| Writing assignment #2, due Thursday, March 18 | |
|
For the first writing assignment, your task was to analyze the voices and perspectives of Native Americans who have long been left out of the narrative of American history. For this writing assignment, your focus will move forward in time from the 1830s removal era, to the 1850s filibuster era. This time your task will not be to read documents from neglected voices, but instead be to look for the suppression of subaltern perspectives in particular. In other words, you will be analyzing how certain voices and perspectives were made to be absent. This writing assignment features several documents written about American filibusters who sought to take over Alta California and Cuba (colonies of the Spanish empire) as well as Nicaragua (an independent country) in the 1850s. Some of those documents supported the filibusters; some opposed them. In one case, a national magazine reprinted a Southern newspaper article not out of any ideological sympathy, but to demonstrate how filibuster supporters viewed the world. In the case of all the documents, you will have to consider the aim of the document: for what reason it was written and put into print before the public eye? Who was part of that “public” and who was not? For this writing assignment please analyze how the documents delivered the perspectives of different kinds of Californians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and enslaved peoples at stake. The central question is: In what three key ways did the documents either include or exclude such subaltern perspectives? You will immediately notice that all of the documents discuss foreign places, hence subaltern peoples are at the very least obliquely included. One of the documents will stand out: the 1858 essay in The Albion whose name reveals that it was an American magazine for a British-friendly audience. Most of the documents are differently complicated. They all discussed places, but to what degree did they discuss the peoples who lived in (or were supposed to be transported to) those places? To what degree did they include the voices, perspectives, motivations, or ideologies of subaltern people — i.e., people generally lacking power and on the receiving, resisting end of imperialism. To what degree did the documents differentiate among people, as opposed to lumping them all together into broad or singular categories? To what degree did the documents dehumanize places, as if empty or empty-able? To what degree did the documents dehumanize or debase peoples? Again, there are many analytical angles that you can take, beyond the above possibilities. It is your task to choose your analytical angles (i.e., what strikes you as most important as you read the documents, as to how those documents treated subaltern peoples), to define those analytical angles clearly in your introductory paragraph, and to use them to craft a clear overarching thesis in response to the central question above. Be sure to provide ample evidence (in the form of short “money quotes”) from the documents to substantiate your analysis in each paragraph, and to demonstrate your overarching thesis. You may also cite your lecture notes, but there is no need to do any outside research, as the documents and your lecture notes will be more than sufficient. All of the documents can be found under Files in Canvas. There are the five documents you read for week 8, but four additional documents for this writing assignment. Nine documents altogether. Papers should fulfill the expectations indicated under “Writing Assignments” in the Course Policies section of the course website. Please submit via Assignments in Canvas on the due date. Sample citations: “Rights of Civilization” (1854). |