When you are calling something American, what does that mean? If you set aside the fact that someone was born in or lives in America, what makes a specific work or author American?
Write a 1,050- to 1,400-word paper in which you select a specific author and explain how and why his or her work is American.
• Instead of arguing simply that the writer was born in the United States, place his or her work in the context of the larger literary movements of this period.
• As you analyze your chosen author and his or her American identity, make sure you apply accepted rhetorical strategies. What this means will vary somewhat according to your chosen task. You might apply the idea of rhetorical authority, using ethos, logos, and pathos. You might examine the rhetorical situation of the poem, or focus more specifically on a single rhetorical strategy, such as Kairos.
• As you structure your paper, make sure you apply a consciously chosen organizational structure. This might mean following a chronological pattern, analyzing cause and effect within a historical or biographical context, developing a classification system, or any of the other common organizational patterns. As you explore your chosen author consistently utilize a chronological, relational, or procedural pattern.
• Be sure to indicate why you believe your author chose a particular rhetorical devices and strategies for stylistic purposes.
• When we consider diversity, it is easy to see it through contemporary eyes, and only look for signs of current concerns. However, diversity has meant different things at different periods in American history. As you discuss your chosen author, make sure you discuss diversity in a way that is specific to his or her period and context.
• Analyze how the factors that shape American literature in general also shape this author in particular.
Include at least three academic resources in your response.
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.