EN220/IN250, American Identity, O'Conner

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AS1: Exploratory Essay

J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur is the first important American author to ask the question, "What is an American?" Although Crevecoeur was describing life in the British colonies in America, he used his character, James, to comment on the principles of social organization that were making American society different form any that had gone before and to portray, for the first time, the new consciousness of emerging American society.

Write an exploratory essay on what Crevecoeur thought it meant to be "American." Then compare that to your own current understanding of what you think it means to be an American.

Objectives:

To think about what it means to be an "American"
To discuss the impact of an author's word choice and sentence structure on the interpretation of the text
To identify some major themes and development of the Letters of an American Farmer
To compare and contrast issues, values, and ideals in Crevecoeur's Letter with your own understanding of these topics and issues.
To explore your own understanding of what you believe it means to an American

See Rubric for Evaluating this Exploratory Essay

Original assignment located at: http://www.laep.org/humanitas/digitalhs/american/