1500 word essay, include the films Andrzej Wajda, Man of Marble, Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), Volker Schlöndorff, Strikein Howell. What are we looking for in these essays? In your opening paragraph, provide your answer to the prompt. Do not repeat the prompt. Be creative and analytical in your response to the questions we are asking. Do not limit yourself to a Dictionary definition of the concept being discussed (although you may refer to such a definition to reveal the particular qualities of the concept you have identified). What we want to see is what you (and now your readers) learn from your close reading and detailed analysis of three texts takes us beyond the dictionary. (You can discuss briefly other texts and lectures where relevant, but focus on three texts.)

In the body of the paper, lay out the evidence for the argument you presented in the opening paragraph drawn from your close reading of the written or filmed texts that you have chosen to analyze. Avoid generalities. What you need to do is to enable us to understand in new ways the term you are discussing. In your second-to-last paragraph, compare your findings in these three texts. Each text we discuss in this class is different in nature and therefore what you find in it will differ. What is the significance of these differences in your analysis of the questions posed in the prompt? In the concluding paragraph six, situate your findings in the historical contexts in which the works at hand were written and which they sought to address. These concepts are potentially universal in nature, but how they can be used and what they reveal will necessarily differ in different historical situations. What do we learn about the term under examination as a concept of historical analysis, that is to say a tool that can be used to reveal what is going on (or not going on that you would expect to go on) and why in particular historical situations?

A few words on your conclusion. In this paper, you started with an analytical concept and explored how its use opens up each text in different ways, consonant with the nature of the particular text and the history it presents. You used the concept as a tool in such a way that with this tool, we can see elements in the text and the historical situation we could not see before. And we understand in new ways how these texts and situations are similar and different and what this means. In the conclusion, we ask what do we learn about this tool itself? How do we do this? By using it in different places and ways—what you have done in this paper. Based on the evidence you present in the body of your paper, what do we learn about your chosen concept as itself a tool to analyze a text and the history it presents? From your experience using this concept in this paper, what guidance can you give future users of this tool so that they get the most from it as a means of analyzing other texts and the historical situations they present?