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AMER2046 / LALS3005 -- Legal Fictions Midterm Essays
Due Friday, 18 March 2016 at the beginning of class
Write an essay (6 – 8 pages / 1600-2000 words, double spaced) on one of the following topics. The following are broad-based topics and you are encouraged to narrow your interpretation in any way that you see fit; please be sure to define carefully your key terms.
A: In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson blamed slavery on King George III. However, in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson seems to have very different views on slavery. Read “Query 14: The Administration of justice and description of the laws?” and consider the relationship between race and slavery. How does Jefferson define slavery and justify it as a social practice? Why the difference from the Declaration?
Or, compare Jefferson’s views on slavery to those of John Locke, as represented in “Chapter 4: Of Slavery” in Second Treatise of Government (1690).
B: Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) is a satirical film that criticizes the way in which the media mobilizes racial stereotypes to make money and how hip-hop music, media companies and clothing designers use race (and racism) to help sell their commodities. Do you think the movie is an effective critique? Or, do you think that the movie is repeating the very practice of commodification of racial stereotype?
C: Write an essay that considers stereotypes about race, gender, or sexuality in one (or more) of the following videos. You might consider one of the following questions: Are these artists criticizing or embracing stereotypes (if so, which ones, etc.)? How do stereotypes change when they move from one national context to another, to international context, or to multiple national contexts? Are they employing satire or parody? Do you see issues of cultural appropriate, exploitation, or orientalism—or, to put it another way, how does the concept of “authenticity” matter or not to in these cultural texts:
Azealia Banks “212 Ft. Lazy Jay” – Broke with Expensive Taste (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Jv9fNPjgk
Iggy Azalea “Work” – The New Classic (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zR6ROjoOX0
M.I.A. “Paper Planes” – Kala (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRjZoRtu0Y
M.I.A. “Bad Girls” – Matangi (2013)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yuqxl284cg
Lily Allen, “Hard Out Here” (2013)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0CazRHB0so
Lorde, “Royals,” Pure Heroine (2013)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc
Beyonce, “Formation” – (2016)
http://www.beyonce.com
or
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-beyonces-surprise-new-video-formation-20160206
In your analysis, please treat these videos as multi-layered cultural texts. The visual imagery and style, the lyrics, the editing techniques are all potentially important to what the video means. Furthermore, their distribution in the world market and reception by various audiences may or may not be important to your interpretation. Finally, basic techniques of literary analysis—such as description of the setting (where are these taking place?), character (or lack of character), plot (or lack thereof), generic qualities (satire, romance, parody, realism), questions of reliable narration, metaphors and symbols—are all in play.
D: The first paragraph of Chapter Three of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of a Life of an American Slave (1845) describes a garden with its perimeter marked by tar. Interpret this passage carefully—remember, to formulate a strong thesis that defines its key terms as you consider the meaning and implication of this passage.
E: Come up with a topic and thesis that compares / contrasts two of the following texts: Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of an American Slave (1845); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852); Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1881) Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington Ctiy in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana (1853).
http://www.amstudy.hku.hk/PDF/Northup12YEARS1853.pdf
Or, watch the film adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013). Choose a scene from the film and compare it to the original scene in the book, or to another scene in the slave narratives by Douglass or Jacobs. Be sure to explain *why* you have chosen the particular scene on which you are writing your essay—what idea or concept (literary, legal, or otherwise) are you trying to address in your analysis and interpretation of the scene?
F: Choose a topic of your own, relating to law and / or literature as it relates to anything that we have read this semester. Please write an email to me to let me know that you have chosen this option and include a short (1-2 sentence) description of your paper topic.