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What is American?

The concept of "American" as a subject of study spans disciplines ranging from history and sociology to literature and cultural studies. It invites students to examine what defines American identity, society, and values — questions that resist simple answers. Courses in world studies, American history, and cultural analysis regularly ask students to interrogate the idea of America as both a geographic place and an evolving set of ideals. Works like J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's 1782 letter posing the question "What Is an American?" and figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Amiri Baraka serve as anchors for exploring how American identity has been constructed, contested, and redefined across centuries.

Student papers on this topic take a wide range of approaches. Comparative essays examine American values alongside European or Asian counterparts, or place historical periods like the Progressive Era and the New Deal in direct contrast. Other papers use case studies to analyze specific social and political developments — the Abolition Movement, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the influence of Latin migration on American life. Cultural and media analysis appears as well, with papers exploring pop music in the 1980s, advertising's effect on dietary choices, and the evolution of the cell phone as a lens into American society.

A strong essay on an American studies topic works best when it anchors a broad theme in a specific argument. Effective evidence draws on policy documents, literary texts, historical events, or cultural artifacts rather than vague generalizations about national character. The most common pitfall is treating "America" as a monolith — successful essays acknowledge the diversity of voices, regions, and experiences that shape any aspect of American life.

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Paper Doctorate

Food Increasingly Popular a Leisure Activity. Background

Conditions in the contemporary society have made it possible for people to change their perspective regarding some concepts and things as simple as food have come to represent a leisure activity. Individuals are no longer interested in eating with the purpose to satisfy this need, as many people presently regard cooking and eating as an art. Moreover, one needs to focus expansively on these concepts in order to harvest all the benefits associated with making and eating food. Food has reached a whole new level in first-world countries, considering that the financial condition that people in these countries have virtually enabled them to see food as being more than just a necessity. Numerous individuals are actively engaged in producing, buying, and selling food-related ideas with the purpose of exploiting this domain.

How Mark Twain\'s Use of Social Commentary and Satire Was Received by African Americans

The essay entails a description of how African Americans received Mark Twain's use of satire and social commentary. The essay explores racial issues as evident in Mark Twain's works. The paper considers various themes in mark twain's works, in order to examine the issue of race and the reaction of African Americans.

Research Paper Doctorate

Lewis and Clark expedition: exploration and discovery

The reasons that the Lewis and Clark expedition were very important in history include the reasons why Jefferson arranged the journey, the expectations of the expedition, the members of the Corps of Discovery, and the…

Essay Doctorate

Management Function Organizing Meet Goals Businesses Today.

Over the course of the recent economic downturn, General Motors has had to fundamentally alter its way of doing business and its managerial structure. In the past, despite occasional efforts to reconfigure its outdated…

Paper Doctorate

Women's information access and social change

¶ … spending time reflecting on the lives and accomplishments of Fannie Coralie Perkins, Betty Friedan, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Louisa Higgins, and Ida B. Wells-Barnet, a number of responses come to mind.

Paper Undergraduate

Affirmative Action and Race Relations

Affirmative action, in higher education and elsewhere has been a hotly debated issue, since its inception, among a group of minority faculty and faculty organization from U.S. law schools conceived of the need for…

Legality of TSA Pat Down

Security screening has become a nightmare to most passengers. It was Duncan, the Republican representative who pointed out the lucrative government contracts in TSA's new naked body scanning machines.

Essay Doctorate

Safety and Heath in it Environments Applied

Businesses including IT firms are flooded with IT tools like microcomputers, photocopiers, digital surveillance tools, internet, among others. There is mounting evidence from a review of literature that in the IT work environment, especially the IT industry, present hazardous working environments to workers. Workers in these environments also undergo stress from the lack of knowledge of the tools, the lack of, or reduced human contact. Information technology tools also create electrical and fire hazards, which threaten the safety of employees. Employees also suffer from health issues like bleary-eyes from bright screens and monitors of IT tools. The research proves the need for increased safety and health measures in these environments. In the end, the research creates knowledge in the business community of the importance of increased safety and health standards and ergonomic approaches in IT environments given the rapid development of technology and the increased use in workplaces.

Essay Doctorate

America-Afghanistan Relations While it Might Seem Counter-Intuitive

While it might seem counter-intuitive to the average American, it would be beneficial to the United States to remain allies with Afghanistan. The most passionate argument against this opinion is generally one which recounts the events of September 11th, and which argues that given the pure evil that was waged on U.S. soil and the lives that were lost, not to mention the sense of safety and security that was forever damaged, no possible alliance could ever be possible between the U.S. and Afghanistan. Such an opinion does have its validity in some perspectives, but more than anything, such a perspective fails to keep in mind that it was not the nation of Afghanistan which condoned such savage attacks on the US; it was renegade forces within this country known as the Taliban. A brief history of Afghanistan is useful at this point.

Essay Doctorate

JC Penny Makeover Background on U.S. Department

JC Penny Makeover Background on U.S. Department Stores and Background on J.C. Penney Dr. Robert Tamilia (Marketing professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal) explains that the department store in America not only "…revolutionized the retail store," and the shopping experience, and the available of products and promotional techniques, the department store contributed in a major way to the evolution of "...hiring practices and inventory control procedures" (Tamilia, 2002, p. 3). Moreover, Tamilia writes that the department store was one of society's more "democratic institutions" and besides offering customer services that had previously been unheard of (restaurants, restrooms and reading rooms) the department store in America "…liberated women and gave women their rightful place in society."

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