Final Course Project-Perspectives on a Famous Personality
(Due, Sunday Week 8: 20 points)
The purpose of this assignment is to give you experience
applying the theories you are learning about to a real
personality. You will begin by choosing an interesting person to
study and analyze. Be sure to choose someone you truly find
interesting, because this person will be your focus throughout
the course. Choose a public person you like (a politician, movie
star, musician, author, etc.), living or deceased. The only
requirement is that there must be sufficient information
available about this person’s life for you to adequately complete
the assignment. Below is a short list of some interesting people
whom you might want to consider: (you choose outside of list
but let me know who you choose by week 2)
Mother Teresa
Condoleezza Rice
Malcolm X
John F. Kennedy
Maya Angelou
Richard Nixon
Serena Williams
Emmanuelle Charpentier
Fidel Castro
Barack Obama
Bill Cosby
Oprah Winfrey
Mohandas Gandhi
Pablo Picasso
Bill Gates
Michael Jackson
Benjamin Franklin
Jonas Salk
Marie Curie
Napoleon Bonaparte

Johnny Depp
Elaine Chao
Elon Musk
Woodrow Wilson
Mike Tyson
Saddam Hussein
Steve Jobs
Tyler Perry
Harry Truman
Adolf Hitler
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Pope John Paul II
The Dalai Lama
Henry Ford
Rosa Parks
Princess Diana
Cesar Chavez
Eleanor Roosevelt
Simone de Beauvoir
Sigmund Freud
Abraham Lincoln
Winston Churchill
Madonna
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen DeGeneres
Jason Momoa
Eva Peron
Malala Yousafzai
Paul McCartney
Awkwafina
Drew Barrymore
Kurt Cobain
Howard Hughes
Deepak Chopra
Jimmy Carter

Martin Luther King, Jr
Martha Stewart
IMAN
Queen Elizabeth II
George Washington Carver
Before starting your paper, find and read a good biography or
autobiography of this person. (
Important: If you can’t find a book-length biography,
choose someone else.) Supplement your book with newspaper or
magazine articles and interviews. Your goal is to get to know
this person well, giving you plenty of information upon which
to base your analyses of his or her personality.
Paper Instructions: Analyze this person from 2 of the eight
major perspectives explored over the course of the class, using
at least five different sources (biographies, printed interviews,
etc.). Quality papers will provide a thorough and well-written
theoretical analysis, will connect analysis to evidence from your
readings, and make specific connections related back to the
concepts and theories studied in class. The course textbook
should be used as a cited reference to help support your analysis
and insights about the person you select.
Specifics: Papers should be approximately 7 pages. Papers
should conform to APA style, including citation of all sources
used.
Howard Zinn: A Challenge to
American Exceptionalism
Here is an excerpt from an article written by American
historian and philosopher Howard Zinn.
In reality, we have never been just a city on a hill. A few
years after Governor Winthrop uttered his famous words,

the people in the city on a hill moved out to massacre the
Pequot Indians. Here’s a description by William Bradford,
an early settler, of Captain John Mason’s attack on a
Pequot village.
Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword,
some hewed to pieces, others run through with their
rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few
escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about
400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus
frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the
same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the
victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise
thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them,
thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them
so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.
Expanding into another territory, occupying that territory,
and dealing harshly with people who resist occupation has
been a persistent fact of American history from the first
settlements to the present day. And this was often
accompanied from very early on with a particular form of
American exceptionalism: the idea that American
expansion is divinely ordained.
American exceptionalism was never more clearly
expressed than by Secretary of War Elihu Root, who in
1899 declared, “The American soldier is different from all
other soldiers of all other countries since the world began.
He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and
order, and of peace and happiness.” At the time he was
saying this, American soldiers in the Philippines were
starting a bloodbath which would take the lives of 600,000

Filipinos.
One of the consequences of American exceptionalism is
that the U.S. government considers itself exempt from
legal and moral standards accepted by other nations in the
world. There is a long list of such self-exemptions: the
refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty regulating the pollution of
the environment, the refusal to strengthen the convention
on biological weapons. The United States has failed to join
the hundred-plus nations that have agreed to ban land
mines, in spite of the appalling statistics about amputations
performed on children mutilated by those mines. It refuses
to ban the use of napalm and cluster bombs. It insists that
it must not be subject, as are other countries, to the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
What is the answer to the insistence on American
exceptionalism? Those of us in the United States and in the
world who do not accept it must declare forcibly that the
ethical norms concerning peace and human rights should
be observed. It should be understood that the children of
Iraq, of China, and of Africa, children everywhere in the
world, have the same right to life as American children.
The true heroes of our history are those Americans who
refused to accept that we have a special claim to morality
and the right to exert our force on the rest of the world. I
think of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. On the
masthead of his antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, were
the words, “My country is the world. My countrymen are
mankind.”

