Final Paper Prompt

All of the texts we have read for this course posit a connection between sex, sin, and citizenship.  Over the course of the semester, I hope you’ve gained a sense that during the early national through antebellum periods Americans were concerned about the bonds of citizenship.  These issues were particularly important in the early decades of the nation, as the nation grew in terms of geography and population and as industrialization moved people from the country into the city.  People seem to become more alienated, even as they move closer together, opening up a set of questions about political life: were men supposed to be in a kind of brotherhood of the nation? Is that what a democracy or a republic requires?  What about people who don’t qualify for citizenship, or at least full citizenship?  How do they get tied into civic life?

In short, what holds us together personally, politically?  What is the relationship between the feelings that hold us together personally and the feelings that hold us together politically?

The texts we have read investigate these questions by looking at the bonds that connect us—bonds of kinship, bonds of sexual desire, bonds of same-sex affiliation. Many posit that there is something unhealthy or damaging about the heterosexual coupling (or the nuclear family more broadly) because coupling further isolates people and because it thwarts a larger sense of community (and often is devoid of physicality, sensuality, and intimacy, which are arguably also essential to a democracy).

For your final short paper of the term, you will investigate how one text we have read articulates the bonds that hold us together and/or the ways that heterosexual coupling and the nuclear family undermine civic bonds.  You should address this topic in 5-7 pages, so be sure to stay focused.

I will evaluate papers using the following hierarchy:

• Argument: The argument is nuanced (rather than just plausible), clearly presented, and thoroughly supported throughout the paper.  (40% of grade)
• Evidence: The paper uses evidence from the primary texts and analyzes the cited passages thoroughly, clearly connecting evidence to the author’s argument.  Critical sources should be consulted sparingly, if at all. (25% of grade)
• Organization: The paper has a fluid structure, with a clear progression and a sense of forward trajectory. (20% of grade)
• Style: The paper should be thoroughly proofread and should contain few surface errors.  It should use MLA citation.  (15% of grade)

Updated calendar

For Monday, please finish Temple House and read Clotel, pp. 44-80.

For Wednesday, please get to p. 155 of Clotel.

I’ll be posting the next assignment by Friday night.  Please post any comments you have from today’s conversation in the interim.  I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about:

• recovering texts
• texts as historical documents
• canonical vs. non-canonical readings
• the uses of technology for classroom
• the ability of technology to bind us together, to sustain or even create some kind of comradeship.

Second Short Paper Assignment

Second Short Paper: Sex and Sin in Early America

Due April 1, 2010 by 5 PM

Choose one of the following paper topics.  Because of the variety of topics, you will not get a detailed rubric for this paper.  That said, I will evaluate papers using the following hierarchy:

• Argument: The argument is nuanced (rather than just plausible), clearly presented, and thoroughly supported throughout the paper.  (40% of grade)
• Evidence: The paper uses evidence from the primary texts and analyzes the cited passages thoroughly, clearly connecting evidence to the author’s argument.  Critical sources should be consulted sparingly, if at all. (25% of grade)
• Organization: The paper has a fluid structure, with a clear progression and a sense of forward trajectory. (20% of grade)
• Style: The paper should be thoroughly proofread and should contain few surface errors.  It should use MLA citation.  (15% of grade)

(1) Scholars have made much of the fact that Moby Dick is a novel notoriously lacking in female characters.  Pierre, however, is brimming with women, and arguably those women are more powerful and self-assured than our “hero,” Pierre.  Choose one of the female characters in Pierre and discuss whether this character uses her femininity to gain power over Pierre.  Do you think Melville insinuates in Pierre that women’s power is dangerous or destructive, or do you think he shows how women can have more strength, moral fortitude, or ability for heroic action than men have?

(2) Whitman writes in the 1876 Preface to the Centennial Edition of his poetry: “In my opinion it is by a fervent, accepted development of Comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all the young fellows, North and South, East and West—it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the United States of the future…are to be more effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal’d into a Living Union.”

Taking Whitman’s claim as your starting point, evaluate whether Melville, in Pierre, agrees or disagrees with Whitman’s view of comradeship and the future of the Union.  Obviously, you will need to focus your analysis.  To do so, you might consider:

• Friendship between men
• How the family, nuclear or extended, disrupts Comradeship
• The possibility or impossibility of “welding” the Union together
• What a “Living Union” might signify to Melville

(3) Recalling that in the 1876 preface Whitman claims that the goal of the “Calamus” poems is political, read Whitman’s initial construction of the “Calamus”, which we now title “Live Oak, with Moss” or “Calamus-Leaves,” on The Walt Whitman Archive (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/liveoak.html).  Influential critic Hershel Parker at one point claimed that this original sequence of poetry amounted to Whitman’s “gay manifesto.”[1] Would you classify this original series as a “gay manifesto,” especially in comparison with the ones that appear in the 1872 edition of Leaves of Grass (the edition we consulted in class)?  Or does this initial sequence of poems seem to be more of a retreat from the political, an attempt for a homosexual person to work through his position in a culture that oppresses homosexuality?

