SUNY Geneseo Department of Computer Science
Intd 105 13, Spring 2014
Prof. Doug Baldwin
Peer Critique on Thursday, February 20
Complete by Monday, February 24
Grade by Monday, March 3
Poe’s portrayal of Jupiter in “The Gold Bug” is heavily influenced by minstrel stereotypes that were emerging in American culture during Poe’s life. We discussed these stereotypes and their relation to “The Gold Bug” in class on February 13. Many modern commentators consider these stereotypes, and by implication Poe’s presentation of Jupiter, to be highly racist. This assignment asks you to consider why Poe might have portrayed Jupiter the way he did.
In writing this essay you will need to know something about Edgar Allan Poe’s life. You can find a brief but good biography in the American National Biography Online, at http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-01302.html.
Write an essay of 900 to 1500 words (3 to 5 pages) that explains why you think Poe portrayed Jupiter as he did. For example, was Poe writing what he thought was a realistic portrayal of a Southern black man? Or was he writing the character he thought his audiences would expect? Was he advancing some thesis of his own about relations between white and black Americans? Something else? Feel free to use these questions as starting points for forming your own ideas about Poe’s motivation, but in the end I hope you will write something you believe, not merely an answer to one of these questions.
Your essay should of course, be based on some thesis you develop on this subject, but the main thing I want to work on in this exercise is argument, i.e., marshalling and presenting evidence to support your position. You should therefore consider, summarize, and evaluate evidence from the story, our discussion of minstrel stereotypes, and Poe’s biography, and of course show how your thesis follows from that evidence.
Note that while you may research your essay in sources beyond the ones mentioned above, I don’t expect this to be a research paper, and I haven’t given you time to do much if any research. If you do use ideas in your essay that come from sources other than the story and our class discussions and readings, however, you must cite those sources.
We will do peer critiques of draft essays in next Thursday’s class (February 20). Please bring three printed copies of your draft essay to class that day.
Turn in your essay by emailing it to me (baldwin@geneseo.edu). The email must be timestamped by 11:59 on the “Complete By” date above. You can write your essay using any common word processor.
Finally, I will meet face to face with each of you to discuss your essays and give you your grades. Please sign up for a half hour meeting with me, to be held some time between when you turn in your essay and the end of the day (5:00 PM) on the “Grade By” date above. You can sign up for these meetings on the schedule outside my office. The schedule is divided into 15-minute blocks, so sign up by writing your name across two consecutive blocks; I have schedules for several weeks posted, so be careful that you are signing up for the day you intend.