Write an essay of 4-5 pp. (or 1200-1500 words) in which you give an account of an aspect of one of the works we've read in a way that shows how another work from the course sheds light on it. To choose a topic you will need to identify:

(i) the work (and aspect of it) that will be your main focus (this should be something we have read in the more recent part of the course—beginning, say, with Ruskin),

(ii) the work which sheds light on it (which may be any work read this semester), and

(iii) two ways of understanding the main work (one that incorporates insights gained from the second work and one that does not).

A paper of this length is too short to give a full account of the whole of even the shorter selections in the course. Since you will also be presenting more than one account of a work, you should not expect to deal with more than one aspect of the work you focus on. The "aspect" you do address may be a part of the text or image (e.g., a group of paragraphs or the description of an event), but it may also be some feature of the work that reappears in a number of different places or is made of separated parts (e.g., a tension or apparent inconsistency between things said in different places). You need not define the specific part you are concerned with at the outset; simply avoid attempting to discuss anything close to the whole of even the work that is your main focus.

The work that sheds light on the main work will naturally be discussed less extensively, and your discussion of it need not appear as a full account of even a part of it. What you should aim to do is to say enough about this work for a reader to understand why it sheds light on the main work. And, although it might be possible to locate the reason it does this in some part (or group of parts), it may instead be some feature of the whole work that cannot be isolated in a part. Even so, you should at least illustrate this feature by specific references to the text. For example, an idea might be developed in the whole work ("alienation" or "estrangement" in the second selection from Marx is an example of this), so it cannot be traced to a specific part; still, specific parts of the text, even specific quotations, could be used to illustrate the idea or aspects of it.

One way to distinguish the two ways of understanding the main work is to contrast, in your mind, the way it might be understood by someone who did not read the second work with the way it might be understood by someone who had read this work. If you in fact read the main work before you read the second one, these two ways might represent the way you understood the work when you first read it and the way you understand it now as you look back on it. But if you read the main work after you had already read the work that sheds light on it, you may need to imagine how someone might understand it who has not read this second work.

The nature of the difference between the two ways of understanding the work can vary. They may be incompatible in the sense that holding one interpretation involves giving up the whole or part of the other. But one may simply add to the other by providing a fuller account of things addressed in the first interpretation or by addressing things that the first interpretation misses. For example, someone reading the main work first might have an understanding of how a particular event fits into the story and, after reading the second work, retain this account but pay attention of some features of the event that had seemed unimportant before. In short, the new light that is shed by the second work might make the first work look different, but it might simply bring to light some things that were in the dark or even just make it easier to see some things whose presence was already noticed.

There is rarely only one way of organizing even a specific sort of paper, but one natural approach in this case would be to first describe the feature of the main work that needs to be understood (for example, by saying what happens in an event while leaving open the question of what it means for the story as a whole), then to give the account of the feature just described that could be provided without reading the second work, and finally to say how this account might be altered as a result of reading the second work. In some cases it may be difficult to separate completely the first two of these three steps since it can be hard to describe an aspect a work without saying anything about what it means. Still a natural way to begin is to say in a preliminary way what it is that you are going to provide an account of even if you cannot provide much detail without actually giving an account.

Here are a few examples of possible topics. I've tried to illustrate some of the different forms this assignment can take rather than to collect the most likely choices of topics that would fit it. So you certainly should not feel limited to these; but you also should not feel that you cannot use one of them as your topic. And if one seems close to the topic you'd like to use, do not feel that you need adopt the particular form of that topic that is given here.

• Reading Bernal Diaz might alter the way you understand the picture of Motecuhzoma you find in Broken Spears. (Notice this says not just that you end up with a different view of the person but that you find yourself understanding what Broken Spears says about him differently.)

• Having read Popol Vuh, you might understand the significance of the character Chac Mool in "Chac Mool" in a way that is different from the understanding you would have had without having read it.

• Some of things said about work in News from Nowhere can be seen as illustrations of the ideas found in Marx's manuscript on estranged labor (though Morris would not have known this particular work of Marx since it wasn't published in his lifetime). Even though this might not change the force of these statements in your mind, it might set them in a broader or deeper context.

• The term caciques appears in both Bernal Diaz and The Underdogs; and recalling the role of caciques during the conquest might lead you to think the meaning of the term in Azuela's book differently. Note that this could be more a product of the difference between the two cases than their similarity. (This has some of character of a comparison, but it differs in that, instead of giving an account of individual works in order to understand the relation between them, you use the relation between them to help you understand one of the two.)

• Pictures count as works, too. For example, there is a description of a woman grinding corn in The Underdogs that could shed light on the painting by Diego Rivera. (I can imagine it being hard—though not impossible—to get a paper out of this particular topic; but that would not be true of other connections between pictues and texts or pictures and other pictures.)

Don't hesitate to seek my help if you find it difficult to formulate a topic; and, of course, I'll be glad to help, too, as you are working on your essay.

These are due the day of a lecture (let's say by 5:00 pm unless you make other arrangements), so it may be most convenient to submit them electronically. Either e-mail attachments or the Blackboard dropbox are fine. In both cases, please check for a confirmation that I've received your file and have been able to open it.