The Final Paper or Project

The final assignment in this course is of your choosing: it could be an 8-to-10-page research-based critical essay or pedagogical essay, an analytical web information/research site, or some other format of your invention. It's your call--in terms of what topic or issue you choose to focus on as well as what format you present your findings in--so think carefully about which texts, questions, and modes of analysis have been most interesting to you and feel free to invent your own line of inquiry. You should either stop by my office during the last two weeks of classes or drop me a line over e-mail so I can give feedback on your ideas.

Final projects are due by the close of the academic day on Friday, December 20, 2002. (We will have a peer review session at noon on Monday, December 16, in our regular classroom.) NO LATE PROJECTS WILL BE ACCEPTED; if you don't complete your paper or website by this date, you will automatically get an incomplete as a final course grade.

Possible topics (meant to be illustrative, not comprehensive or prescriptive!) for your final paper or project include:

• choosing a topic to research that you didn't already address in your previous course work from the critical essay assignment sheet or from the first or second critical response paper assignment sheets from the spring 2000 version of the course--and presenting that research in the format of your choice;
• writing a paper in which you analyze one of the works from the second half of the course on its own, in historical context, or in relation to one of the works from earlier in the course, or in which you focus on the development of autobiographical writing in the colonies;
• writing a paper in which you compare and contrast the Jehlen/Warner anthology we used with the Norton anthology for the perspectives on early American literature they offer;
• writing a paper on how you'd organize a high school class period devoted to one of the works we read in the course and the reasons for developing that structure;
• creating a web information/research site devoted to a specific author, genre, event, or issue (see the links page for an introduction to what's out there, and to help you figure out what needs to be done);
• writing a paper in which you describe an installation, event, or exhibit you'd organize on a topic/subject related to the course, and give a rationale for your projected plans;
• writing a paper in which you analyze a literary work from a later period of American literature for what's at stake in its relations to one of the works from the colonial period that we read in the course: the obvious example is Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, but many writers have written works that are in direct intertextual relation with early American literature, which you may have encountered in other courses or wish to explore for your final project, among them:
  • Paula Gunn Allen, "Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe"
  • Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
  • William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip
  • John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
  • John Berryman, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet
  • T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
  • Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus and "America"
  • Aime Cesaire, A Tempest
  • Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok
  • Robert Coover, The Public Burning
  • Caryl Churchill, Vinegar Tom
  • Joy Harjo, "New Orleans"
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (and many tales)
  • Robert Hayden, "Middle Passage"
  • June Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley"
  • Maurice Kenny, Blackrobe
  • Tom King, Green Grass, Running Water
  • Robert Lowell, "Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
  • Kate McCafferty, Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl
  • Arthur Miller, The Crucible
  • Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World
  • V.S. Naipaul, A Way in the World
  • Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
  • Jacques Poulin, Volkswagen Blues
  • Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon
  • Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead
  • James Stevens, "Tokinish"
  • Gerald Vizenor, The Heirs of Columbus
  • John Edgar Wideman, "Fever" and "The Cattle Killing"

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Don't forget to run your initial idea by me, and take advantage of exam week to seek feedback on your project!