INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN STUDIES PROFESSOR RUSSWORM
Close Analysis and American Studies
(make sure you have a creative title for your paper)
5-6 Pages, Double-spaced, Times New Roman Font
Due: Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 5:00pm
in my mailbox outside Bartlett 170 (no emails please)
For this assignment you need to write a close analysis of one or more scenes or passages from a film or novel. Your goal is to make an argument about how ideas about masculinity and nationality intersect in your film or novel. How is the film or novel engaged with representations of American men at a particular moment in time? You want to be both specific and creative in your analysis. Try to say something unexpected, less obvious, for example. Be sure that you are not talking generally about plot and do not spend a lot of time summarizing what happens in the film or novel. Instead, you want to pay close attention to the details of the moments you choose to analyze. Quote freely and often to make sure that you are grounding your observations on textual evidence but also be sure to provide a rich, interpretative discussion of those moments. If you work on a film, be sure that your evidence and analysis takes into account how the formal elements of the scenes are working together to create meaning. If you work on a novel, be sure that your evidence and analysis takes into account how literary elements or conventions are working together to create meaning.
As always, it is important to keep in mind that you are not writing a movie or book review. Rather, you should produce a paper that has an argument (a debatable claim), is well organized and clearly written, and remains scholarly in tone.
If you write about film, attached to your paper (not to be counted in the page total), you must include a few screen shots from the exact scenes that you analyze in your paper. Capturing these images is required and should assist you in paying even closer attention to film form. You also need to include a shot segmentation for at least one of the scenes you work with at the end of your paper.
Select one film or novel from the following list:
Novels: Films:
The Scene North By Northwest
The Killer Inside Me Easy Rider
Giovanni’s Room Enter the Dragon
Rocky I or Rocky II (not both)