The following topics are suggestions. If you want to write on another topic, feel
free to do so. It might be a good idea, in that case, to check with me first, but
that is only advice, not a requirement.
Note that the topics tend to have many sub-questions. You need not (and
probably should not) try to answer all of them. (You certainly should not just
answer them one after another in order — that would make a bad paper.) I put
them there to suggest various directions for thinking about the topic, and in
particular to head off superficial or excessively simple ways of thinking about
it.
All of the topics are intended to facilitate making substantial use of material
from at least two of our authors, which I recommend (although, again, this is not
required). You can also write about more than two if you feel that improves your
paper. (Obviously in such a short paper there is not room for a substantial
treatment of many different figures. But sometimes just a brief allusion is enough
to make an important point.)
You can also use other outside material if you think it helps your paper
(though I don’t necessarily recommend that). If you do, you must of course make
it clear exactly what you are using and how. Also, it should still be clear that the
paper was written for this course. If you have any questions about what
plagiarism is or how to avoid it, you can ask me, or consult the resources listed on
the Library website. For possible consequences of plagiarism, see the Academic
Misconduct Policy.
Since we are all in America, if not all Americans, these topics all touch us
personally, and I don’t think it would be possible (or good) to write about them
without manifesting at least some feelings of one’s own. Nevertheless, the main
intent of the paper is to discuss the views or attitudes manifested in the reading,
rather than your own opinions on the topic. That is: you should ideally come up
with something interesting and original to say (not mere summary), but it should
something interesting and original about what our authors mean. (In particular: I
don’t expect or encourage you to reach a final judgment about whether
what they say is correct or not.) If you are upset by something one of our
authors says, or find it ridiculous, you should use that as an excuse to
try and understand better why someone would say such a thing. If you
can’t manage that, you should probably consider writing about something
else.
For a good comparison paper, remember that the comparison should be
interesting. This means, for example, that the paper should not read like two
shorter papers (one on each author) stuck together. Also it should say something
non-obvious about their similarities and differences. (It is always possible to make
any two positions sounds similar if one is vague enough. But that isn’t
interesting.)
If you’re using the readings I posted on Canvas or the editions I ordered, you
can refer to the readings just by giving the title and page number. If you use a
different edition and/or some other source, please give at least enough
bibliographical information, in whatever format you prefers, that I can
find it if necessary. There’s no need for a separate bibliography or title
page.
You can find answers to some commonly asked questions about my
assignments and grading in my FAQ.
Suggested topics
1.
What, according to our authors, are the possible ways for human beings to
relate to nature? Note that the meaning of “nature” may not be quite clear,
or may not be the same for different thinkers. (In one sense “nature” might
be equivalent to “wilderness,” but in other senses definitely not.) Do they
think some ways better than others, and/or that some ways have replaced
others, for better or worse, and was that inevitable, and is it irreversible?
How, if at all, does America, or the idea of America, according to them,
involve such a relationship to nature, or such a change in relationship to
nature? Is America, according to them, founded on natural principles (on the
“law of nature”), or supernatural, or artificial?
2.
What attitude do our authors take to materiality or corporeity
(being a body), as opposed to spirituality or ideality? Are American
ideals/principles/values, according to them, fundamentally materialist or
somehow anti-materialist? Do they think most Americans exemplify such
ideals? For some authors this will be closely connected to their attitudes
towards Christianity and their beliefs about the relationship between
America and Christianity (Protestant and/or Catholic, including Black
Christianity); for others not. Again, for some there will be a close relationship
between this and the issues about the “money culture” raised in the next
prompt (so that the two prompts might be interchangeable), but for others
perhaps not. (In any case, you should not confuse “materialism” as a
metaphysical position with “materialism” in the sense of attaching great
importance to wealth and physical possessions.)
3.
What attitude do our authors take towards, broadly speaking, what
Dewey calls “the money culture” or “pecuniary culture” (and/or what some,
following Marx, call “capitalism”)? (This may have various different aspects,
types, stages, etc., not all of which go together — e.g. there is individual and
corporate or state capitalism; there is focus on production, or overproduction,
or on consumption; there is technical training and work ethic and discipline
and thrift, or or on the other hand greed and self-indulgence, or the desire to
have a modern house, or a farm with a large barn, or various nice things —
e.g. large hats, nice shoes, a yellow convertible, tea and coffee and meat every
day — or the desire and ability to own, i.e. enslave, other human beings, or to
plunder them and steal their land, timber, etc.) Do our authors think of this
“money culture” as fundamentally American? Or as pre-American, perhaps
European? Or as a degeneration of American ideals? What has produced it,
according to them? Do they think that something can or should end it?
