Watch the movie The Young Karl Marx (2017), directed by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck. The movie takes place in several European cities in the 1840s, and shows the beginnings of the intellectual and political partnership between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (who co-authored much of their work).
A lot of the history and characters in the movie will likely be new to you, so we do not expect you to understand everything that happens in the movie, but we expect you to recognize characters, places, situations, and political contexts of 19th century Europe.
For this assignment, write three (3) different questions about issues, characters, or scenes in the movie that you did not understand, that intrigued you, made you curious, or for which you felt you needed more context.
Choose one of the questions and do research (online and/or offline) in order to answer it. The goal is that after your research you understand the movie better (and therefore Marx and Engels’s context and ideas).
Do not settle for the first source you find online. Evaluate if it is a good source of information or not. Find at least another source. If a source cites another source, trace it and read it (and see where the authors get their information from). Keep looking and score the sources for reliability until you find the ones that you judge the most reliable.
Do not simply copy or paraphrase sources. Read, process in your mind and your notes, and write the answer in your own words.
Your assignment should include:
The three questions.
The answer to your chosen question.
A short paragraph on the research process and a description of the sources you used to answer the question. How did you score the sources and why?
Cited sources at the end.