American Studies Research Paper

Title / Addition (if necessary)
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) by Sherman Alexie
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Part One Millennium Approaches (1991) by Tony Kushner / The HBO Movie version of Millennium Approaches
Bean Trees (1988)
by Barbara Kingsolver
Between the World and Me
by Ta Nehisis Coates (2015) / My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation by James Baldwin (1963)
Falling Man (2007) by Don DeLillo
Grounded (2014) by George Brant / Drone - documentary by Tonje Hessen Schei
Heidi Chronicles (1988) by Wendy Wasserstein / Heidi Chronicles (1995 movie version with Jamie Lee Curtis)
The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien
Yellow Birds (2102) by Kevin Powers

2/29 - Mo - Hand out text blurbs - have people start skimming/choosing. Introduce project in general...especially parameters…

  • Some books are long enough to stand alone; some texts need to be connected to another text (see chart)
  • Every text must have at least 2 people to be approved
  • No text can have more than 5 people
  • You should come to the choosing date with several picks

Research Paper Book Choices – American Studies – 2015-2016

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel (with cartoons, as the main character is a high school student who is interested in cartooning and art) and was published in 2007 and is set on an Indian reservation and a nearby mainly white town in and around Spokane, Washington. This novel is a sarcastically told first person comedy about a ninth grade Native American who leaves his reservation high school to go to the “white” school 22 miles away. It looks at the social and economic contrasts between Native American Indians and White folks in the 1990s and builds well on the work we did with Passing.

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Part One MillenniumApproaches by Tony Kushner is a play that was published in 1991 and is set in New York City during the early days of the A.I.D.S. crisis, the early 1980s. This play dissects power politics and sexual politics of the time period, mixing comedy and tragedy. This play has graphic sexual content. People who chose this play would also watch the HBO version of it.

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver is a novel and was published in 1988 and is set mostly in the southwest. The main character starts out in rural Kentucky but drives across the country and settles in Tucson, Arizona where she adopts a child. This novel looks at the lives of undocumented immigrants, single mothers and Native Americans in the 1980.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates is a non-fiction essay published in 2015 that uses the frame of the author writing a letter to his teenaged son to discuss contemporary racial issues in the United States, Coates blends accounts of his own youth in Baltimore and his college days at an historically black college and his experiences as a journalist with the contemporary “Black Lives Matter” landscape. If this book is chosen, you would also read a much shorter essay about a similar topic called Letter to my Nephew by James Baldwin, written in 1963.

Falling Man by Don Delillo is a novel published in 2007, set mostly in NYC during the aftermath (over several months) of 9/11. Although it has a few interludes told from the terrorists’ point of view leading up to the event and a few descriptions of what happened in the towers themselves, most of this novel is about the dislocating sadness that happened in the lives of several survivors who were in the towers but escaped.

Grounded by George Brant was published in 2014. This play is about an American woman fighter pilot who gets pregnant and who is transferred, after she returns from childbirth, to the drone flying division. It is a one woman play - she narrates the whole story. The plot brings up moral questions about America’s drone strike program. The students who chose this play would also watch the 2014 documentary called Drone directed by Tonje Hessen Schei.

Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein was published in 1988. This play is about the journey of American women from 1964-1988 toward more equality as seen through the eyes of one representative woman. It uses visual arts in a creative way (as the main character, Heidi, is an art history professor and builds well on the work we did with The Yellow Wallpaper.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a novel and was published in 1990 and is set during and after the Vietnam War. These interconnected stories look at the pressures and camaraderie that soldiers experience during combat and how these experiences affect them once they get home. Tim O’Brien fought in the Vietnam War, and this novel is one of the most important pieces of fiction published about the war, especially because so much was based on fact.

The Yellow Birds is a novel written by Kevin Powers and was published in 2012. It is set mostly in Iraq, during the recent war but also has sections set in the main character’s home town, after he returns from the war. This novel meditates in a powerful way on the questions of purpose vs futility in the mind of an American soldier during the Iraq War.