Write a critically evaluative paper on following topics. Essays must make use of and refer explicitly within the paper to a MINIMUM of 2 scholarly sources (excluding the primary filmic and literary texts), offering proper documentation in MLA format. Consult this site for information on MLA rules and regulations: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/1/. *Essays not meeting the minimum research requirements will receive an F*. Each essay must examine one film and one book in making its argument. The essay will be evaluated on its ability to establish a claim, to support that claim using evidence from the works themselves and from academic sources relating to those works, to present the claim in proper grammar and style, and to offer information in a technically accurate way. No plagarism
LENGTH: 6 double-spaced pages (exclusive of works cited) in Times 12 with 1” margins, due within 2 days. I attached the requirement for research as well as the citation example for novel and film
TOPIC: Use one film and one novel from the course to argue whether masculinity (however you want to define that term) is a prerequisite for traditional American heroism?
The list of reading and film (must pick up one of each from the following list)
Types of Research Material
Primary Sources: documents or objects created during timeframe or experience under
consideration in the assignment that give insight into that timeframe/experience.
•Documents: letters, journals, news footage, photographs, speeches, accounts
•Artistic works: music, drama, poetry, movies
•Artifacts: architecture, furniture, clothes
Secondary Sources: documents analyzing and interpreting primary sources, often
employing elements of primary sources (e.g. quotations, graphics).
•magazine/journal articles, text books, critiques
Tertiary Sources: documents providing compilation and/or distillation of primary
and/or secondary sources
• encyclopaedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, summaries
Research Selection Dos & Don’ts
1. DO use a mix of general, specific and topic-intensive sources
2. DO choose sources that give an array of approaches to/interpretations of the topic
3. DO choose up-to-date material
4. DO NOT use non-scholarly sources
5. DO NOT select only the minimum required number of sources
6. DO be aware of potential authorial bias
Online Research
1. Avoid mammoth internet searches; begin with selective databases (or search engines)
Search (June 21st
, 2016): The Birth of a Nation The Last of the Mohicans
Google: 626K hits 1.2M hits
Google Books: 242K hits 151K hits
Google scholar: 10.5K hits 7230 hits
Film and TV Lit. Index: 259 hits MLA: 179 hits
2. Assess scholarly credibility of all sites
Verify author/sponsor identity
Verify author expertise
Verify site update currency
Verify sourcing of all non-original material
Verify contact information
3. Avoid non-expert sites and user-interface sites:
Wiki-sites
Blogs
Social Media
4. Assess intention and audience of all sites
Verify site orientation (.gov, .org, .edu, .com)
Verify site target group (secondary, post-secondary, expert levels)
Avoiding Plagiarism
1. Quote whenever possible; avoid paraphrase
2. Ensure accurate quotation
3. Provide sufficient in-text citation to correlate to works cited
4. Ensure complete & accurate works-cited entries
5. What to cite: all quotations; all paraphrases; all summaries; all little-known
facts; all non-original ideas, opinions, statistics, illustrations, photos, screencaps,
clips, sound bites
6. What not to cite: common phrases/sayings; common knowledge; dictionary
definitions; conversations; class lectures (sometimes)
Methods of Providing Quotations
1. Colon Method
Jones notes: “Griffith’s use of black-face actors marginalizes the dignity of
Black experience even more than the negative actions of the film’s Black
characters.”
2. Integrative Method
Given that “Griffith’s use of black-face actors marginalizes the dignity of
Black experience even more than the negative actions of the film’s Black
characters,” we can suggest that filmic technique more than narrative is
the director’s most dangerous weapon of propaganda.
3. Combination Method
“Griffith’s use of black-face actors,” according to Jones, “marginalizes
the dignity of Black experience even more than the negative actions of the
film’s Black characters.”
Quoting Do’s and Don’ts
1. DO NOT quote simply because it’s easier than stating your own ideas.
2. DO NOT let quotations comprise > 5-10% of the paper (primary & secondary
sources combined).
3. DO contextualize/introduce quotations:
NO: Hemingway rarely notes tone of voice. “‘They wont get us,’ I said.
‘Because you’re too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave.”
YES: Hemingway’s refusal to provide tone of voice is indicated by his use of
vague words to describe speech: “‘They wont get us,’ I said. ‘Because
you’re too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave.”
