Paper 3 (Optional)

Length: 750-1000 words

Deadline: Must be uploaded to Canvas by 11:55 p.m. on the date listed in the syllabus.

Paper 3 is an optional paper; you don't have to write it. Also, you'll notice that there are creative options for this assignment in addition to the traditional literary studies paper. Since this assignment is optional, if you complete all 3 papers, only the top 2 short paper grades will be counted and the lowest short paper grade will be dropped.

Critical Analysis Options

1. Your own topic.

2. In what ways do the works we're reading in this section present a challenge to the heteronormative ideas of the Jazz Age? How does "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade," for example, present LGBTQ sexualities?

3. In what ways do writers engage with W. E. B. DuBois's ideas in The Crisis magazine and The Souls of Black Folk of the "talented tenth," sorrow songs, double consciousness, and so on?

4. Analyze closely one of the sections of Cane that we did not discuss extensively in class, and use the critical sources in the book or other critical articles to support your argument.

5. Choose a different topic from the Paper 2 assignment and write a paper about it. Here are those topics:

1. 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.
2. Analyze several poems that share a common theme.
3. Choose a volume of a magazine such as The Delineator (which you saw at the MASC), The New Yorker, or another such popular magazine 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?
4. 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.
5. 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?
6. 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?
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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. .
10. 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?
11. 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.

Creative Options. These options will probably be a little longer than 3-4 pages. As above, you can put your own spin on these ideas, shifting genre and other features as needed.

1. Write a short story in which you rewrite a situation from one of the works we've read from a different character's point of view. Your story should remain true to the basic ideas and some details of the original, but you can invent whatever you need to make an interesting story. How would "The Sea Change" or The Sun Also Rises be different if it were told from the point of view of the woman or, inThe Sun Also Rises, from the jazz drummer who is given few words and referred to as a racial epithet? How would "Karintha" (from Cane) tell her own story?

2. Turn a 1920s song or poem into a short story or play. Or, using jazz or blues lyrics, imagine a conversation between the woman and the man in one or more songs, or between two singers of the era (Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, for example).

3. Write your own screen treatment and at least one scene from a screenplay in which you envision what a movie from one of the works we've might look like. Alternately, you may want to outline what a typical 1920s film looks like and write a scene from it. Along with the screenplay and brief treatment, write a brief (1 page) explanation of why you made the choices that you made, as if you were going to pitch the story to a producer.

4. Write an analysis of a work we've read that has been adapted into a film. What choices did the director and screenwriter make? How did the film interpret the story's themes visually?

5. Write and illustrate a graphic novel (or extended web comic) using one of the texts we’ve read as your basis.

6. Your own topic. You need to check with me before going ahead with this.