Cliffdwellers (1913) 
by George Bellows

Blue and Green Music, 1919. 
Georgia O'Keeffe

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Transcendent City vs. The Modern City:

• The Transcendental Vision of the City: Walt Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1856) (on-line annotated version); Voices and Visions video (14:20- 16:30) 
• Ric Burns, New York: A Documentary History, episode three, Sunshine and Shadow: Jacob Riis, then Bethesda Fountain, then Central Park, then the Five Points (2:03-10:43) then go to Jacob Riis (1:20:25 to 1:32:48)

Homework:

• Essay on Huck Finn due Thursday by 3:30 p.m.

Essay on Huck Finn due by 3:30 p.m.

The Transcendent City vs. The Modern City:

• Watch New York episode four Power and People: Emma Lazarus (1:24-5:51)
• From Realism to Naturalism  (Powerpoint)

New York City 1888:

• Ric Burns, New York: A Documentary History, episode three, Sunshine and Shadow: Jacob Riis (1:20:25 to 1:32:48)
• If time permits, watch  New York episode four Power and People: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (1911)  (1:05:30- 1:40)
• Literary Perspective: Dickens, Riis, Howells and Crane
• Naturalism: Literary Definition
• Silent Film Melodrama: The Little Matchgirl (1902) 

• Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1892):  Chapter 1: The Street Fight (3-6) (GoogleDocs Page)

Homework:

• Read Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (part one) (GoogleDocs Page) Chapters 1-10  Study Guide

Typical Toughs (1890) Jacob Riis
How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Little Mother (1890) Jacob Riis

Daumier, Melodrama Show (1860)

• Silent Film Melodrama: The Little Matchgirl (1902)
• Snidely Whiplas and Nell (Dudley Do-Right)
• Discuss the Reading: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (part one) (GoogleDocs Page) Study Guide (Lecture One)  (Quiz)
• Google docs Study Guide Part One

• Setting: Describe the situation of children who grow up in the Rum Alley ghetto.
• Plot: What can you predict will happen to the heroine in a melodrama? 
• Style: What is Crane's perspective on his characters? 
• Naturalism: Literary Definition Is Maggie's character determined by biology or economics or psychology? 

Homework:

• Read Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (part two) Study Guide

Key Questions:

• What prevents Maggie from achieving the insight necessary to understand her situation? What makes her unable to accomplish this goal? Do you hold her responsible?
• What could Maggie have learned from Nellie? Would that have saved her?
• What has Maggie realized when Pete throws her out of his bar? What options does Maggie have at this point?
• Could Maggie have done anything to interrupt this slide down the slippery slope?

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Discuss Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (part two) (Quiz 2) Study Guide; (Lecture Two) (Google Study Guide Part Two)

Homework:

Review Maggie and choose which scene you consider to be the key moment which decides her fate.

• Study Guide Part One
• Study Guide Part Two
  

• What is the primary obstacle to Maggie achieving the insight necessary to understand her situation? What makes her unable to accomplish this goal? Do you hold her responsible?
• What could Maggie have learned from Nellie? Would that have saved her?
• What has Maggie realized at the moment that she is dumped by Pete? What options does Maggie have at this point? 
• Could Maggie have done anything to interrupt this slide down the slippery slope?

Criticism on Maggie:

• Bloom's Literary Reference Online
  

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Shinn, Eviction (1904)


Cliffdwellers (1913) 
by George Bellows

Daumier, Melodrama Show (1860)

Review Maggie and choose which scene you consider to be the key moment which decides her fate.

• Study Guide Part One
• Study Guide Part Two

• Creative Assignment on Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
• Maggie Movie Workspace
• Example of Silent Movie Melodrama: Damsel in Distress

1. Marx: Maggie belongs to a class which Marx called the lumpen proletariat: that layer of the working class which is unable to gain class consciousness; on her own, she is doomed. What would Maggie need to understand to achieve this consciousness? How does the culture she absorbs daily help keep the working class in its place?
2. Darwin: Social Darwinist thinkers loosely combined Darwin's conception of  natural selection with classical liberal economic theory to argue that some races and ethnicities were losing out in the struggle for survival and therefore deserved to be allowed to die off. Other more radical Social Darwinists argued that poverty bred contagious social threats which needed to be medically removed. Is Crane a Social Darwinist?
3. Freud: Freudian theory held that children traumatized in their development would struggle to establish independence when they reach adulthood. How does the trauma Maggie experienced as a child manifest itself when she becomes a young adult? Can Maggie be treated? 
4. Nietzsche: Nietzsche argued that people should overcome their rational and religious qualms about taking the necessary action to assert one's own power over others. Who would Maggie need to become to achieve such power?
5. Liberal: How would liberals respond to Maggie's dilemma? They are soft determinists who insist that even if environment influences a person's character, each individual is ultimately responsible for his or her own fate. ("You always have a choice.") To what degree is Maggie herself responsible for the terrible situation she finds herself in?

