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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

Poetry of racial struggle in African-American literature

This paper compares the common theme of struggle in the works of the African-American poets Dunbar, Hughes, and Dove. All three poets use metaphors and other poetic imagery to talk about the suffering of their people in a method that is covert rather than explicit. This enables them to deal with sensitive topics such as racism and sexism in a manner that takes even an unwitting, resistant reader by surprise.

Paper Doctorate

Engineering ethics in individual automobile safety technology

The tension between business and ethics—such as that robustly illustrated by the Ford Pinto debacle—fits extraordinarily well with the consideration of vehicular technology, the use of which may pose safety hazards for drivers and others in the vicinity of preoccupied drivers. The question then begs: where does the responsibility for safety belong—with the consumer who is in the driver's seat, the manufacturer who will quite obviously have mixed motivations, or with the government that will need to balance cost with benefit. Or perhaps the responsibility ultimately goes to watchdog groups and consumers demand—through legislative process—that human lives are not well matched to economic cost-benefit analysis made from a particularly economic frame.

Research Paper Undergraduate

Cultural differences in American and Japanese intelligence perceptions

The paper is a comparison. The paper accesses differences in cultures that contribute to differences in perceptions of intelligence. The two cultures that are compared are Japanese culture and American culture. The paper also theorizes upon a method to measure intelligence that takes into consideration cultural differences as part of the measurement.

Paper Undergraduate

Observing school culture at Clay County High School in West Virginia

This essay is a reflective piece that explains the author's experience observing at a high school located in Clay County West Virginia. The purpose of the essay is to explore the cultural differences and similarities that are seen elsewhere. A questionnaire was introduced to help gather data about the experience.

Paper Doctorate

Racial disparities in arrest rates and criminal justice system bias

The paper explores the relationship between race and arrest rates. It provides a description of the issue and its significance as well as the hypothesis. The paper provides literature on independent and dependent variable summarizing what is learnt from the variables. It provides a summary of the data collection methods used for research.

Research Paper Doctorate

United States attitudes toward European defense after the Cold War

United States Attitudes toward European Defense

Research Paper Doctorate

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet adapted in four modern films

¶ … play Romeo and Juliet written by William Shakespeare during the Elizabethan Times in the late 1500s with four modern day movie adaptations: West Side Story directed by Robert Wise in 1961, Romeo and Juliet directed…

Research Paper Doctorate

Immigration and hierarchy in John Fante's Ask the Dust

John Fante's Ask the Dust is regarded as one of the most successful novels of the 20th century with its theme grounded in immigration and myth of American dream. The novel is not exactly negative in tone instead it…

Research Paper Doctorate

Richard Wright's "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" and biography

Richard Wright was one of the greatest African-American writers; he was also the first African-American to have produced one of the famous novel of racism and its psychological affect on the individuals in his…

Research Paper Doctorate

Elite Inc.'s five-year international expansion and market strategy plan

¶ … goal of the five-year strategic plan is to be the market leader in the Asian market, to maintain the position in the North American market, and establish the product in the European market.

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