MUST ANSWER PART A ( 20%), THEN TWO QUESTIONS FROM PART B ( 40% EACH).
Must have thesis statements, preferably one or two sentences, highlighted or written
in bold. (2 points deducted for failure to have bold print
thesis statement.) The answer to part A should be approx. 2-3 pages. Answers
to B should be 3-4 pages per essay. Please use parenthetical citations (Approx. 3-4 per page)
Sources:
William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey
Bruce Schulman, The Seventies
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service
George Lipsitz, “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”
Jeff Chang, CANT STOP WON’T STOP
Te Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power
David Halberstram, “One Very Hot Day”
VA Suicide Statistics (either directly from the VA website or other reputable sources)
PART A (20%) 2-3 PAGES
You are a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who has managed to return to
something resembling a “normal “civilian life after years of living with a
traumatic brain injury sustained while on active duty. You are a founding
member of a veteran’s organization called Wounded Warriors Fight Back
(WWFB) whose primary purpose is to reform and demand accountability from
the department of Veteran’s Affairs. After years of red tape you have finally
secured an opportunity to address the congressional Veteran’s Affairs
committee. You have sent each member of the committee a copy of David
Finkel’s book, Thank You For Your Service, with a detailed letter describing
the book and asking them to read it. Write the letter. Be sure to include
direct quotes from the book as well as statistics on Veteran’s suicide rates (which can be sourced from the VA website).
PART B (EACH QUESTION =40%) 3-4 PAGES EACH
1. I have stated that an apt title for this course could be: America Since Television. Write
a well-organized essay describing the impact of television on U.S. history since its
popularization in the late Forties. Be sure to include both fiction and non-fiction
Offerings.
– touch on I Love Lucie and the impact of modern urban industrial life, contrast MASH with Walter Cronkite airing the Vietnam War every night; then you can thread it through really effectively into modern talking heads commentary newscasters and the decline of liberal consensus
3. Write an essay in which you examine the aftermath of the failure of LBJ’s Great
Society to be fully realized and link this failure to the emergence of the Hip Hop Nation
and ultimately the carceral state. Use The Pruitt-Igoe Myth documentary, Schulman’s The Seventies and Jeff Chang’s CANT STOP WON’T STOP