RALPH BAUER 2115 Susquehanna Hall Department of English University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

Phone: (301) 405 3797 E-Mail: bauerr@umd.edu website: "http://www.mith2.umd.edu/fellows/bauer/home.html"

Questions for Discussion:

1. How does Jefferson describe Virigina?
2. What is the textual genre of "Notes"? What structures its contents?
3. What about authorship in this text?
4. Is Jefferson a "racist"? What role does his discourse of race play in the larger rhetorical design of this book?
5. What is the tone of this book? What is its rhetorical strategy?
6. Discuss the trope of the body in this text.
7. How does Jefferson justify the American Revolution?
8. Discuss Jefferson's views on nature.
9. What is Jefferson's view on the Native Americans?
10. Discuss Jefferson's concept of history?
11. How does Jefferson portray Americans?
12. Why does J. not call his book a "natural history"?
13. Why do blacks elude legal and scientific classifications?
14. What is the relationship between the breakdown of scientific classification and the romantic language of the sublime?
15. Discuss the conflict between various representations of space
16. How does Jefferson "know" things?

Thomas Jefferson and the Republican Theory of History

• Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire
• Charles Willson Peale, Excavation of the Mastodon, Drawing of Skeleton 1, Drawing of Skeleton 2