American Values

American Studies 045: 001

University of IOwa, SPRING 2006

Instructor: Professor Yablon

 

FINAL take-home paper

Announced: Monday, March 27

Due: in your section, Friday April 14

Worth: 25% of overall grade

Instructions

Choose just ONE of the following three questions, and write a 7-8 page essay in answer to that question.  Each of these questions ask you to grapple with some of the ideas and themes we have covered in the first 11 weeks of this semester (you may also draw on material from weeks 12-13, but this is not required).

 

The assertions and arguments you make in your paper must be based on the course readings and lecture material.  You should discuss at least 4 readings, but no more than 7.  An image does not count as one of these readings, nor do outside sources.

 

As explained in the syllabus, your final paper will be graded according to several criteria, listed in order of importance:

  • the strength and persuasiveness of your overall argument (40%) and its resolution of the question you have selected.  You need to present your case in a coherent and focused way, drawing on evidence from the readings, images, or lectures.  Note also that an argument becomes all the more persuasive when it acknowledges (and refutes) potential counter-arguments.
  • Your comprehension of the readings and the lectures (35%).  In answering the question you have selected, you should draw both on various readings (from Jasper, Horwitz, and the packet), and on material presented in one or more of the lectures.  Comprehension means more than simply repeating the substance of a particular reading/lecture.  You are also expected to put forward your own interpretation of the material.  This entails exploring connections or tensions between one reading and another, or pointing to contradictions within them.
  • the style of your paper (25%). This refers to the way in which you organize and present your arguments and ideas; the fluency of your writing.

 

Question 1

To what extent have migrants and immigrants in American history imagined themselves to be making a clean break with their native towns, communities, or countries?

 

In Restless Nation, James Jasper argues that the will to uproot oneself represents a desire to forget – to forget ones former hometown, ones former community, even ones former self.  To what extent is this argument borne out by the various examples we have looked at in this course?  Those might include:

  • Slave fugitives who escaped the South in the antebellum period
  • Mormons who migrated westward to Salt Lake City in the mid-nineteenth century (to be discussed in week 13)
  • Young men who pursued their dreams of great wealth in the late nineteenth century
  • European immigrants (and reverse immigrants) circa 1900
  • African-Americans who left the South and migrated to Northern cities in the early/mid twentieth century
  • Rural Midwesterners who went to Chicago in the early twentieth century (week 12)
  • Rural migrants who left the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression
  • Iowans who left the state during the farm crisis of the 1980s/90s
  • Or other examples from this course

As this question asks you to think about whether migrants/immigrants intended (consciously or unconsciously) to maintain or sever ties as they embarked upon their journeys, your essay should examine one of the four paintings of scenes of departure viewed in week 8:

 

Note: the various topics listed above cover a variety of historical periods.  In answering this question, be sure to think about how the phenomenon of (im)migration has changed over time.

 

QUESTION 2

Why does freedom of movement need to be constitutionally protected?

 

You are working for a Washington-based think-tank currently lobbying for a new amendment to the constitution.  This amendment would enshrine freedom of movement as a fundamental right of all Americans.  The task before you is to write a position-paper that would put forward a historically-informed argument in favor of this new amendment.  Your paper should:

  • show how movement has historically enabled various groups of Americans to escape certain conditions and express certain values
  • demonstrate how the right to move has been restricted, compromised, or even denied outright for certain groups of Americans during certain periods, and is therefore in need of protection
  • discuss the current limitations of the constitution as a safeguard of that right [Note: the 14th amendment (ratified 1866-68) does declare that Americans are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside, thereby permitting them to travel across state lines without remaining under the jurisdiction of their former state – and thus, in effect, revokes the Slave Fugitive Act of 1850.  In order to make your case for a new amendment, you need to explain why this earlier one does not fully protect the right to move]
  • refute (or at least qualify) the arguments made in Jaspers Restless Nation about the social costs of a culture of movement

Note: this question asks you to discuss both specific historical cases from this course and the more general questions of constitutional rights and freedoms.  You should remember, from our discussion of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights earlier this semester, that the meaning of those two terms is neither self-evident, unchanging, nor univocal.

 

Question 3

On what grounds, under what circumstances, and with what methods, can one defend the rights of Americans not to move?

