Final Paper Assignment
Ralph Emerson,
Henry Thoreau,
Thomas Jefferson
Final papers must be 6-8 FULL pages, double-spaced, with 1” margins in 12 pt. Times
New Roman font. They must include a Works Cited and use MLA citation style (Works Cited page is not included in the six-page minimum requirement. Final papers are due by Turnitin by note: there can be absolutely NO exceptions made.
What does it mean to be an American and what does freedom mean in America? Our
course has covered a variety of texts from several different periods of American Literature.
Each has articulated different and at times competing definitions of America and of what it means to be an American and what freedom means in the United States. The topic of America and the definition of freedom is very general, so feel free to approach this subject from whatever angle you wish.
You may be more interested in studying a theme that does not have much to do with the topic of America.
Whatever topic or theme you choose to write upon, be sure to make a conscious effort to at least connect it to the more general question:
What is America and its view of freedom (or what is an American)?
Choose THREE – FOUR authors or texts from any part of our syllabus that were
not used in the midterm paper, to compare and contrast on this topic.
You must also select 2-3 secondary sources to help you with your main argument, advice: pick the authors or texts that you are most interested in or feel you can do your best job in commenting upon.
Draft a list of main topics that each text or author treats, and then find some commonalities or contrasts between them. Remember taking note of differences is as important as stressing similarities.
You may write on any topic that you find interesting. For those of you who are
interested in philosophy, the likes of Locke, Hamilton, Madison, Thoreau, and Fuller are text rich with philosophical insight, with the later more centered on the American Romantic version of idealism.
You can pick any chapter or topic to focus upon. For those of you more interested in Poe’s gothic tales of horror, feel free to examine the topics he treats in depth: human depravity, guilt, conscience, perversity, paranoia, evil, and so on.