• Creative Assignment on Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

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Review Maggie and choose which scene you consider to be the key moment which decides her fate.

• Study Guide Part One
• Study Guide Part Two

• Creative Assignment on Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
• Maggie Leaves Home (Benson, Matthew, Miles)
• Pete is stolen from Maggie (Vivien, Callie, Tahra, Meron)
• Maggie Jumps Into River (Jane, Caroline, Beck)
• Maggie Confronts Pete at His Bar (Solai, Meghan, Samantha, Emily)
  

• Dead End Kids, "They Made Me A Criminal" (1939)
• Humphrey Bogart in "Dead End" (1937)
• The Perilous Misadventures of Miss Destroyer (Student Made Movie)
• The Little Matchgirl (1902) a silent melodrama
• D.W. Griffith, Way Down East (1920) starring Lillian Gish
• D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation Clip 1 (1915)
• Alfred Hitchcock, Blackmail and Easy Virtue (1927)

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Review Maggie and choose which scene you consider to be the key moment which decides her fate.

• Study Guide Part One
• Study Guide Part Two

• Maggie Leaves Home (Benson, Matthew, Miles)
• Pete is Stolen from Maggie (Vivien, Callie, Tahra, Meron)
• Maggie Jumps Into River (Jane, Caroline, Beck)
• Maggie Confronts Pete at His Bar (Solai, Meghan, Samantha, Emily)
• Maggie: Hard Determinist (Cobey, Logan, Josh)

Modernism Independent Projects:

• William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure; The Red Wheelbarrow (1923); This Is Just to Say (1934)
• From Realism Naturalism to Modernism (Powerpoint)
• Imagism: poetry built through the combination of precise sense imagery
• The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

• Choose Independent Projects on American Modernism  and carefully read the stories or poems.

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The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted: The Bridge, 1920-22. Joseph Stella

Maggie Movies:

• Maggie Leaves Home (Benson, Matthew, Miles)
• Pete is Stolen from Maggie (Vivien, Callie, Tahra, Meron)
• Maggie Confronts Pete at His Bar (Solai, Meghan, Samantha, Emily)
• Maggie Jumps Into River (Jane, Caroline, Beck)
• Maggie: Hard Determinist (Cobey, Logan, Josh)
  

Modernism Independent Projects:

Independent Projects on American Modernism

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

Check out the Thomson Gale Literature Resources Center,  JSTOR, or Bloom's Literary Reference Online on the Gilman On-line Database Page.  

Homework:

• Research Independent Projects on American Modernism
• This Essay is Due on Thursday, March 13th at 3:30 pm

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Independent Projects on American Modernism

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

• Gale's Literary Resources Online
• Bloom's Literary Reference Online

• This Essay is Due on Thursday, March 13th at 3:30 pm

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Independent Projects on American Modernism

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

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Langston Hughes (1925)

Independent Projects on American Modernism

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

Remember that you MUST turn in a Works Cited Page with your essay. You MUST cite sources for ideas which are not your own using correct MLA form.

Internet Citation Machines:

• Landmarks Citation Machine
• OSLIS Citation Maker
• Easy Bib
• Honor in Writing at Gilman

Homework:

• This Essay is Due on Thursday, March 13th at 3:30 pm

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Peer Review

Independent Projects on American Modernism

The Intellectual Backgrounds to Modern Consciousness:

• Marx 
• Darwin 
• Freud
• Nietzsche
• Study Guide

The Zeitgeist of Modernism 

Remember that you MUST turn in a Works Cited Page with your essay. You MUST cite sources for ideas which are not your own using correct MLA form.

Internet Citation Machines:

• Landmarks Citation Machine
• OSLIS Citation Maker
• Easy Bib
• Honor in Writing at Gilman

Homework:

• This Essay is Due on Thursday, March 13th at 3:30 pm

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The Great Gatsby (1925) Dust Jacket Illustration by Francis Cugat

Introduction to The Great Gatsby (1925)

• The Jazz Age (Notes)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Brief Life (U. of S. Carolina);
• Video: 'Cosmopolis' (from New York: A Documentary Life by Ric Burns (1998)) (Notes) (Fitzgerald begins at 17:20 and again at 40:00)
• Listen to "West End Blues" (Louis Armstrong) (1928); "The Charleston" (Paul Whiteman Orchestra) (1925) 

Homework:

Read The Great Gatsby, Chapter One (1-26) (Googledocs Version) Study Guide

For Further Reading (and listening): 

• Jazz Age Literature/Culture, Part I and Jazz Age, Part II and Jazz Age Writers.
  
• Jazz Poetry: 1920s-30s and Jazz/Blues: 1920s-30s and Jazz Film: 1920s-present.

