For your final writing assignment, write a 10-12 page paper on the literature of war analyzing any kind of text — from traditional literary works to graphic novels, TV, videogames, anything —that has relevance to our coursework this semester. You may choose to continue working with our common course materials or select a literary/cultural text(s) that you think is worth examining more closely. You may write on a single text or, in keeping with the mid-term paper assignment, compare and contrast how one war or era has been represented with that of another war or era. Rather than trying to cover all the various genres associated with the literature of war, you should draw your comparisons against similar forms or modes of representation (that is, focusing on novels of each war, memoir/first-person accounts, fiction films, etc.). Continuing along the same lines as our discussion board work, you might consider addressing one of the following topic areas: The genre of war: How is the aesthetic or style of “realism” conveyed in the text (film, memoir, etc)? Does the text realistically capture war and combat experience? How would you describe the “tone” of the writing or the film? The epistemology of war: How does the text lay claim to knowing the “truth” of war? Does the text acknowledge the ways in which even combat experience is mediated and shaped by prior representations of war? The gender of war: How are gender roles represented in the text? How are men and women (or their absence) depicted, and how might those depictions contribute to certain fictions (ideological messages) of masculinity and femininity? The rhetoric of war: To what extent could the text be considered a work of propaganda (promoting a one-sided, intentional and unequivocal message)? Is the text invested in such national-cultural myths of America as the City on a Hill (moral superiority), altruistic idealism (social and political superiority) or technological invincibility (military superiority)? Does the text provide some kind of reasoning or rationale for going to war? Is the suffering and sacrifice given justification? Why indeed do we fight? In order to ground your discussion and analysis in scholarship, your paper should incorporate at least three of our course readings (or five sources total if you would like to use class discussions as a source to be cited).