My Final Project Proposal

For my final project I am going to do a critical essay about James Tiptree (Alice B. Sheldon) and how through his life we can better understand P. Burke as The Girl Who Was Plugged In. I will be looking at various aspects of Tiptree's career in the U.S. Intelligence Community, military, and as an author in the genre of Science Fiction in order to better understand his experiences. Then I will use these findings as a basis of analyzing the life of P. Burke and her experiences throughout the story. Through this analysis I hope to find clues into how Tiptree viewed politics, the government, etc and also how he viewed himself. Basically, I want to determine how we can better understand The Girl Who Was Plugged In, after knowing how Tiptree's experiences shaped his own life. Also, knowing his background may lead to conclusions of possible reasons why he wrote this story and the message(s) he wanted to convey to the reader. I will be using Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon as my reference for his life background and I will probably also look into some history of the U.S. Intelligence Community itself.