Unit Activity: American Literature Through the Eighteenth Century This task will prompt you to investigate a specific aspect of a literary work from the colonial era and its relationship to a particular topic in history. To complete this task, you must complete the following steps:

Select a particular topic that is relevant to the colonial era and the Age of Reason, and form a thesis that explores an aspect of that topic.
Research your topic and identify relevant information that supports your position.
Draft your historical investigative report and organize your research findings.
Produce a final draft by proofreading and revising your initial drafts.

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.