HSSH 506 Final Assignment
Professor Lavender, Spring 2001
The purpose of your final assignment is to allow you to display skills which you will be developing in this course through in-class discussion, research activities assigned as homework, and assigned readings.
You will write an eight- to ten-page essay concerning one of the primary readings or films assigned in this course (Candide, The Communist Manifesto, Five Sisters, The Seventh Seal, etc.). Your assignment will be to compare the in-class reading with another work (film, book, play, artwork, etc.) that deals with a common time-period, common theme, common genre, or some other form of commonality.
For instance, if you were interested in writing your paper about Candide, you would choose another one of Voltaire's writings, or another work of the time (like Adventures of a Simpleton, by Simplicimus, or Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels), or another picaresque novel (like La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, or Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache, or Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote de la Mancha, or Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, or the middle section of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, or maybe even Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn) or another utopian work (like Sir Thomas More's Utopia, or Plato's Republic, or Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, or Samuel Butler's Erewhon, or Francoise Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, or H.G. Wells's A Modern Utopia, or Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, or Aldous Huxley's Island, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, or Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward), or something else which you and I can come up with. You must clear the other work with me before you start, but I will be very open to suggestions on your part.
My intention is not to ask you to read another 500 pages and then write about it; my intention is to help you learn more about the context of an issue that interests you. Have fun.
I will be looking for clarity, content, courage and compassion--clarity and "reader-friendly" writing; content that illustrates careful analysis of the sources; courage in making an argument (rather than just a summary) and defending your stand; and compassion for the historical realities of the people who lived the history you write about. I will be happy to work with you to improve your writing. I also recommend that you employ each other as proofreaders and editors.
The typewritten proposal and outline will be due on Wednesday April 4 by 5:00 pm. I will return your draft to you on the Monday after Spring Break (no Mazatlán for us!), and the final draft will be due on Monday April 30 by 5:00 pm. I will not accept late papers, except with incredibly compelling or humorous excuses which reach me before the due time passes.
Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for Honors 506 (The Western Experience: Social Science), The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York, Spring Semester 2001. Send email to lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu
Last modified: Tuesday 30 January 2001.