges’ in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. You may also apply any other resource you find useful, including any hand-outs, articles, or class notes we read or discussed. The course website may prove useful to you for this. You may also ask me to recommend you sources, if necessary. This essay requires you to consult at least 5 scholarly sources and to create an annotated bibliography due with the draft.
Getting Started
The most difficult part of this essay will be organizing and framing what you want to focus on. You will have to both develop and identity common or productive themes that you then employ to form an argument, position, or thesis. Finding a productive thesis is difficult, but you are free to choose any position or examine whatever aspects of the texts. You will have to make an argument by proving an interesting and original perspective about the relationship between the texts.
Verifying a Thesis
You should have a working thesis (that you may alter) by spring break (April 12th), and should email me your idea by that date. Students that do not verify their approach or idea waive their rights to contest my judgment if I later determine their thesis, and by extension their entire draft, is unoriginal or uninteresting.
Annotated Bibliography
The annotated bibliography is a description of the outside sources you consult for your essay. See the sample below:
Rogers-Cooper, Justin. Shock and Knowledge. Queens College: Jrc Press, 2006.
In his rambling but nonetheless provocative notes on the representations of war and its aftermath, Rogers-Cooper asserts that the experience of war is so horrific that the human mind cannot readily put into language the manifold effects of its traumas, and that literature alone is capable of synthesizing the surreal terrain of its terror and meaning. He focuses on Vonnegut, Frankl, Speigelman, and Hedges.
posted by Jrc at 3:12 PM
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