Term Paper Project
The Assignment
- Your research paper analyzes one volume of
writing about Japan. Similar to our class discussions this
semester, your paper discusses how ideas of cultural geography are
presented: What is the East, the West, Japan, the US? How
does the main character in your novel or travelogue cross cultural
borders? What kind of transformation is expressed in the
crossing? Some of you are working on novels set only in Japan but
written in English for non-Japanese audiences--how is Japan represented
in these novels? Support your arguments with specific references
to the book you're reading.
- You will
produce a double-spaced paper of about eight pages with an additional
page of bibliography and perhaps copies of illustrations in the book.
- For citations,
use the Modern Language Association (MLA) style.
Example:
Sayonara
- In our
tutorials, we talked about the popular novel Sayonara, coming up with ideas
about how the novel represented Japan and the US; gender and race
relations; and ideas of racial "tolerance" and idealized learning about
an older Japan that predated the war. To get started with your
term paper, apply the same analysis to the book you've chosen.
Identify the passages you think are most interesting and that suggest
themes in the book.
- Talking
about the novel and then the film Sayonara led us to thinking about
the broader context in which these popular media were consumed.
We read Shibusawa's America's Geisha
Ally and thought about how her arguments about the appeal of
Japanese women and children as potential allies of the US and in need
of protection by the US could also connect with our readings of Sayonara. We also discussed
how Major Gruver's "embrace of the East" contrasted with the stories of
American white women presented in Yoshihara's Embracing the East. In
thinking about how to write about the book you have chosen, consider
what the relevant context is. You can draw on books we've read in
class to make comparisons or note contrasts.
- Thing
about what others have said about this book or books like it. For
example, key words Sayonara and Michener in Google Scholar produce
these ideas for more to read (see below). Reading one or two of
these essays would help you expand your own ideas of
Sayonara. These "secondary sources" would enhance your study of
your "primary source", Sayonara.
-
BOOK] A
Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts of" Madame
Butterfly"
J Wisenthal - 2006 - books.google.com
... bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1949 Rodgers and
Hammerstein's SouthPacific 1954
French are defeated at Dien Bien Phu James Michener, Sayonara
1957 Joshua ...
Web
Search
Innocence
to Deviance: The Fetishisation of Japanese Women in Western Fiction,
1890s–1990s
N Morris - Intersections: Gender, History
& Culture in the Asian …, 2007 - wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au
... expression of the genre is James A. Michener's
Sayonara: A Novel of Forbidden Love
(1954), which was also made into an Oscar award winning film in 1957, ...
Cited by 4 - Related
Articles - Cached
- Web
Search
'JAPANESE'SPACES AND THE
CONSTRUCTION OF'AMERICA'IN MASS-MARKET US FICTION: SAYONARA AND
RISING SUN
S Hones - Keisen Jogakuen College bulletin,
1997 - ci.nii.ac.jp
... This article takes James Michener's Sayonara
(1953) and Michael Crichton's Rising
Sun (1992) as early and late examples of the ways in which Japanese
place has ...
Cached
- Web
Search
Reconsidering
Japanese-American Relations - Find
article @ UNC
D Strauss - American Literary History, 1996 -
JSTOR
... War II, many of these images have persisted into
the late twentieth century in such
works as James A. Michener's Sayonara (1954) and James
Clavell's Shogun. ...
Web
Search - BL
Direct
- How would you expand your
three-page essay on Sayonara
to eight pages? You could expand it by bringing in the historical
context; by including the reviews others have written about it or a
similar novel of the times; and by making connections with other books
read this semester
- Try outlining your ideas!
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