American Values

American Studies 045: 001

University of IOwa, SPRING 2006

Instructor: Professor Yablon

MIDTERM take-home paper

Announced: Monday, February 13

Due: in your section, Friday February 24

Worth: 15% of overall grade

Instructions

Choose just ONE of the following three questions, and write a 4-5 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 5 weeks of this semester (you may also draw on material from week 6, 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 3 readings, but no more than 5. An image does not count as one of these readings, nor do outside sources.

As explained in the syllabus, your 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%): the way in which you organize and present your arguments and ideas; the fluency of your writing.

Question 1

In week 2, 3, and 4, we have viewed a number of history paintings by Emmanuel Leutze, depicting various “heroic” episodes in the rise of American “civilization”: the arrival of the Norsemen, the departure and return of Columbus, and the crossing of the Delaware by General Washington. However, as mentioned in lecture, these are the paintings that are extant; Leutze’s other paintings, most notably the painting that supposedly depicted Columbus’ first contact with the Indians in 1492, remain missing.

Imagine that you are an art historian who has been requested to imaginatively reconstruct Leutze’s lost painting of the contact between Europeans and Indians. What would this painting have looked like? And how would it have fitted into Leutze’s larger vision of American history?

You should speculate both about the possible content of this painting (what it depicts and doesn’t depict), and about its formal properties (how it depicts what it depicts, e.g. use of light, color, arrangement of figures, background/foreground, etc).

Each of your speculations must be firmly based on the existing evidence:

• Leutze’s other paintings that we have viewed (see lecture slideshows for week 2, 3, 4)
• Earlier images of cultural contact that Leutze might have viewed (e.g. engraving of Columbus landing in Haiti shown in lecture 2, engraving of Amerigo Vespucci arriving in the New World shown in lecture 4)
• The discussion of Leutze’s worldview and his ideas about history (from the lectures)
• The general view of nineteenth-century Euro-Americans towards the “peopling” of North America (e.g. “Manifest Destiny”)
• The various events and issues of mid-nineteenth-century America that might also have influenced Leutze’s view of 1492 (the Mexican War, growing sectional tensions, etc)

As an artist who strained for historical accuracy, Leutze would have read numerous documents about this episode. You should therefore include in your evidence some of the following texts that were available to Leutze, discussing what he might have borrowed from them and what he might have rejected:

• Christopher Columbus, "Letter to Lord Raphael Sanchez ... on His First Voyage" (1493)
• Handsome Lake, “How America Was Discovered” (c. 1735-1815)
• John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation” (1845)
• Chief Black Hawk, Autobiography (1833)
• Bishop Berkeley’s poem, “Westward the Course of Empire” (1720s) (in lecture notes, and Jasper, p. 17)

Note: you are being asked here NOT to reconstruct the actual scene of Columbus meeting the Indians, but rather to reconstruct how Leutze himself might have viewed it through the lens of the cultural beliefs and conventions of his period.

QUESTION 2

PBS regularly broadcasts documentaries on American history (e.g. The American Experience). Imagine that they are now planning a new series of documentaries on the theme of American Journeys. In the initial proposal for the series, they were planning to focus entirely on “Epic American Journeys”, with episodes on Columbus’ voyage of discovery in 1492, the Puritan migration of 1630, and the pioneers of western settlement in the mid-nineteenth century. They have since agreed to add episodes on the following journeys:

• The “Middle Passage”
• Indian removal
• Coxey’s march on Washington
• The Suffragette march on Washington
• The civil rights march on Washington for “Jobs and Freedom”

For the purposes of this assignment, you have been hired by PBS as a historical consultant for your expertise in American Studies. What the executives want to know is whether (and to what extent) these new inclusions might require some rethinking of the structure and approach the documentaries will take. Should these “other journeys” be narrated in some fundamentally different way, and why/why not? Would they alter the meaning of the series as a whole? And how should PBS even define what is an “epic” journey and what is not?

Note 1: You should focus on a minimum of two journeys (at least one “epic” journey and one “other” journey, for purposes of comparison). You may examine more than two journeys, but do NOT try to cover all the journeys cited above.

Note 2: In your selection of documentary evidence, you should include images as well as readings pertaining to the journey you are examining.

Question 3

Did nineteenth-century Americans fundamentally agree or disagree over the historical and cultural significance of the railroad, and what do those (dis)agreements reveal about their attitudes towards the larger idea of Manifest Destiny?

We have encountered passing references to the railroad in course readings such as:

• Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis on “The Frontier”
• John O’Sullivan’s article, “Annexation”
• John Randolph Gooden’s letter, “Pitching Tents in Iowa”
• Jack London’s memoir, “Two Thousand Stiffs”

And in art works such as:

• John Gast’s “American Progress”
• Andrew Melrose, “Westward the Star of Empire”

What cultural significance do these authors and artists attach to the railroad? Do these authors and artists share a similar view of the railroad? Or are some more celebratory of the railroad than others? And why do still others, such as Leutze, leave out the railroad altogether? How would you account for such similarities/differences? And, most importantly for the purposes of this question, what do they reveal about how Americans viewed the larger idea of Manifest Destiny?

Note: do not be content merely to compare and contrast authors. You should build on those comparisons and contrasts to construct a larger argument about “Manifest Destiny,” what it meant to nineteenth century Americans, and what it had to do with the railroad.

Tips

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 Friday February 17.

2. Carefully choose the readings you will be referring to in your argument. The selection of relevant readings is an important part of the assignment.

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 let’s move to’, ‘With’, ‘Moving on’, etc), and clichés 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 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?” (Crèvecoeur, 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 13^th 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), 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.