Fall Quarter Follow Up

I can safely say that this quarter has provided the greatest challenge relative to shear READING VOLUME. The only book I didnt get to on my read list was Emma Goldman's "Living My Life" (although I read her various free speeches delivered in San Diego via Internet). I will say that I am very satisfied with my grades for this quarter. This quarter was mentally and physcially taxing, yet I was able to receive an A in Cultural History, an A- in American Literature and a B in Political Science, Im just glad this quarter is over. I am Happy with the way finals went they were pretty straight forward. I am very satisfied with My final paper for American Lit, here is a brief synopsis......

I wrote my paper On Zane Greys "Riders of the Purple Sage" Perhaps the most famous American Western Novel of all time (maybe the Virginian compares). It just so happens that the novel is also a 270 page castigation of Mormonism and its doctrine of Polygamy during the 1870's. I analyzed the novel as something more than novel that pokd and prodded at a religous minority. In my paper I argue that Zane Grey wrote the novel as justification for the American Takeover of the Western United States at the Turn of the century, using Mormonsim as the primary threat to U.S. dominace in the region. I divided the paper into three parts. The first evaluates how Zane Grey was able to debase mormonism without any national backlash. I evaluate how the ruling opinions of U.S. supreme court cases involving polygamy such as Reynolds vs. United States and Davis vs. Beason, involved language that suggested mormonism as an extremely obscure and un-american religion, also drawing from turn of the century politcal cartoons that depicted mormons as Non-white fathers/husbands of chinese/indian/mexican ..women/children.
The second part evaluates how Zane Grey essentially turned Utah into a slave state by equating polygamy with slavery and the sexual exploitation of women. In this part I compare the Character of Jane Withersteen in Riders with the life of Harriet Jacobs in her slave narrative, focusing on how characters such as Doctor Flint in Harriet Jacobs Narrative and "Tull" in Riders and how they sexually exploited the women that were in their influence.
The third part is the central argument of the paper and focuses on how Grey worshipped the west in his novel and built it up as a priceless gem that must be saved from mormon dominance. I referance the monumental work of Mormon History "Great basin Kingdom" and compare the monograph to Greys descritpion of Mormon monopolies on commerce and land in the west during the 1870s.

THAT IS JUST A SYNOPSIS YOU CAN VIEW THE PAPER HERE!!!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d8jgtks_0hj9pzrgp

Overall I learned alot from puting this paper together no to mention this ENTIRE QUARTER!!!!!!!! I CANT WAIT UNTIL NEXT QUARTER. MY CLASSES ARE ALL ON COLONIAL HISTORY!!!! But again Im glad to have a break!!!