Essay 2, due March 13 in class:

In an essay of about 1,500-2,000 words (5-7 pages), answer one of the following questions. 1. Would it be fair to call Edgar Rice Burroughs (Week 4) a Futurist, as defined by Filippo Marinetti (Week 5)? Why or why not? 2. Consider out readings for Week 5. What is good about war and violence, according to Friedrich von Bernhardi and to Filippo Marinetti? 3. Consider our readings for Week 6. Both Ernst Jnger and Erich Maria Remarque clearly felt they learned important things during World War I. Compare the "lessons" they drew from their wartime experiences. 4. Consider all of our readings from first hand accounts of men's experience in World War I (Remarque, Jnger, and the four readings from firstworldwar.com). What wartime experiences seem to have made the greatest impression on these authors? 5. Consider Michael Geyer's description of how the German army learned to fight. Do the accounts of Jnger, Remarque, and others (Verdun/Vimy/St. Julien/Messines) match that description? 6. Michael Zoschenko presents a very skeptical view of life in early Soviet Russia in our readings for Week 7. What seem to be the main targets of his criticism? 7. Compare and contrast the views of the two socialist authors we read in Week 8 (Lenin, Luxemburg) and the two we read in Week 2 (Marx/Engels, Bernstein). 8. Compare the changes in gender roles described by Catherine Horwood (bathing in the 1920s) with that described by Erika Rappoport (shopping in the 1900s). How similar are the arguments of these two authors? 9. Compare our readings from Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini. On what do these authors agree, and on what do they disagree? If you wish, you may compare instead any TWO of these three authors only. 10. Compare our readings from Hitler (Week 9) and E. M. Forster (Week 10). What are the key points of difference between them? Are there any similarities in their views?

12. Compare the ideas of any of the following pairs of authors: Marx/Engels (Week 2) and V. I. Lenin (Week 8) as representatives of a leftist tradition; Leo XIII (Week 2) and Pius XII (Week 10) as representatives of the tradition of Catholic social and political thought; Herbert Spencer (Week 2) and E. M. Forster (Week 10) as representatives of liberalism; Heinrich Treitschke (Week 2) and Adolf Hitler OR Benito Mussolini (Week 9) as exemplars of radical right-wing political thought. Discuss how much the tradition

you have chosen changed between the 1880s/1890s and the 1920s/1930s. If you are very ambitious and are sure you have something coherent to say, you may examine two of these pairs of authors. 13. Consider the communist children's vacations discussed by Laura Lee Downs and the changing bathing customs discussed by Catherine Horwood. In what ways could the changes each author discusses be considered "democratizing," and in what ways not? 14. In consultation with Dr. Dickinson, develop your own essay question based on our assigned readings. Your paper should be a focused essay that presents and argues for a clear point of view. By point of view, I do NOT mean that you should decide whether you agree or disagree with the authors, but rather a clearly-argued thesis based on close analysis of the texts. Please consult "Writing History Essays," in the course reader, for suggestions as to how to construct such a thesis. You should use one of the two standard citation formats in your essay (footnotes or parenthetical references in the text plus bibliography at the end). Cite the original publication, not the course reader.