Engl 220

Midterm Paper

Spring 2009

Men (and Women) Without a Cross:

Reading Race and Gender in The Last of the Mohicans

Throat-clearing. You should know by now that anything I do is likely to have a long set-up. It’s always meant to have a point, though, so stay with me.

Two of the key questions of our class are (I’m quoting from the syllabus here):

  • How do textual representations contribute to our sense of our own identities and of the identities of others?
  • How do those representations help to enforce—or to challenge—relations of power among social groups?

This paper will ask you think critically about those questions by drawing upon your informed understanding of a) The Last of the Mohicansand b) a related critical text. For the “a” part, you’ll analyze how Cooper is constructing racial and/or gender identity in this novel, and consider how much room we have—with or without his permission or invitation—to question or contest those representations. And for the “b” part, you’ll determine whose thinking you might borrow to help you work all that out.

How to proceed. Pick a character (or two) and discuss where and how, in the construction of the book’s overarching schema of Indianness and whiteness, this character fits.

Clarity and concision are good things, but—in the academic world, especially—so are nuance and complexity. Stretch your legs, then, and consider all the angles. If you feel the portrait of this character’s racial identity is dependent upon (or perhaps complicated by) the way s/he fits into the book’s prevailing notions about masculinity, then say so—and explain what you mean. If you feel the book is ambivalent or even contradictory about either of those things (race, gender), let that be part of your discussion, too. If you feel certain aspects of your character emerge into more prominent relief when s/he’s compared with another, do so.

In developing your analysis, you should draw meaningfully upon one of the following critical/theoretical essays for reference or support. They will give you a conceptual and theoretical vocabulary in which to work some of your own ideas:

  • W. J. T. Mitchell, “Representation”;
  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes”;
  • Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race”;
  • Edward Said, Introduction to Orientalism.

If you can also make use of one of the supplemental (“Recommended”) sourcesin the Course Reader unit on “Representing Others” to inform or bolster your argument, so much the better.

What sort of “drawing” would be “meaningful”? Well…

  • Maybe you feel that Mitchell’s discussion of the power of representation (and the uncontrollability of representation) gives you a way to discuss how Cooper seems to be counting on us to “receive” the sorts of “signs” he’s manipulating—or to talk about the possibility for“crosstalk” that’s opened up when the “axis of communication” is bisected by the “axis of representation.”
  • Or maybe you’d like to extrapolate from Gates’sdemonstration of how racial difference has historically been produced in and through reading and writing to discuss how Cooper’s novel helps to naturalize a certain distribution of social power.
  • Or maybe you think that LOM reflects the historical shift in thinking about “race” that Appiah traces in his essay.
  • Or maybe you regard LOM as an attempt to create or shore up an internally consistent body of knowledge that’s intended to establish a kind of “authority” over the subject (Indians) that it describes.

Those examples don’t begin to exhaust the possibilities. However you want to use one of these pieces, you should consult with me if you have any doubts about your understanding of its claims.

Givens. Essays like these (in case you haven’t learned this by now) are always thesis-driven. So: have a thesis. I.e., make your “reading” of your chosen character center around an arguable and specific claim. For example, your thesis might take the form of an answer to the following question, or one like it: What do you think Cooper’s interests are in portraying this character the way he does; what point is this character—or the fate of this character—intended to make? Or it might actually center around one of the quibbles or qualifications I mentioned above: i.e., your sense of the complicatedness or the unsettledness of your character’s identity may simply be your thesis.

Set up your thesis with an introduction that compellingly frames the issue or maps the territory as you see it: what is the general context in which your specific argument is taking place? Develop your thesis via a well structured argument that marshallssalient textual evidence. (And don’t imagine that this evidence will speak for itself: it’s your job toincorporatequotes, paraphrases, or summaries from other texts into your argument by introducing them effectively and explaining or elaborating upon what you see them “proving” or illustrating.) And once you’re done, don’t just tell us what you’ve told us (in that klunky old five-paragraph-essay fashion that we all learned in junior high); dream up a conclusion that gives your argument another turn of the screw, or relates your argument to some other (literary or extra-literary) context, or suggests its ramifications for some broader topic that you don’t have the time or space to go into just now.

Finally: when you think you’ve got a final draft, set it aside for a day. Then come back to it with fresh eyes, revise it one more time, and proofread for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other surface errors. (Microsoft can help you with some, but not all, such things.) Please don’t use plastic covers, folders, or fancy binders; a staple in the upper lefthand corner will do. I don’t have a stylesheet you should follow, and I won’t insist absolutely that your paper conform to MLA format. But of course it would be good practice for you if it did.

Length: I usually say that any paper should be as long as it takes to do your argument justice. Some arguments are more complex and need more space. Others can be wrapped up neatly in a couple of pages. This argument should probably be complex enough that it requires at least 7 to 10 pages to work out.