From Anil

Hello,

While impressed and inspired by the activity Jackie shared with us, I unfortunately have nothing that comes close to matching its caliber or creativity.

I have included here the sort of activity I routinely administered to my introductory rhetoric and composition class. This was a 10-week course, and the theme was empire. I chose the texts for the first five weeks and the second five were based on a mandatory textbook. After carefully reading through Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” and then the White House National Security Strategy, the class moved on to Avatar. I divided the class into small groups and had them discuss the following questions:

1. Why do you think we watched Avatar immediately after reading the NSS? What is revealed and/or concealed by the juxtaposition of these two texts?

2. What are the diegetic continuities you perceive between these two texts?

3. What would you identify as the different social-political forces in Avatar? On what grounds can one be differentiated from the other? (E.g., in the name of whom, in whose interest does each faction purport to operate?)

4. Which of these groups would resemble the United States – as it is produced in the NSS? Which would least resemble it?