A solid understanding of**** Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth …Eksteins – Rites of Spring **** Essay questions posted in “paper requirements”
In essay form (introduction with thesis, body with citations, conclusion) answer both question with a 3-4 or 4-5 page response.
Please choose 1 topic from Group A and 1 topic from Group B
— clearly show which topics were chosen
• Include both questions in the same file.
• Start the second essay on a new page.
• Quote the authors regularly in making your points. – authors w/ books below
• Citations to their locations in the text
• Provide a work cited page
4-5 sources from specific books only
Group A:
Question 1.
Compare the imperialism represented in both Conrad and Fanon. Has anything changed in the way Europeans treat non-European people? What does it say that non-Europeans (here, Fanon), in their struggle with European colonizers, are using European means (such as writing books in French)? Examining Samuel Huntington’s Views on the divisions of the world, explain how they are or aren’t useful in understanding the European-African relationship beyond what Conrad and Fanon bring forward.
Sources:
Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth
Conrad – Heart of Darkness
Huntington – Clash of Civilization
Question 2.
While totalitarian regimes as discussed by Arendt seem almost completely different from the rest of the states of the age, links can be found between the practices of totalitarian states as she describes them and the behavior of the French colonizers in North Africa that Fanon describes. Identify and discuss these links.
Sources:
Arendt – The origins of Totalitarianism
Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth
Group B:
Question 1.
Discuss the changes in identity experienced by the soldiers coming home from World War I that we see in Eksteins and those experienced by Kovaly in her memoir. Are there any links between them? What is particularly modern about those changes? Are the changes among women discussed by Mary Louise Roberts similar to either or both of these?
Sources:
Eksteins – Rites of Spring
Kovaly – Under a Cruel Star
Mary Louise Roberts – Civilizations without sexes
Question 2.
Why dos a modern world which seems so hopeful, so optimistic coming out of the 18th century, go so wrong by the middle of the 20th century? Why do the cultural stresses of the early-mid twentieth century not produce the constructive explosion of energy seen in the United States as described by Wood? Use examples from Wood and Eksteins novels.
Sources:
Wood – The radicalism of the American Revolution
Eksteins- Rites of Spring