Amstud 2010-2011
Research Paper
Green & Franklin
THE AMERICAN DREAM/AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
Our theme this year has been, of course, The American Dream or the American Nightmare. Perhaps it is not an “or” but an “and/or”. . . .Either way, your task over the next several weeks is to explore one topic of your choosing to uncover how the tension between the nightmare and the dream unfold.
If you have an author that lends himself or herself to an historical topic and the theme American Dream/American Nightmare, then you will proceed to define your historical topic and start your research of the history. You will connect your author and literature to the study. Your literature will become a primary source. If your author choice does not lend itself to this theme or to an historical topic (like the ones below – but not necessarily limited to them), then you should write a separate paper. You can still feel free to use literature we have studied in class to support your thesis.
TOPICS:
First decide on an historical topic – Make sure you do something that interests you, because it will be a long couple of months if you are bored silly. These topics are merely a brainstorm. . .Feel free to add to the list; however, you MUST get approval.
Women’s suffrage Movement – 1848-1920 (or a specific part of this time period)
Carrie Nation
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Struggles of Alice Paul, Lucy Stone
Equal Rights Amendment
Title Nine – What is its story and its impact?
Authors: Charlotte Perkins, Kate Chopin, Sarah Orne Jewitt, Edith Wharton, Eudora Welty, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickenson, Joyce Carol Oates, Maya Angelou, Marge Piercy, Sylvia Plath, Zora Neale Hurston
African American Quest for Civil Rights
Booker T. Washington v. W.E. B Dubois (comparative study)
MLK v. Malcolm X
Role of NAACP
Brown v. Board of Education 1954
Medgar Evers
Scottsboro Trial
Freedom Rides
Integration of Ole Mississippi
Little Rock 9
Freedom Summer of 64 in Mississippi (death of four freedom workers)
Selma March/Voting Act
Authors: James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, James McBride. . .Richard Wright, James McBride, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and many, many more
Corporate America –
Robber Barons or Captains of Industry – Role of 19th Century Industrial Giants in creating the dream/nightmare
Rise of General Motors and then alter decline in the 80s. . What happened?
Compare/Contrast Sam Walton – founder of Walmart with Andrew Carnegie – How does each man represent both the dream and the nightmare?
Philanthropy – Gates v. Carnegie or other 19th Century philanthropists – Is this the dream? What is good about philanthropy. . .what are the disadvantages to American society?
Frank Norris, John Steinbeck to an extent, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, John Updike
Labor –
American Federation of Labor
Great Strikes of 1877
Pullman Railroad Strike
Wagner Act
Haymarket Riot
Knights of Labor
Authors: Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton
Immigration
Life off the boat – Ellis Island – Was Lady Liberty welcoming to our wave of immigrants in 1880-1910?
Chinese American experience –
Japanese Americans/Internment crisis in World War I
Examining role of immigrants and labor unions
Authors: Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, Dean Howells, Katherine Mansfield, Pearl Buck, Amy Tan, Frank McCourt
THE WEST
Life of a pioneer – (read first hand and second hand accounts of life on the frontier – what is the dream . .what is the nightmare?)
Mormon experience –
Women and the West – (you may want to look specifically at Women and Wyoming)
Story of the Nez Perce Indians
Lewis and Clark Expedition (Yes you should read Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose if you decide to do this topic)
Study of painting and photographs of the West in the late 19th and early twentieth Century.
Authors: Willa Cather, Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, William Faulkner, Jack London
Consumerism of the 1920s –
The boom in consumerism – appliance city
Sky scrapers
Story of BrooklynBridge
A study of art in the 1920s
Jazz Age
Al Capone -- prohibition
The Great Depression – focus on government programs that helped/hurt the “dream” – Look closely at one program and its impact today.
Sacco and Venzetti
Scopes Trial
Ku Klux Klan
Author: Sinclair Lewis, many of the African America authors already mentioned, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty
America’s foreign policy in Spanish American War – building the dream abroad?
Relationship with Hawaii
Cuba?
Philippines
Writers: Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, among others
1950s --- Happy Days?
Post traumatic stress from World War II (Kurt Vonnegut anyone?)
Military Industrial Complex
Eisenhower and age of dynamic conservatism
Television
Author: Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates. . . and now we’re getting to all the modern dudes
Theme of War
WWI – role of American finance in the war
Women in the home front – WWII
War propaganda
Atomic bomb – was it the right choice?
Author: Tim O’Brien,
Baseball in American History
Jackie Robison and integration of baseball
Negro or “shadow” Leagues
Babe Ruth v. Lou Gehrig – stories in American Dream/American Nightmare
Shoeless Joe Jackson – Black Sox
Other topics:
Music – spirituals/jazz/r and B/hip hop – window to larger themes
American Family – change over time
Watergate
Other notable authors who have enough “bulk” to warrant using for the Research Paper:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen Crane, Ray Bradbury, Tom Wolfe, J.D. Salinger, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robert Pirsig, Andre Dubus III, Bobbie Ann Mason, Walt Whitman, John Knowles…on and on and on…
Stage in Process / Requirements / Due Date / Total Points1. Topic Choice / Two paragraphs typed: What is your topic, Why are you choosing this topic? What kind of sources do you think are out there ? How do you see the larger them of Dream/Nightmare playing a role? Can you incorporate your author in this paper? If not, what other literature might work? / November 1st / 10 points
2. Preliminary bibliography and reading period / 5 sources – 3 must be books (yes, real books) and one must be a primary source and one can be a solid internet source – see list of ok sources.
You must type up preliminary in appropriate MLA format – see handouts and library for more help. / December 5th / 15 points
3. Revisit topic/end reading period / 2 page typed paper:
- Four things your have learned about your topic (you can bullet point)
- What sources were most helpful?
- What else would you like to know?
- How do you think you can fit the theme of American Dream/American nightmare into the paper?
- WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION/THESIS -- HIGHLIGHT
- What will be four subtopics you will research so you can get the whole story – layout your plan.
4. Note check / A minimum of 15-20 note cards – 4x6 – You need to have at least 20-25 cards for each subtopic (yes, that’s about 100 note cards total) by the time your done with the research / January 7th / 20
5. note check 2 / A minimum of 25 note cards 4x6 are due / Jan. 27th / 25 points
6. history skeleton / Three typed pages double spaced – You must use 6 quotes from your research – examine how you will use each of these quotes to answer your research question. More specifics on this part later! / Feb. 14th / 20 points
7. note check 3 / A minimum of 25 note cards 4x6 are due / March 1st / 25 points
8. Outline for paper with bibliography / 3 page min. Must include quotes and sources / March 8th / 30 points
COMPLETE HISTORY DRAFT – DUE March 22nd
Final Papers – TBD (same time and place as the American Author portion for English)