4. DO NOT introduce quotations like this:
“a good example of this is when…”
“like the quote she gives on page 134…”
“we see this when he says…”
5. DO explain quotations.
6. DO NOT try to use the Integrative Method with long quotations.
7. DO make sure integrated quotations fit grammatically.
8. DO ensure accurate quotation.
Structuring Body Paragraphs
1. Topic sentence relating to main idea
2. Supporting details of evidence
3. Explanation of details’ relevance to thesis
4. Transitional statement into next main idea
Given that he had already begun to realize the problems that strict gender identities
impose on people, it is rather fitting that Hemingway chose to set his first real examination of
modern sexual love during the First World War. If relations between the sexes in a patriarchal
society are antagonistic, the fact that Hemingway offers a love story in war-time makes for
interesting speculation; while the affair may germinate during the war, Frederic and Catherine’s
relationship eventually outgrows it, to the extent that by Book Five mention of battle has ceased
almost entirely. Instead of the usual story of love in war, or even love as war (as might be expected
from a phallocentrically trained man), Hemingway gives us a tale documenting the very breakdown
of patriarchal constructs like war. The attempts Frederic and Catherine make to define themselves
and foster their relationship offer an example of what Ira Elliott calls “the ‘truth’ learned on the
frontlines,” namely, that “gender, desire, and sex cannot be defined by oppositional binarisms.”1
Setting his story in wartime demonstrates Hemingway’s own recognition of such a lesson, validating
Mark Spilka’s claim that he is “a critic of cultural codes who offers some sense of alternative
possibilities and directions” and suggesting, too, that we are right to regard the book as a step
closer to a feminine mode of writing.2 Coming as it did ten years after the end of the war, A
Farewell to Arms was Hemingway’s response to the transformations he witnessed, as well as his
imaginative attempt to span the gulf he saw widening between men and women of his generation.
1.
Ira Elliott, “A Farewell to Arms and Hemingway’s Crisis of Masculine Values,” LIT:
Literature, Interpretation, Theory 4 no.4 (1993): 292. Print.
2. Mark Spilka, “Repossessing Papa: A Narcissistic Meditation,” Hemingway Repossessed,
ed. Kenneth Rosen (Westport: Praeger, 1994). 41. Print.
Sample Body Paragraph (Novel)
As with his use of use of white actors in blackface to portray the major African American
characters, Griffith showed his marginalization of the Black presence in the diegesis of The Birth of a
Nation through his blocking and framing of the minor Black figures. An exemplary instance occurs in
the scene in which Ben and Margaret Cameron escort Phil Stoneman on a tour of the family
plantation. Griffith begins with an establishing shot of slaves (portrayed, notably, by Black actors)
picking cotton in the middle- and background. Almost immediately the three white figures enter the
shot in the foreground, partially blocking our view of the slaves, who bow and doff their caps while
smiling widely. As the shot plays out, with Ben Cameron proudly displaying the fruits of their slave
labor, Griffith asks the audience to ignore the ongoing presence of the workers by focusing his
camera and narrative on the concerns of his white characters, namely the growing love intrigue of
Ben Cameron for the cameo of Phil’s sister Elsie and Phil’s own attraction to Margaret Cameron. The
near-eclipse of the kowtowing slave workers here functions nicely as an indicator of the film’s clear
desire to segregate the worlds of White and Black America while maintaining an insistence on the
correctness of social hierarchizing. Jones remarks that the use of blackface “marginalizes the dignity
of Black experience almost as much as the negative actions of the film’s Black characters” (33).
However, the almost total effacement of the African American body from this shot surpasses both
the make-up and acting as evidence of Griffith’s white-supremacist agenda. His literal positioning of
White figures in front of Black ones in the plantation scene leaves no confusion as to his racial
allegiance, just as his focus within the remainder of the scene on the potential Cameron-Stoneman
romances underscores his vision of a post-Civil War America made strong by the reunion of North
and South. Griffith may not literally remove Black experience from the screen in such scenes as this,
but his effective erasure of the slaves through blocking and framing techniques all but announces his
ideal of a resurgent and idyllic paradise of whiteness.
Sample Body Paragraph (Film)
Sample MLA Documentation
In-text Citation (embedded author):
Jones argues that Griffith’s use of black-face actors “marginalizes the dignity of
Black experience almost as much as the negative actions of the film’s Black
characters” (33).
In-text Citation (non-embedded author):
Griffith’s use of black-face actors “marginalizes the dignity of Black experience
almost as much as the negative actions of the film’s Black characters” (Jones 33).
Works-Cited Entry (book):
Jones, Emery. A History of Race in Hollywood. New York: Oxford UP. 2009. Print.
Works-Cited Entry (print article):
Jones, Emery. “A History of Race in Hollywood.” Studies in Film 43.3 (2009): 31-
56. Print.
Works-Cited Entry (on-line article):
Jones, Emery. “A History of Race in Hollywood.” Studies in Film 43.3 (2009): n.
pag. Web. 17 June 2016.
