Paper 2
Length: 750-1000 words
Deadline: Must be uploaded to Canvas by 11:55 p.m. on the date listed in the syllabus.
Guidelines
These are broad topics and are only suggestions; you will need to shape and to limit them.
- Your own topic.
- In what ways do the songs, sheet music, and poetry of the era reflect certain themes of the era and echo one another? Choose one theme and 1-3 items to analyze closely. You might choose items from a particular genre (the blues) or those of a particular year.
- Analyze several poems that share a common theme.
- Choose a volume of a magazine such as The Delineator (which you saw at the MASC) and analyze the ads and at least one story. What does this sample of the magazine tell you about the 1920s audience for that magazine?
- At the MASC, we saw sheet music featuring Julian Eltinge, the most famous "female impersonator" (as he was billed) of the early twentieth century. In what ways do LGBTQ identities make themselves known and how are they represented in print and film media of the 1920s and early 1930s? In addition to Eltinge, you might want to look at Vesta Tilley, a male impersonator, or the roles of film actors such as Franklin Pangborn.
- Take an iconic song like "St. Louis Blues" (or a novelty song like "Collegiate," which you heard in The Freshman) and analyze multiple versions of it. How do the elements of the music, changing lyrics, etc. affect the meaning of the work? More broadly, what themes in 1920s culture does it echo?
- Compare one or more poems by Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, or both. How does McKay's use of conventional form (sonnets) affect the themes and imagery of the poem?
- At the MASC, you saw a first edition of Alain Locke's The New Negro, the book popularly credited with starting the Harlem Renaissance. Examine this work closely and write an essay analyzing how the pictures, portraits, incidental art, songs, poetry, and prose of the whole book work together.
- We've discussed how advertising, movies, music, and other features of popular culture pervade 1920s literature. Choosing one or two works, analyze the ways in which one or more of these features add meaning (including symbolic meaning) to the work.
- Closely analyze a film that addresses a subject current in the 1920s, such as the crime drama (Scarface, The Public Enemy, Little Caesar), college life (The Freshman, The Plastic Age, College [Buster Keaton]), the flapper or women's roles (Our Dancing Daughters, It [the Clara Bow not Stephen King version], Three on a Match). These are examples; you can choose a different film from the time period. .
- Choose a theme, scene, character type, or idea that you see in several works and analyze its function. For example, many of these works contain scenes in nightclubs, cafes, or cabarets. How is this setting used in these works, and what does it represent?
- Drawing either on the 1920s periodicals available at Holland/Terrell Library or on materials at the MASC, examine several issues (at least 1-2 years' worth) of a particular publication. Choose an author, a theme, or a trend that you see appearing in several issues and write a research essay in which you examine this idea or person.
- If you chose a theme, place, or concept, how is it portrayed in these magazines? For example, we've seen that Hawaii and Egypt seemed to hold a lot of interest for people in the 1920s; how did this interest manifest itself in the stories, articles, pictures, and ads in the magazine? Remember, you need to choose only one theme, place or concept.
- How were authors, artists, and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance written about in these publications? Choose one or two authors, artists, or musicians and a number of 1920s publications to address this question.
- Is there an author that you think is unjustly neglected? Which one, and why? This will require a close analysis of some of the author's fiction.but is less well known today, like Edna Ferber.
- You might also choose to examine a well-known author whom we're not reading in this class, such as Edith Wharton, who wrote about the 1920s in books such as The Glimpses of the Moon and The Mother's Recompense.