| Writing assignment #3, due Tuesday, April 20 | |
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For the first writing assignment, your task was to analyze subaltern voices long left out of the narrative of American history; for the second writing assignment, your task was to analyze the paradoxical simultaneous presence and absence of subaltern peoples in hegemonic discourses. For this third writing assignment, your focus will be another paradox: contradictory cultural investments in being and becoming. This writing assignment centers upon several documents written by early 20th-century U.S. Senator from Indiana, Albert J. Beveridge. Those documents contain much evidence of the paradox of being and becoming, and they contain many connections to the documents you have already read by Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Mahan, Hezekiah Butterworth, Edward Stratemeyer, and Rudyard Kipling. (Plus, the political cartoons in the lecture, and Eugene Sandow from the website.) In the case of all the documents, you will have to consider the aim of the document: for what reason was it written and put into print before an audience? Who was part of that audience, and who was not? For this writing assignment please analyze how the documents grappled with the paradox of being versus becoming. The central question is: How did the documents convey being versus becoming on three levels: with respect to masculinity talk on the personal level, empire talk on the national level, and race/civilization talk in between the personal and the national? You will want to feature Beveridge throughout your paper, supplemented with other writers. You will immediately notice that this paradox is something that the various writers unconsciously utilized to understand their moments in history, albeit in very selective and contradictory ways. Being and becoming are sometimes connected to stated ideologies (belief systems), but at other times they are not consciously thought through — not then, and not now, which is why they are so crucial to recognize and to analyze. Rather, they can be ready, casual mechanisms by which to make sense of the world that are precisely useful because they require no thought, or questioning, or investigation. In other words, they help make sense of the world without the necessity of doing the work of making sense of the world. In this way, they resemble the focus of the previous writing assignment: namely, the illusions of supposedly knowing about other cultures and peoples without doing any work to actually know them. That is the power of stereotypes. This paper focuses on a harmful, harder-to-see equivalent of the stereotype. I gave you a number of examples of this paradox in the four lectures for weeks 11 and 12, and there is plenty of evidence in the documents. For example with respect to one of the three levels, in what ways were men already men, and in what ways did they have to become truly men? This begs an immediate question, of course. Which men in particular? All men? (No.) Similarly, in what ways did Americans deem the United States to be a superior country, and in what ways did it have to become an empire? Again, for what audience? Impoverished city street cleaners? (No.) As always, you will want to craft a clear overarching thesis in response to the central question, to define particular analytical angles for each of the three levels and organize them in paragraphs, and to provide ample evidence to substantiate your analysis in each paragraph and toward 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. Be mindful of the writing guidelines we have established earlier in the semester, toward clear, effective writing. All of the documents can be found under Files in Canvas, in the materials for week 12 and week 13, by the writers indicated above, while centering on Beveridge, whose writings cover all three levels. Sample citations: Albert J. Beveridge, “The Young Man and the World” (1905). |