What are the best nonfiction essays about Star Wars?

April 7, 2017 9:42 AM

I'm looking for short Star Wars related non-fiction pieces to use for an English composition course I'm teaching.

The students are bright, but they are non-native speakers. All are avid Star Wars fans. Humorous stuff is a plus. In previous classes, I've used a chapter about Star Wars drawn from Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which went over really well. Ideally we could read the piece and discuss in under an hour.

posted by matkline to Education (12 answers total)

Something from this book, or one of the related ones listed? I've been fairly happy with essay collections in this series like Seinfeld and Philosophy but haven't checked this one out.
posted by supercres at 9:58 AM on April 7, 2017

Best answer: Jonathan Last's essay, "The Case for the Empire"
posted by Jahaza at 10:35 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: "No More Task Force Rogue Ones" is an analysis, by an anonymous US Army staff officer, about the inevitable defeat of the raid on the imperial archive at Scarif (the last act of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), because of their failure to plan the essentials of a raid.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:37 AM on April 7, 2017

Best answer: The Darth Jar Jar theory and/or some of the newspaper/magazine pieces about it
posted by katemonster at 10:44 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

My favorite is Tom Bissell's essay about the appeal of Boba Fett, printed in the collection A Galaxy Not So Far Away. It's very funny, by far the best thing in the book.
posted by thesmallmachine at 10:45 AM on April 7, 2017

Best answer: I will forever recommend A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III, aka the "R2-D2 was a rebel spy" theory essay.
posted by sleeping bear at 11:03 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You could use for discussion the brief and interesting conversation in the movie Clerks about contractors and military ethics in Return of the Jedi. Either transcribe it or work in class directly from the film clip, or both.
posted by bertran at 12:59 PM on April 7, 2017

Thank You, General Leia
posted by actionpotential at 7:00 PM on April 7, 2017

Meta/Further reading from the Star Wars page at Fanlore has a handful of essays and articles.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:39 PM on April 7, 2017

The artist John Powers has a weird/fun blog called Star Wars Modern.
posted by suedehead at 6:16 PM on April 8, 2017

Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary is a superb piece. Although it's an obituary, it's also a really wonderful look at Leia's importance within the Star Wars universe.
posted by h00py at 5:00 AM on April 9, 2017

Cass Sunstein wrote a great book; you could take a chapter from that.
posted by soonertbone at 5:39 PM on April 12, 2017