Short Story and Poetry Independent Projects: American Modernism

Choose an artist or writer from the late 19th or early 20th centuries and write a research paper on how their art relates to “American Modernism”. You will also present the outline of your essay to the class in a PowerPoint. 

Your task is to write an analytical essay in which you generate a thesis statement about a common theme you find in the short stories, poems, or other artifacts by a particular artist from the Modern Era. The purpose of your research is to find information which will help you interpret the poems, stories or other artifacts which you have chosen to analyze. You are not writing a report on the artist's biography or a simple overview of the artist's work. Instead, use your research to help you devise a great thesis statement which explains the artist's purpose in the works you have selected. Be on the look out for ways that your writer's or artists' ideas have been influenced by Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. (See The Zeitgeist of Modernism)

The paper should be 5-7 pages in length. You need to use at least three sources, two of which must be print sources. Use appropriate MLA citations and present a properly formatted Works Cited Page.

Final Draft of Modernism Project due Monday, March 6th at 3:30 pm 

Here are your choices:

Short Stories, Novels and Poetry:

Modern American Art and Architecture: 

Modern Music: 

Jazz: America's Classical Music (1992) Grover Sales  NY, NY Da Capo Press
Chapter 2 "The Nature of Jazz" (pp. 9-47) 
Chapter 3 "The Growth of Jazz" (pp. 48-100)

Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns (PBS Webpage) 
The Red Hot Jazz Archive: A History of Jazz Before 1920 
Jazz Profiles (NPR)
Music from the 1920s
The Jazz Age, and the Crash of '29


Sociology: