The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -content– Read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and write a short response paper about gender spaces during that time. This paper should be no more than 1,000 words (3-4 pages) and should follow the basic essay format of an introduction (with an argument), body, and a conclusion (critical response to the validity of the work). The only source used should only be the book! Introduction: In the introduction you can summarize the book. Try to keep this to about five to seven sentences or half of a paragraph. At the end of the paragraph you need to formulate an argument that engages with the question. For example, in this paper I’m going to examine how Franklin’s book/work looks at male and females spaces by analyzing the work place, family relationships or family life and education. Next, in the body, you should have a paragraph that looks at the work place, family, and education…and the evidence should be about looking at gender…male and females spaces.Need to give me concrete examples from the book. In the conclusion,be critical of the book. What does that mean? It means that I don’t want a traditional conclusion that summarize what you just said. What I want is for you to be critical of the book as a historical source. I’m NOT looking for you to be critical of the book’s ideas, but critical of the book itself. For example: (YOU CAN’T USE THIS ONE) Franklin’s work is important in understanding early British North American life and should be considered a worthy source. However, one of the problems with Franklin’s work that we must be cautious about is the audience. In the opening page he tells the reader that the audience of the book is his son. The fact that he wrote the book for his son might mean that he inflated or exaggerated the content or at times took liberties to make himself look better in a give situation. For example: you need to give me an example in the book. Also, Franklin might have not mentioned certain events that made him look bad or affected his wife negatively because he didn’t want his son to know this information. For example, history has told us that Franklin was quite the ladies man and wasn’t always true to his marriage. You can also have a positive critique. Franklin writes well and I found the work spell binding and couldn’t put it down. The story that really pulled me in was his explanation of the Junto or reading group. How exciting that books were important status symbol in early colonial society. So, if you are critiquing the ideas, like this book shows that women were treated poorly or summarizing what you just wrote, then you are not producing what I’m looking for.

2016-09-21