In the revision of your analysis of Maus, you will cite a relevant authoritative secondary source: a critical essay, book review, or interview published in an academic journal or a well-regarded news publication. Next week in class, I will distribute a handout that includes passages from some studies of Maus that you may cite in your essay. Excerpts from those sources appear in a later section of this post.
Why Cite an Authoritative Secondary Source?
Quoting or paraphrasing an authoritative secondary source gives your writing credibility. It indicates to readers that your ideas are trustworthy and valid because your analysis is informed by the work of an expert.
Citing an authoritative secondary source also links your analysis to a study of Maus that preceded yours. Academic writing is knowledge-building. With your analysis, you are adding to the critical conversation about Spiegelman’s memoir.
Ask yourself, what has a scholar or journalist written about Maus, and how do my own ideas about Spiegelman’s memoir fit into the conversation? Your answers to those questions can serve as a starting point for integrating your own take on Maus with the ideas presented in a secondary source.
Locating Authoritative Secondary Sources
The GTCC Libraries website includes a research guide for Maus, which features links to articles, essays, reviews, lectures, and interviews.
You can also locate scholarly, or peer-reviewed, articles on Maus by following these steps on the libraries’ home page:
- Click on advanced search.
- In the first search index box, select subject. In the search term box to the right, type Spiegelman, Art.
- In the second search index box, select subject. In the search term box to the right, type Maus.
- Click search.
- On the next screen, you will see a list of more than two-hundred sources. You can refine your search by choosing one of the limiters in the menu bar on the left. Selecting articles will narrow the list of sources to fewer than ninety; selecting peer-reviewed articles will limit the list to fewer than twenty.
Another Authoritative Secondary Source
If you watched the live stream of GTCC Professors Michael Brock and Zachary Goldstein’s lecture “The Lasting Effects of World War II and the Holocaust,”you are welcome to use that presentation as a secondary source for your analysis of Maus. Here’s how you would integrate one of their points into your analysis:
Zachary Goldstein, Associate Professor of English at Guilford Technical Community College, observes that one of the misconceptions of the Holocaust is the notion that all of the deaths occurred in the gas chambers. Art Spiegelman’s depiction of the public hangings of Jewish merchants in Modrzejowska Street illustrates Goldstein’s point.
Notice that the signal phrase includes the writer’s first and last name as well as his credentials. The paraphrase does not include a page number because the source is a presentation. The works cited entry, which would appear at the end of the analysis, lists the details of the event:
Works Cited
Brock, Michael and Zachary Goldstein. “The Lasting Effects of World War II and the Holocaust.” Guilford Technical Community College Globalization, Education, and Literacy Committee Presentation, Microsoft Teams Live Stream, 16 Mar., 2021. Lecture.
For more on introducing sources with signal phrases and citing online lectures, see A Writer’s Reference, pages 376-79 and 419.
Passages from Authoritative Secondary Sources
From Hamida Bosmajian, Professor of English at Seattle University:
“[t]he Nazi flag. . . is never shown unobstructedly unfurled in Maus” (42).
From Nancy K. Miller, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York:
“The Success of Maus is due to a double audacity. The first is the choice to represent the Holocaust as a cartoon, the second to cast its star witness as a victimizer in his own world, a petty tyrant at home” (48-49).
From Arlene Fish Wilner, Professor of English and American Studies at Rider University:
Adam Gopnik has noted that the animal heads given to the humans in Maus reflect “our sense that this story is too horrible to be presented unmasked” (qtd. in Wilner 109).
From Hamida Bosmajian, Professor of English at Seattle University:
The telling of stories is, of course, a primary means of ordering the disorder of experience; it provides a surface sensibleness that may be perceived as meaningful. Artie, however, will never make any sense or meaning of it all, no matter how many times he articulates the horror verbally and graphically; he can only shape an imitation, an illusion of meaning through the telling of the tale. (30-31)
In an MLA-style manuscript, the quotation above is indented one-half inch because it is one of more than four lines. The quotation marks are omitted because the indentation signals to the reader that the lines are taken word-for-word from the source. For more on presenting long quotations in MLA papers, see A Writer’s Reference (376).
From Hillary Chute, Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University:
“The most striking instance of representing past and present together in Maus is the inclusion of the autobiographical comic strip ‘Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History’” (346).
Works Cited
Bosmajian, Hamida. “The Orphaned Voice in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman’s “Survivor’s Tale” of the Holocaust, edited by Deborah R. Geis, U of Alabama P, 2003, pp. 26-43.
Chute, Hillary. “History and Graphic Representation in Maus.” A Comics Studies Reader, edited by Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, UP of Mississippi, 2009, pp. 340-62.
Miller, Nancy K. “Cartoons of the Self: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Murderer—Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman’s “Survivor’s Tale” of the Holocaust, edited by Deborah R. Geis, U of Alabama P, 2003, pp. 44-59.
Wilner, Arlene Fish. “‘Happy, Happy Ever After’: Story and History in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman’s “Survivor’s Tale” of the Holocaust, edited by Deborah R. Geis, U of Alabama P, 2003, pp. 105-21.
Jane Lucas 