(4) Can we consider Whitman’s notion of Comradeship in asexual ways?  If so, how?  If not, why not?  Create a theorization of “Queer Citizenship” based on the “Calamus” sequence that appears in the 1872 edition.

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[1] Parker, Hershel.  “The Real ‘Live Oak, with Moss’: Straight Talk about Whitman’s ‘Gay Manifesto.’ ” The Walt Whitman Digital Archive.  Web.  23 March 2010.  [Note: this originally appeared in Nineteenth-Century Literature 51 (September 1996), pp. 145-60.]

Long paper prompt and information!!!

In this course we are investigating the premise that during the early national and antebellum periods Americans were concerned about the bonds of citizenship: does a democracy (or a republic) rely on the formation of a citizenry that is a kind of brotherhood of the nation—in which white men are joined together on equal footing, like in fraternal relations? If so, how could this brotherhood be formed? What might join these disparate people together? And what are the repercussions of this brotherly citizenry for women? People of color?

Arguably, these questions become even more vexed as mass culture develops, people move into cities, and men become alienated from one another despite living in closer proximity. How could the nation avoid becoming a nation of Coverdales—people longing for connection but unable to consummate human relationships for fear of physical and emotional intimacy? And if we are a nation of Coverdales, then how will our democracy survive?

The texts we have read (and will read) investigate these questions by looking at the bonds that connect us—bonds of kinship, bonds of sexual desire, bonds of same-sex affiliation—and attempt to determine how these more intimate bonds might be analogous to the bonds that tie citizens together.

If you choose to write a long paper for this class, I invite you to consider some of these larger concerns. In thinking about what you might write about, think about how a particular text might answer one of the following questions:

*Is physical intimacy necessary for civic formation? What’s the relationship between sexual bonds and citizen bonds? Can a monastic citizen be a good citizen? What is the connection between kinship bonds and citizenship bonds? Can an orphan be a good citizen?

*How does the heterosexual coupling and normative nuclear family reflect the state of the nation? Is heterosexual coupling good for the nation? If so, how? If not, why not? Is the nuclear family good for the nation? If so, how? If not, why not?

*How do heredity and inheritance undermine—or reinforce—democracy?

*What are the alternatives to traditional heterosexual coupling? Is free love a better path for forming a functioning republic or democracy? Or is it a threat?

*If a good citizenry relies on homosocial bonds (i.e., close relationships between men), then how might we formulate a notion of queer citizenship?

These questions are just a starting point to help you discern your own interests and eventually derive at some kind of a hypothesis (or pre-thesis).

FOR YOUR PAPER PROPOSAL (due Wednesday, 3/10), write two to three paragraphs in which you:
*Clearly articulate a hypothesis related to one of the texts that we have read
*Provide a brief explanation of that hypothesis and your topic, including how you intend to remain focused or honed in so that the paper doesn’t run away from you like Pierre ran away from Melville
*Provide an overview of important questions that you will need to answer in your research and the paper
*Suggest possible ways you might go about answering those questions—sources you might look up, passages you might use in the text, etc.

I’m not concerned about the diction or format of the proposal, but it should indicate serious reflection and provide an emerging vision of what you hope your final paper will argue. Please keep in mind that the final paper is 10-12 pages long. Thus, your research proposal should focus on compelling questions/topics/issues that will require a sustained argument. However, your topics and ideas shouldn’t be so broad that they would really require 30 or 40 pages to explore fully. In other words, keep in the back of your mind the need to focus and delimit.

THE PAPER

The final paper will be 10-12 pages long and should examine one primary text from our reading list, as well as at least three secondary sources. (If you would like to use two primary sources, or if you want to try a slightly different approach than I’ve outlined here, I’m happy to accommodate that, but I’d like to talk over your ideas with you first.) I encourage you to think seriously about what kinds of questions you’d like to answer and let that guide you toward appropriate secondary sources.

A successful paper will compellingly discuss one of the course’s central issues, thoroughly support and substantiate its arguments, and effectively synthesize primary and secondary material. I will hand out a complete rubric later in the term.  The paper will be due the same date as our scheduled final exam.

If you are interested in writing about one of the texts we haven’t yet read, here is some info that might help you:
*The Wikipedia entry on Clotel
*Even cooler, the scholarly online edition of Clotel
*E-text of Temple House
Information on the 1872 edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, from the amazing Walt Whitman archive