Take Home Final
Background
In this take-home final, you will be making arguments about core course issues, and using evidence from the seminar and from your anthropology and history courses to support your arguments.
Instructions
- Each member of the class must answer the following question using your notes from class, the course readings, and any other sources you locate, including your textbooks from Anthropology 201 and History 104 (please reference them, and only use sources that are scholarly, reputable and credible) (Two typewritten double spaced pages maximum):
- Do you believe that war is a natural, inevitable state of human civilization? Why or why not?
- In addition, each student must also choose and answer three of the six questions below. You can again use your notes, the course readings, your textbooks from Anthropology 201 and History 104, and any other credible sources you find. (One typewritten double-spaced page maximum per question):
- What do you believe are the contributions of biology (genetics) versus culture in promoting and sustaining war? Be sure to include evidence to support your answer.
- Please discuss the relationship between situational factors (Milgram obedience to authority experiment, Zimbardo Prison experiment, experiments described in the Gilbert article “He Who Cast the First Stone”) and evil acts such as prisoner abuse or genocide.
- Why is it important to know your enemy and how could this knowledge have prevented or mitigated the Vietnam War or the Iraq War?
- Choose a war memorial that we did not use in our class exercise on war memorials, and do a visual analysis of the memorial just like we did in class. What does the memorial signify? Give a brief historical analysis of why the memorial was built and what it commemorated.
- Please elaborate on the costs and potential benefits of one of the three wars studied during this course, and explain why this kind of analysis could be used to promote undertaking a war or ending a war. Be sure to include damage done to infrastructure, money spent, civilian and soldier casualties, and long-term psychological and physical consequences to both soldiers and civilians. Balance these costs against potential benefits to be gained.
- List at least three of the major lessons learned from World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. How could these lessons prevent future wars with, for example, Iran or North Korea?
Format
Your final examination should be typewritten. The preferred method is to send your final as an e-mail attachment to your instructor at . You can also drop it by your instructor’s office in College Hall 303. The final is due by 10 a.m. on Friday, December 12, 2008.Twenty-five points will be deducted from the examination grade for each day the final exam is late.No final examinations will be accepted after 3 p.m. Monday, December 15. The PowerPoint slides from each class’s session are available online at and are also linked to from the course schedule.