This week we all met again to confer more about the status of our project. I like where we are, and I think we won’t have much trouble filling the allotted time with discussion. The hard part now is deciding how to divide up the pages to give the class the best basis for discussion. So far, I wpould like to submit the following:
- American National Biography about Kennedy, roughly 4 pages
- single image graphing Kennedy’s popularity
- website analyzing the data represented in the image, about 3 pages
- my children’s book on Kennedy, equivalent of 7 regular pages
- single page of Times article ranking presidents
Total= 16 pages
I have been unable to find a satisfactory article comparing Mitt Romney’s struggles with Mormonism and Kennedy’s struggles with Catholicism, so do you guys think that we should just provide everyone with the basic knowledge of JFK’s religious issues (as portrayed in your and my other sources) and introduce the Romney contrast as more of a theoretical sidepoint? Or do you think we should settle for including a kind of pointless article just for the sake of laying out the parallel from the start? I’m leaning towards the former, since we were able to have a productive, conjectural discussion on Sunday without you two being fully versed in the conflict and thus our page allotment might be better spent elsewhere.
So, as it stands, I see our discussion as being based around the following points:
- JFK’s Catholicism. Our nation was founded on the separation of church and state, but we identified a seeming spectrum from very prejudiced back then to less prejudiced when Kennedy was elected, to possibly less prejudiced now with a Mormon candidate. Mention Peter’s idea of a spectrum from Protestantism to Christianity to Monotheism to everything, with Mormonism being the tipping point between Christianity and other religions since people debate whether or not Mormonism is a Christian religion or a cult.
- Assassination.Role in American legends? What do conspiracies have to do with his legend? Avoid overlap with previous discussions on Crockett’s death.
- Role of image and pop culture in American legends. Do we need figures to be more about sensation than achievement? Eg, why is military feat of lifejacket remembered when surely most soldiers save a single life over term, often in great danger. Only popular because it demands attention. How does JFK’s sensational personal life work with this? Assassination?
- Civic/childrens’ texts. Compare with Weems. More balanced now—why? Do we therefore not need legends as much anymore?
- Polls—useful? Truthful? What do they reveal as a source? What do these reveal about how America values internal versus external strife? What about how we need or don’t need legends in times of crisis?
Do you guys think this is an accurate reflection of what we should discuss? How does the page count seem to you?