Sample Paragraph on Walt Whitman:
Alice Fahs contends that Walt Whitman began the Civil War as a poet of
celebration, as evidenced by the iconic pre-war Leaves of Grass, but was
transformed during the course of the conflict into a poet of consolation. The
early “Beat! Beat! Drums!” of 1861 combines the frenetic energy of drums
beating and bugles blowing with images of a society shaken to its very
core by the onslaught of war. This manic, frenetic energy is in great
contrast with the later poetry, especially Whitman’s tribute to Lincoln,
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” of 1865, which describes the
“night and day” (Whitman 88) dirge of a coffin through various seasonal
landscapes, offering a pastoral elegy for the national loss of an iconic
leader. Whitman may have remained the poet of the nation, but the nation
he represented was one of mourning by the end of the war.
Sample Paragraph on Emily Dickinson:
As Alice Fahs argues, the Civil War provided a “dark Enlightenment” to
Emily Dickinson’s already bleak view of metaphysics. Dickinson’s prolific
Civil War poetic output demonstrates that she resisted the providential
meaning that many attributed to the unfathomable death and destruction
wrought by the war. The speaker of “My Triumph lasted till the Drums”
instead focuses on the “tyrannies of Men,” stripping the battlefield of heroic
values and identifying with the field of corpses: “I hated Glory
/ And wished myself were They” (Dickenson 98). Many her poems written
during this period reflect on how “[i]t feels a shame to be Alive— / When
Men so brave—are dead—” (100). Victory on a battlefield “populous with
Bone and stain,” as depicted in “My Portion is Defeat—today,” is not the
product of valor, but rather “Death’s surprise” (100). The speaker muses,
How different Victory
To Him who has it—and the One
Who to have had it, would have been
Contender—to die (100)
Death—the great leveler—becomes the focus of Dickinson’s wartime
poetry, obliterating any triumphal or optimistic vision of bloodshed.
Sample Paragraph on Winslow Homer:
Cultural historian Alice Fahs maintains that the Civil War transformed
Winslow Homer from a commercial artist who presented clichéd and
stereotyped visions of American types into to a ‘serious’ painter who offers
us the most humanizing depictions of the war on record. The sentimental
domesticity reflected in the flat, caricatured lithographs like “Life in Camp,
Part 2: Goodbye” (1864) gives way to complex, nuanced depictions of
fraught human relationships. “A Visit from the Old Mistress” of 1876, for
instance, portrays the tense meeting of three former slaves with their
former mistress. Homer uses striking contrast between darkness and light,
expressive brushstrokes, and the posture of his figures to convey the
ambivalence of this encounter. Far from that of a once glib commercial
painter, Homer’s postwar work sensitively probes Reconstruction racial
politics in a manner largely absent in other artistic representations of the
period.
Preliminary Research
Let’s say, for instance, that I was struck by the Alexander Gardner
photographs of the aftermath of the battle at Antietam that Professor Fahs
showed in lecture, especially since she claimed that they represented such
a visual rupture in representations of the Civil War.
Using the link provided on the “Writing Process and Student Learning
Goals,” I might first visit the Library of Congress Online Catalogue of
Prints and Photographs, subsection Civil War Glass Negatives and
Related Prints
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/
There, I could search directly for other images by Alexander Gardener,
perhaps of another famous battle deeper into the Civil War.
Alexander Gardner, Battlefield of Gettysburg. Dead Confederate sharpshooter at
foot of Little Round Top. Silver albumen photograph. Photographed July 1863,
printed between 1880 and 1889.
Once you have conducted a preliminary visual analysis, you can begin to
think about how you want to pursue an interpretive claim about the image.
Key Strategies for Analyzing Photographic Evidence
•  Distinguish between facts and evidence
•  Discover how various parts of an image support a larger idea or concept
•  Demonstrate how explicit parts combine to form implicit wholes
•  Address specific ideas (how, for example, an idea of the brutality of war
is supported by elements within an image), or more theoretical positions
(how, for example, the parts of an image speak to an understanding of
war).
Preliminary Research
Having chosen a preliminary image and conducted a visual analysis
without any supplemental material, I would start by looking up the
photographer (in this case, Alexander Gardner) on a non-academic
research site (i.e., Wikipedia).
In the case of this particularly famous photographer, a lot of information
comes up that might be directly relevant to my image analysis of this
photograph, especially in terms of how he “staged” corpses in his famous
Civil War battlefield photographs.
Also, this particular Wikipedia page has a lot of great bibliographic links
(which may not be the case for other photographers or artists).
Preliminary Research
The next step is to begin searching for scholarly secondary sources to
further extend my understanding of Gardner’s work and to deepen and
extend my thesis about the role this particular image played in
understandings of the Civil War.
Using the link provided on the “Writing Process and Student Learning
Goals,” I might first go to the History subpage of the UCI Library page.
! Remember, the UCI Libraries have many online, full-text databases, but
in most cases you must be logged on to either a UCI network computer
OR a remote-access VPN (for instance, if you are trying to access the
library site off-campus). It is worthwhile to download the Cisco Remote
VPN platform to your laptop; that way, you will always have access to the
UCI library resources no matter where you decide to work.
Preliminary Research
Once on the History subpage, I will first try the America: History and Life
database. As a general guideline, I like to start by searching with very
specific search terms, and then moving to more general terms if those first
specific searches fail.
So for instance, I might start by searching for Alexander Gardner,
photography, and Gettysburg.
Should that fail, I could go more general, searching Alexander Gardner and
Civil War.
Should that fail, I could go extremely general, and search Civil War and
photography. I won’t likely find specific arguments about Gardner’s work,
but I still may find good scholarly pieces about the genre of Civil War
photography that I could apply to my reading of Gardner.