Groups discuss our recent discussions and readings
Prepare an “essay prospectus” in this Google doc, i.e., a
paragraph that identifies a lesson the group thinks can be drawn from those
discussions/readings and some evidence to support that lesson
Groups briefly present their idea to see how others react
Group statements
Compare and contrast racism from the blackface era and today’s society.
Talk about how it was the norm then and although it seems to lessen in recent
years, it’s still around us. Thesis: Racism is still with us today even
though the forms of it are more implicit because we are more aware of them.
Edgar Allen Poe’s narrative sugarcoats Slavery and African Americans views
on slavery, versus the way African Americans perceived it. The setting and time
period of Edgar Allen Poe’s narrative reflects how slaves were viewed
during their time period and Poe pokes fun at it in a fictitious way.
Draw connections between Jupiter and the stereotypical minstrel caricatures.
How does this relate in modern day?
As society’s views and values change over time, what is focused on in
literary interpretation can differ greatly than when something was originally
written. The meaning and purpose of a text now can be very different than how
it was originally intended to be.
Jupiter in “The Gold Bug” is similar to blackface in the sense that
it provides a comedic relief while being racist/derogatory. The way Edgar Allan Poe
uses Jupiter in the gold bug can be compared to the roles of black people in
more modern literature/television.
Throughout the short story “The Gold Bug”, Jupiter’s character
is portrayed as a stereotypical African American during the 1840s, there are
especially connections between the minstrel shows and Jupiter’s character.
Even today there are many racist stereotypes in our pop culture.
How prevalent is racism in modern television and cinema? In what ways are these
occurrences preserving racism?
Some general comments on these as starting points for essays
Essays need theses, i.e., arguable positions that they will defend. Beware that
“compare and contrast…” isn’t a thesis, nor is a
question a thesis — but your answer to a question might well be a thesis
Arguments need to be supported by evidence. Arguments coming out of some of these
will need evidence from beyond the things we have read or talked about so far.
That’s fine, but this is not supposed to be a major research project, so
evidence can come from a few sources, they can be the results of simple Google
searches, etc. (We’ll talk about better research strategies later.)
You need a narrow focus to be able to write an effective argument in 3 to 5
pages. Topics such as “racism in modern life” or “racist
caricatures in modern media” should be refined down to a specific aspect
of life, a specific show, etc.