4.
What, according to our authors, is the relationship between America and
Europe? You may want to focus on Britain, or France, or possibly Germany,
or you may want to distinguish between those, or you may want to treat
Europe, or even the Old World generally, as all one thing (depending perhaps
on which authors you discuss: Emerson and Cordova speak of “Europe” in
general, as does Thoreau at times; France plays an important role in Du
Bois and in Coates; France and Britain are both important, but in different
ways, to Grant; etc.). Is or was there a good reason, according to our authors,
for America to separate from Europe (and from Britain in particular)? Has
this separation or independence actually been attained? Where is there more
equality and/or more liberty? (Does the answer depend on exactly what
we mean by those terms?) Or is what we call “America” essentially just
an outpost of Europe (“Euro-America,” as Cordova sometimes says)? What
significance do or would our authors attach to America’s intervention in
Europe in World War I, World War II, and/or the Cold War?
5.
What is or might be the significance of Canada, according to our authors?
(If you write about anyone other than Jefferson, Bentham, Thoreau, or Grant
— which you could! — you would have to fill this in by speculating as to
what they might say, since, at least in the works we read, they don’t mention
Canada at all.) What, according to them, does or might the existence and
history of (French and/or English) Canada signify about (the United States
of) America? What does or might it mean to them that the America has
a border? Can America respect such a border, according to them? Should
it? What might they think about Canada’s (relatively) peaceful separation
from Britain, beginning in the 19th century, compared with America’s violent
earlier separation? About Quebec’s continuing attachment to (a conservative
version of?) France? Would they say that Canada is more or less free,
egalitarian, and/or independent than America, and would they consider
that a good thing or a bad? What importance might they attach to the
Underground Railroad?
6.
This is a trickier prompt to write (and perhaps trickier to respond to), but
leaving it out as a suggested topic would be ridiculous: what, according to our
authors, is or has been the role of race (in the common contemporary sense of
the word “race,” whatever that is exactly), and in particular of Blackness and
whiteness, and of the enslavement and persecution of Blacks, in the actual
history and/or idea(s) of America? This is tricky in part because all the
terms are questionable and might be rejected by some, also because some of
our authors (e.g., Banneker, Martineau, Fuller, Thoreau, Du Bois, Coates)
treat this issue as in one way or another absolutely central, whereas others
(at least in what we read of their works) virtually ignore it. If you choose
to write about some of the latter, as you well might, you will no doubt have
to treat them as defective in some way, but you should avoid simply ranting
against them. Why or from what point of view might this problem seem of
secondary importance? For example (but there are probably other ways to
come at this): can Americanness be seen as alike opposed to (or “dissolvent
of”) all races, nations, cultures, civilizations, etc. (including even to “white,”
or British/European/“Western” civilization)? Grant says this explicitly, and
Cordova, at least in some moods, may think something similar, as may even
Bentham. So may Dewey, although, if so, he might consider it a good thing.
(Note: there are, of course, other races in America besides Black and white.
Native Americans/American Indians would probably be better discussed
under the next prompt. Other “racial” groups unfortunately haven’t been
much mentioned in our reading, so it would probably be difficult to consider
them in any depth in a paper written for this course, but nevertheless their
existence might be important to bring up when trying to understand the
nature of different authors’ views.)
7.
In what way, according to our authors, is Americanness related to
nationality, particular loyalty, locality, and/or “indigenousness”? One of the
first things I pointed out was that the Declaration of Independence speaks
first of the rights of “peoples” before it speaks of the rights of individuals,
and apparently brings in the latter only to back up the former. Apess, at
least, picks up on this fact and uses the language of the Declaration to
defend the rights of his adopted tribe, the Mashpee (or Marshpee). However,
I also pointed out the paradox or difficulty of this, since the individual rights
appealed to are, or are claimed to be, universal. How do our authors propose
to deal with this difficulty? Do they think it can be solved — the two aspects
(particular and universal) reconciled — under existing terms? Or do they
think one of the two aspects is not truly American? Or that a reconciliation
between the two would require some radical change? And do they think that
“America” is fundamentally a place (within certain borders), or not?
