Essay 2 Assignment

Transnational America (Eng 59/AmSt 60)
Spring 2010, Prof. Davis
Essay 2 Assignment (4-5 pages)
Due Thu. April 8

Choose one of the following options:

(1) Imagine you are eavesdropping on a conversation between Theodore Roosevelt, Jose Marti, and Randolph Bourne at the 1915-1916 Expositions in San Francisco and San Diego. What do they say to each other? Your essay should be written mainly in the form of a dialogue, and the characters should refer, in the course of their conversation, to statements they made in the documents we’ve studied. The setting, about which we’ve learned from Rydell’s All the World’s a Fair, should help furnish topics of conversation for these gentlemen.

(2) The Progressive Era (1880s-1910s) produced a war of words about the way U.S. Americans should relate to foreigners, both abroad and at home. Language became an important tool in the struggle to define issues such as imperialism and immigration and to persuade others through rhetorical performances. Write an essay in which you analyze one or more of the texts we’ve studied in this unit by focusing on what the author says and how he says it. In other words, your discussion should address both the content and the rhetoric of the text(s) you’ve chosen.


Guidelines:
• When you quote, place the page number on which the quotation appears in parentheses at the end of the sentence.
• This is not a research paper. You need not consult or refer to any additional sources. However, if you do, include a works-cited list in MLA format at the end of your essay.