Mitt Romney: Prizing Freedom
Here is an excerpt from Republican politician and 2012
presidential candidate Mitt Romney's book "Prizing
Freedom."
Nations are shaped by their founders, often for many
generations and centuries after those founders are
gone. The culture and character of America reflects the nature
and convictions of the men and women who founded it.
I’ve often imagined what it must have been like for those
very first people who left Europe to immigrate to America.
They left behind home, family, security, and predictability
in exchange for a life-threatening ocean passage, the
possibility of hostile indigenous people, and uncertain
shelter, food, and climate.
Some who came here sought fortune. Others sought the
right to practice their religion according to the dictates of
their conscience. In almost every heart, it was a strain of
liberty that drew them here — religious liberty, economic
freedom, freedom to pioneer, or freedom from oppression.
The thirst for freedom drove these American colonists.
And it is very much a part of what we are as a people today
— we love freedom.
That first choice of freedom by the Founders — incomplete
and only perfected by Lincoln four score years later–has
made all the difference. People from all over the world
who prized freedom — the innovators, the pioneers, the

dreamers — came to America. And so they continue today.
This is who we are as a people — it is in our DNA. It is this
love of liberty and the accompanying spirit of invention,
creativity, derring-do, and pioneering that have propelled
America to become the most powerful nation in the history
of the world.
I had to nod my head when I read what Sylvester Stallone
had said: “I think America apologizes too much.” He’s right,
of course. No nation has done more to promote world
peace and liberty than America. No nation has done more
to combat disease and to salve humanity when it is
suffering than America. No nation has done more to
promulgate economic principles that have lifted billions of
people from poverty than America. Of course we have
made mistakes and of course we can do even more for
others, but this nation has from the beginning done what it
believed was right and good, and the ultimate sacrifice
made for liberty by so many hundreds of thousands of our
sons and daughters is unrivaled in human history. Do not
apologize for America.
This Land is Your Land

This Land Is Your Land
When we last checked in with our story Kate Smith had a
massive hit song with "God Bless America" being played in
jukeboxes in restaurants across America. Folksinger and
social activist Woody Guthrie was hitchhiking
through a freezing Pennsylvania winter in the 1930s, and
any cafe where he stopped he heard the recording of Kate
Smith singing "God Bless America." It got on his nerves.
Not only did it get on his nerves, it just made Woody plain
angry. America was still in the grips of the Great
Depression and people were homeless and starving. "If
there was a blessing in the first place it was over and done
with," said Guthrie.
Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and spent his life
championing social justice and civil rights. You may
remember from the beginning of the semester folk singer
Pete Seeger's story about Guthrie being scheduled to play
at banquet in the segregated South. When he learned that
African-Americans wouldn't be allowed to attend the show
he angrily pushed over the banquet tables and left without
performing. "Everybody needs to start a little trouble now
and then," he said.
He wrote his song as direct response to Berlin's "God Bless

America." The original song was called "God Blessed
America for me." As you can tell, especially from
the censored lyrics, he presents a radical vision of a
bottom-up, grassroots America, challenging it to move
towards its democratic ideals.
These censored lyrics are:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This was also the years of the Great Dust Bowl when
drought in Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico
forced farmers off their land. Many took what belongings
they could and left for California. (Their story was captured
in John Steinbeck's epic novel "The Grapes of Wrath")
These economic refugees were derisively called "Okies"
and characterized as "shiftless," and "relief chiselers," and
chided as having "a lack of ambition" and "stealing jobs"
from Californians.

LA Police Chief Edgar "Two Gun" Davis (right) ordered
"Okies" to leave California or face 180 days hard labor
where you are only entitled to a Bible, "beans and abuse."
Davis once said Constitutional rights were of "no benefit
to anybody but crooks and criminals." The politically
powerful chief set up a so-called "bum-blockade" manned
by LA police at the state's borders though technically city
police had no jurisdiction at the state's borders. One
mother of six stopped at the "bum-blockade" was asked to
pay $3.40 for a California license. She only had $3. She
wept. "That's food for my babies," she said. They let her in
for free, but scholars say perhaps one in a thousand
migrants "inspired mercy."
Refugees gathered in shanty towns called Hoovervilles (a
derogatory reference to president Herbert Hoover,
president at the time of the start of the Depression.) Police
would often burn down Hoovervilles and evict the
residents. In 1941 The US Supreme Court ruled in Edwards
versus California that states had no right to restrict
interstate migration by poor people or any other
Americans.
God Bless America or This Land is
Your Land
The real versus the ideal

There are two views of America- one sees America as a
beacon of liberty to the world and the greatest nation on
Earth. The other sees America as a place pulled by a vision
of fantastic high ideals, but that reaching those ideals is still
a work in progress.
These competing visions of America can be seen in two
famous songs.
First let's look at the songs:
Kate Smith introduces God Bless America - YouTube
Here is composer Woody Guthrie with his original
campfire sing-along "This Land Is Your Land." Notice that
there are some lyrics here that have been censored and
which you didn't sing around the campfire.
Woody Guthrie- This Land Is Your Land - YouTube
Think about what makes these songs different. How do
they see America?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s
The Shining City on a Hill - YouTube
Dinesh D'Souza and America - YouTube
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn -
YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm3jEfxRRc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0MnTHks9Tc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg