30 Apr HOW DOES JANIE, OR ANTONIA, EMBODY ANY NUMBER OF EMERSONS CORE VALUES?
These Suggested Topics are in many cases quite broad. You will want to focus these topics by
using specific texts and research to clarify a broader thesis or theme. Comparative analyses and
creative approaches that treat one or more texts or films that we have studied can be effective.
1. Emersons work is often said to be one of the beating hearts of American literature and
culture. How woud you define Emersons project? What was he writing against? What are the
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principal values he articulates? What is the tone of his work? Analyze, interpret, and discuss
Emersons work – and his role in American literature.
2. How does Janie, or Antonia, embody any number of Emersons core values? Discuss.
3. My Antonia has been described as a pastoral text, and as a prairie epic. What are the relations to
place, and to the land, among some of the major characters and families? What relation(s) to
landscape does the novel seem to encourage and promote?
4. What sort of “peace,” what sort of contentment and independence, does Janie achieve at the
end of Their Eyes Were Watching God? How has she earned this contentment? And how does it mix
or combine with the house that “commenced to sing a sobbing sigh” at the end of the text?
5. Zora Neale Hurston is an anthropologist and folklorist. How does her novel reflect, articulate,
embody, even celebrate – or criticize – black ‘folk (black ‘popular culture) in the novel? How –
and who, finally – does Janie find happiness with, and what does this say to Zoras notion of
African-American culture, values, economic prospects, and relations between genders?
6. Janies Nanny wants her to marry for “protection” in Zora Neale Hurstons fine novel.
Thinking of the historical context of this novel, what does young Janie need protection from?
How are race relations treated in this novel (between blacks and whites in the American South)?
7. Fitzgerald pays close attention to the music of Daisys voice, of which later, Gatsby says, “Her
voice is full of money” (133). How does this song define the novel – for better and for worse? In
other words, what is the role of class, of capitalism and “money” in The Great Gatsby?
8. At the end of The Great Gatsby, we find references to the New World aesthetic, and to “the
orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.” What exactly is diminishing or withdrawing
at the end of this novel? What is the sense of things that are being lost? Develop this theme
within a larger reading of the novel.
9. Can The Great Gatsby be read as a tragedy? If so, what is the knowledge that comes from
suffering (Gatsbys) in this text?
10. Terrence Malick, as a filmmaker, is also an American storyteller. Discuss some of his
storytelling techniques Malick deploys in Days of Heaven and / or Badlands, including his use of
non-verbal (visual) storytelling, music, and lyric segments that treat the land, nature, and the
pastoral spirits of wide open America. What role does violence, love, and the land play in his
films?
10. Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are concerned with African American
speech types and cultural forms. What are the similarities and differences in their projects (in the
materials we have read in this class)?
11. The Harlem Renaissance accounts for a major efflorescence of African American culture
(music, dance, theatre, poetry, literature, criticism). Describe and discuss this period, with a focus
on Langston Hughes (or Zora Neales) relation to and role within this Renaissance
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