Assignment for Oct.11 # 2

Dear students:

While I am away, I would like you to concentrate on the topics of American literature that you would like to research and to finally publish your research on your group web site. I wouldn't mind if you chose to work on any topic from Prof. Volkova's list or her suggested typology topics. You can also have a look at the list of my suggested topics.

1. Shine Your Shoes for the Fat Lady, or Spiritual Quest in J.D.Salinger’s Novels “Franny" and "Zooey”
2. J.D.Salinger’s concept of raising children (The Glass Family as his idea of New Age people)
3. Eastern Philosophy in Salinger’s Writings (stories “Teddy”, “Franny”, “Zooey”)
4. Zen Buddhism and the Beat Generation
5. Flapper Culture in “The Great Gatsby”.
6. Modern American Authors on the Art of Writing
7. Josef Brodsky’s Writings in English
8. American Dream in “The Great Gatsby”.
9. Post-War American Society in the novel “The Winter of our Discontent”.
10. The search for American Identity in J. Steinbeck’s novels.
11. F.S. Fitzgerald as a Chronicler of the Jazz Age (stories “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, “Winter Dreams”, “The Rich Boy”, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”).
12. Saul Bellow: a great fantasist (“Henderson the Rain King”).
13. Herzog by Saul Bellow: a novel of redemption
14. The Story of Failure and Success in “Humboldt’s Gift” by Saul Bellow
15. Searching for the Sense of Life: Walker Percy’s “ The Moviegoer”.
16. Fitting in the “middle America”: Rabbit’s trilogy (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich) 17. William Burroughs and postmodernism in AmLit.
18. Nabokov’s “Pnin”: triumphs and its failures of Russian émigré experience in the United States.
19. Nabokov on the nature of time (Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle and Transparent Things) 20. Experience of a Prisoner of War in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”.
21. Ezra Pound as an Architect of English and American Literary Modernism.
22. Robert Frost, a homespun Yankee sage
23. American Writers: Nobel Prize Laureates
24. The Beatnik Philosophy in the works of Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac
25. Tennessee Williams’ plays (The Streetcar Named Desire & The Glass Menagerie)
26. What does McMurphy represent in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest"
27. Female Images in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved.

Your site will focus on one or two of the authors and it has to include the following literary elements or techniques you are familiar with:analysis of the text;historical, biographical, cultural contextual information;online versions of literary works (as links).This project will give you the opportunity to consolidate and expand upon the work you’ve done this semester. You will have to conduct research in relation to your author/s: their literary works; some biographical information; socio-historical context; related criticism and specific references to the text you choose to include just as you’ve been doing in discussions in class. My advice is to take a topic you are really interested in. It can deal either with the authors we'll be discussing in class, or with works of literature which we won't be able to tackle this semester.

By Oct. 11, I expect you to find partners (a group may consist of 2-4 students) who you would like to work on the project with, to choose a topic of your collaborative project and to explain the reasons for choosing it by leaving a comment on my weblog and reporting who you have teamed up with.

Best of luck,
Anna Vladimirovna