Reading American Dreams (or Nightmares)

(Escape From New York Movie Poster. Barry E. Jackson 1981.)

Essay 3: Landscape Imaginaries: Reading American Dreams (or Nightmares)
 
“Popular culture is to what Americans believe as worship services are to what members of institutional religions believe.’”
Nelson, John Wiley. Your God is Alive and Well and Appearing inPopular Culture. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1976).
In their 2015 book Dreamscapes of Modernity, Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim social imaginaries are “collectively held and performed visions of the future, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and order.”1 In this project we will plumb the idea of landscape imaginaries (or at least of social imaginaries as they construct ideas about landscape) by observing and discussing the projective landscapes forwarded by American popular film — specifically American science fiction film. Like any other form of popular media, a film captures and reinforces strongly held or (sometimes) emerging ideas, values and attitudes about nature and society.2 To do this we will move between critical reading of our primary sources (the films themselves) and the assessment of these films via a series of secondary sources — critical interpretations of American Landscape Imaginaries forwarded by prominent scholars within geography, cultural studies, and environmental history.
Step One: Watch your film 
Within the next week select and watch a film from the list below.
 Planet of the Apes (1968)
 Soylent Green (1973)
 Escape Form New York (1981)
 Blade Runner (1982)
Pay particular attention to elements of the narrative and imagery that deal with the landscape or the environment. Ask yourself the following questions:
– What do these films suggest about our future landscapes and the societies that inhabit them?– Where do you think the ideas about the future presented within the film come from? Does the film present a broader social imaginary (i.e. does the film reinforce cultural fears? Hopes? Both?)
Last, advance a provocative claim. What does the film say about our view of the future or our understanding of man’s role or effect on the world? Can we understand the film as an outgrowth of a particular landscape imaginary?Where does that imaginary come from? Where is it leading us?Come to recitation on 2/29 prepared to briefly discuss your film and your provocative claim.
Step Two: Read the texts
With your film in mind, read the following four essays with an eye toward the potential relationships between ideas advanced within the essays and your film:
– Apel, Dora, “Surviving in the Post–apocalyptic Landscape.” in Beautiful Terrible Ruins (New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 2015).  
 – Boswell, Jacob, “Notes from the Wasteland: Competing Climatic Imaginaries in the Post-ApocalypticLandscape.” in James Graham ed. Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary. (New York: ColumbiaBooks on Architecture and the City and Lars Muller Publishers, 2016).
– Cosgrove, Denis, “Habitable Earth: Wilderness, Empire and Race in America.” in David Rothenberg ed. WildIdeas (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
– Heise, Ursula K.  “From Blue Planet to Google Earth.” in Sense of Place and Sense of Planet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).                                                          
As you’re reading consider motifs from your film that are reflected in the discussions presented by the authors.  Do the readings shed new light on the film for you? Do they cause you to consider the message, rhetoric or visual language of your film in a new way?In light of the readings, revise or strengthen your provocative claim. Can you advance a claim or argument about your film based on a new insight you have gained from the readings? Come to recitation prepared to discuss your new claim.   
Step Three: Abstract 
Before you begin writing your abstract, read William Cronon’s “Learning to do Historical Research: A Primer —Arguments and Narrative” available here:  http://www.williamcronon.net/researching/arguing.htm 
Using Cronon’s advice, revise your provocative claim and then write a 200 – 300 word abstract that summarizes your claim. An abstract is a short statement that contains the thesis, background, and conclusions of the larger work. This is essentially a summary of the paper that you intend to write. Typically abstracts do not contain citations but because we are using the abstract as a part of the larger process of writing please include a bibliography (in CMS format) as part of your abstract. 
 
NOTE: It is important to realize that writing an abstract is not the same as writing a paper. Most authors will write an abstract relatively early in the research process in order to organize their thoughts – this is what I’m asking you to do. As you are writing the paper, your thoughts and thus your argument may change – that is to be expected. We will write a second abstract at the conclusion of the paper.   
Step Four: Essay
Again referring to Cronon’s “Learning to do Historical Research: A Primer — Arguments and Narrative” and using the feedback you receive on your abstract and write a 2000 word essay advancing your provocative claim.Your final paper may use screen captures from your film or other films (or any other imagery that you feel is necessary) in order to succinctly communicate and reinforce your claim. Please provide captions that describe and cite all images. Word count within captions and footnotes will not count against the total.  
Audience:
Write your essay using an academic tone, i.e. as if you were writing to a scholarly journal. This means that you should assume that your audience has some prior-knowledge of your film and that they are reasonably well educated, literate people. For this audience, your style should be engaging, drawing your readers into the story you’ve found and letting them in on why that story is interesting or why it matters. Don’t bore your audience, they may stop reading. Most importantly, please keep in mind that you are not writing to the instructors. Imagine that your audience doesn’t know that you’re a college student writing this essay for an assignment. Your audience is just interested in an informative, interesting, and possibly even entertaining read. You may include as many images and film stills as you need in order to tell your story, and you may crop/enlarge/highlight images as necessary. You should provide captions that describe the images you choose to include in your essay.
          
Submission Format:
Digital Submission: Via Carmen Dropbox
File type: .doc or .docx
Font: 12 point font, double spaced
Citation Style: Chicago Manual of Style–Notes and Bibliography System
Dos and Dont’s
– Do, watch your movie multiple times.
– Do, read the essays (all of them).– Do, spell and grammar check your paper.
– Do, have a person you trust proofread your paper for content as well as mistakes.
– Do, watch other films of this era of this type – consider your argument relative to them.
– Do, have fun with this assignment
– Don’t plagiarize.
– Don’t try to sell us your movie by writing about how wonderful it is. You’re not a producer, we’re not Hollywood executives, and the movie has already been made.
– Don’t start your paper the night before it’s due!!!! – It will be boring and it will be poorly researched. More importantly, you won’t have any fun writing it and we won’t have any fun reading it.