 

It is May 2006, and work has just begun on a new highway through Chicago that would displace large numbers of poor ethnic and black populations from a number of inner city neighborhoods, under the claim of eminent domain.  A protest group has organized a collective act of civil disobedience, involving a mass sit-in or occupation of the construction site to obstruct the progress of the highway.  On the eve of the protest, you have been asked by this protest organization to write a statement to be printed as an op-ed in tomorrows national newspapers, defending the right of those Chicagoans to remain where they are.

 

This op-ed piece should place this attempted removal in the larger historical context of earlier instances in which groups or individuals have been forcibly moved, such as:

  • the attempts to relocate Native-American populations to lands further west, particularly in the 1830s
  • the capture and transportation of slaves from the east coast of Africa to the new colonies
  • the sale of African-American slaves in the antebellum South, often splitting up families
  • the repatriation of Mexican-American migrant workers in the 1930s
  • or other examples from this course

Note: In addition to discussing these specific historical cases, you should also justify the protestors decision to employ the strategy of civil disobedience, referring both to Thoreaus discussion and to earlier examples of such acts.

 

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Choose your question carefully.  And choose it promptly.  You should be prepared to tell your instructor which question you are working on, and how you plan to answer it, by Wednesday April 5.

 

2.  Carefully choose the readings you will be referring to in your argument.  You should discuss at least 4 readings, but no more than 7.  An image does not count as one of these readings.

 

3. Before you start writing your essay, you need to carefully review the readings that you will be using in your argument.  Read over the notes you have taken on each reading in your reading journal, along with your notes from the discussions and lectures.  And re-read the individual texts themselves.  Use all this to work out how you will interpret them in the essay.

 

4. Work out what your argument will be before you start writing.  Draft a plan of the paper.  What will you write in your introductory paragraph?  In which order will you discuss the readings?  What will your conclusion say?

 

5. Avoid simply relying upon what has been said in class discussions and lectures.  You must come to your own conclusions about the material.  Similarly, while you should of course summarize the content of each reading, you should do this as succinctly as possible, so as to focus on your own interpretations and evaluations of each reading.

 

6. Avoid sloppy and conversational language; e.g. beginning paragraphs or sentences with a casual phrase (Another thing is that, Now lets move to, With, Moving on, etc), and clichs and platitudes (America is the land of the free).

 

7. Do not plagiarize (see warning in syllabus).  Be sure to acknowledge the source of any quotes or information you include.  The easiest way to do this is to cite the source at the end of a sentence in a bracket: ([author], [page number]), e.g. to escape the burden of the past (Jasper, 5).  In the case of a reading from Horwitz, cite thus: What then is the American, this new man? (Crvecoeur, in Horwitz, 27)

 

8. If you include quotations from the readings, it is extremely important that you fully analyze that quote.  You will be penalized for merely using quotations as filler material to lengthen the paper, i.e. inserted into the paper without being introduced, situated, explained, and evaluated.

 

9. Always leave enough time to proofread your work before handing it in, checking for spelling or grammatical errors, typing mistakes, and sloppy expression.  If you write a sentence that you suspect is not entirely clear, you can be sure that your instructor is not going to understand it at all.

 

10. Avoid concluding your papers with a happy ending that papers over all the problems and contradictions you have explored in the preceding pages.  While these may work for fairy tales, history is far too messy and complex for such neat resolutions!

 

11. Give your essay a suitable title!  You should also indicate which question you are answering.

Additional information

Taken from the main syllabus

Note on deadlines for written assignments

Both take-home papers must be submitted by the dates and times specified above.  For each day the paper is late, it will suffer a deduction of 2 overall percentage points (up to the maximum number of points available for that paper).  I.e. in the case of the mid-term, by the time you reach 8 days, you will have forfeited the entire 15 percentage points available for that paper; in the case of the final, you will have forfeited the 25 points by the 13th day.

Note on formatting of papers

All written work must be typed in 12-point Times font, double-spaced, with the default margins (i.e. 1.25 inches on left and right; 1.00 inches top and bottom), spell-checked, and stapled, with your name and page-number on each sheet.

Note on writing style

While these assignments are intended to examine your engagement with the ideas and debates of the course more than your skills of writing, it is nevertheless important that your written work is clear and intelligible.  If you think you might need assistance with your writing, you should contact either your instructor, the History Writing Center (which is dedicated to students of History and American Studies courses), or else the Writing Center, in 110 EPB.