What does it mean to be an American and what does freedom mean in America?

ENGL 2327 Final Paper Assignment

Ralph Emerson
Henry Thoreau
Thomas Jefferson

Final papers must be 6-8 FULL pages, double-spaced, with 1 margins in 12 pt. Times
New Roman font. They must include a Works Cited and use MLA citation style (Works Cited
page is not included in the six-page minimum requirement. Final papers are due by Turnitin by
Please note: there can be absolutely NO exceptions made.
What does it mean to be an American and what does freedom mean in America? Our
course has covered a variety of texts from several different periods of American Literature.
Each has articulated different and at times competing definitions of America and of what it
means to be an American and what freedom means in the United States. The topic of America
and the definition of freedom is very general, so feel free to approach this subject from
whatever angle you wish. You may be more interested in studying a theme that does not have
much to do with the topic of America. Whatever topic or theme you choose to write upon, be
sure to make a conscious effort to at least connect it to the more general question: What is
America and its view of freedom (or what is an American)?
Choose THREE – FOUR authors or texts from any part of our syllabus that were
not used in the midterm paper, to compare and contrast on this topic. You must also select 2-3
secondary sources to help you with your main argument, My advice: pick the authors or texts
that you are most interested in or feel you can do your best job in commenting upon. Draft a list
of main topics that each text or author treats, and then find some commonalities or contrasts
between them. Remember taking note of differences is as important as stressing similarities.
You may write on any topic that you find interesting. For those of you who are
interested in philosophy, the likes of Locke, Hamilton, Madison, Thoreau, and Fuller are text
rich with philosophical insight, with the later more centered on the American Romantic version
of idealism. You can pick any chapter or topic to focus upon. For those of you more interested in
Poes gothic tales of horror, feel free to examine the topics he treats in depth: human depravity,
guilt, conscience, perversity, paranoia, evil, and so on.

The readings from the last week of class on American Abolitionism offer a lot of
significant overlap with each other and with the readings from the Colonial Period and the
American Renaissance section. Revisit our Lecture Notes on all of the assigned readings from
the entire course for more topics to spark your interest. Review our discussion forum prompts
and lecture notes to help you to devise and interesting and original topic. Do yourself a favor:
generate some interest in the texts we read this semester, and work on a topic that you are
personally interested in exploring. Another way of approaching this paper: consider yourself
posing a question to the author or text that your analysis is purposed to solve.
Whatever you decide to write upon, I am asking you to write an argumentative essay that
takes a position on the subject matter. You should elaborate your main topic in your
introduction and list the 3-4 points you will be making in the body of your essay. Your
conclusion should bring your argument together into a cohesive and compelling whole. Your
introductions and conclusions should articulate the various interconnections between the texts
you have studied, and how your idea of America has been fashioned by tracing their similarities
and differences.

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