Homework:

• The Great Gatsby, Chapter Two (27-42) (Googledocs Version) Study Guide

For further reading:

• Original Title: "Trimalchio" from  The Satyricon by Petronius (excerpt); parvenu (OED)
• Bruce Bliven, "Flapper Jane" New Republic, September 9, 1925.
  
• "A Flappers Appeal to Her Parents" by Ellen Welles Page in Outlook Magazine (1922)
• Jazz Age Culture (Nichols)
  

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(Video clip from 2013 film)

Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson

Jason Clark as George Wilson

VIDEO: The Roaring Twenties: Dance Craze

Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

Review: Chapter One

• Describe the narrative frame which Fitzgerald creates for Gatsby's story. Why tell this story from the point of view of Nick Carroway? 
• What is it about Gatsby which so fascinates Nick? Why is he telling us Gatsby's story?
• Party #1: How does Fitzgerald characterize East Egg society as represented by the Daisy, Tom and Jordan?
• Fitzgerald's Imagery vs The Real Character of These People
• East Egg and West Egg: "a pair of enormous eggs" 
• Tom Buchanon's Entrance 
• Daisy Buchanon's Entrance  
• Jay Gatsby's Entrance 

• Gatsby Quiz Chapter 2
• Fitzgerald's Imagery: The Billboard in the Valley of Ashes
• What makes Myrtle an appropriate match for Tom?
• Party #2: How does the sad, drunken binge at Myrtle's apartment on Manhattan finally end? 

• The Great Gatsby, Chapters Three and Four (43-85) (GoogleDocs Three) (GoogleDocs Four) Study Guide Three and Four
• MUSIC: Five Jazz Sides For the Age Of Prohibition

For further reading:

• The Great Gatsby and the American Dream (Guardian)
• The Lost Generation (Atlantic Monthly Dec. 1992)
• Jay McInerney: why Gatsby is so great  (Guardian)
• Rehabilitating Zelda Fitzgerald, the Original It Girl (Telegraph)

Zelda at age 18

The Party Machine at Gatsby's Mansion

To Live in the 1920's

Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

• Why has Gatsby invited Nick to the party? What does he talk about with Jordan? (She won't tell Nick.) Why has Gatsby been throwing all these parties?!
• Nick and Jordan 

Chapter Four: Lunch In NYC: What picture of Gatsby's character is beginning to emerge for Nick and for you as we learn more and more about him?

• Gatsby and Nick Drive to New York 
• Lunch With Meyer Wolfsheim.  
• Jordan's Story of Daisy Fay and Jay Gatsby 

Homework:

• The Great Gatsby, Chapters Five and Six  (86-118) (GoogleDocs Five) (GoogleDocs Six) Study Guide Five and Six

Gatsby and Daisy

Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

• Jordan's Story of Daisy Fay and Jay Gatsby  (Chapter 4)
• Party #4: Tea at Nick's 
• What happens to Gatsby moments after he has achieved his dream? Why is he so bewildered? 
• The Shower of Custom-Made Silk Shirts (Chapter 5)
  
• James Gatz: What version of American History is Fitzgerald teaching us when we finally learn the true biography of Jay Gatsby? (Chapter 6)
• Tom Buchanan's Horseback Visit (Chapter 6)
• Party #5: Daisy and Tom at Gatsby's Mansion  
• What does Daisy find so offensive about Gatsby's party? 
• Nick realizes that Daisy and Gatsby's relationship is finished, but Gatsby will never accept that fact. Where has Gatsby's dream gone awry? 
• How, by the late 1920's, had the American Dream gone awry? (Chapter 6)
  

Gatsby Quiz Five and Six

Music mentioned in the text:

• Fats Waller, "The Sheik of Araby"
• Van and Shenk, "Ain't We Got Fun?" 
• Paul Whiteman, "Three O'Clock in the Morning"

Homework:

• The Great Gatsby, Chapter Seven (119-153) Study Guide Seven  (Googledocs Chapter Seven)

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Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

• James Gatz: What version of American History is Fitzgerald teaching us when we finally learn the true biography of Jay Gatsby? (Chapter 6) 
• Party #5 Daisy and Tom at Gatsby's Mansion  What does Daisy find so offensive about Gatsby's party? Nick realizes that Daisy and Gatsby's relationship is finished, but Gatsby will never accept that fact. Where has Gatsby's dream gone awry? How, by the 1920's, had the American Dream gone awry? (Chapter 6)

• Lunch at Daisy and Tom's (120-127)
• The Drive to Town (127- 132)
• The Confrontation in the Suite at the Plaza Hotel  (133-142)
• The Death of Myrtle (143-153)

• Paragraph: Unpack the meaning of the action's catastrophe. Consider the details: the heat, the reprise of details from earlier in the novel, Gatsby and Tom's confrontation, and the mistaken identities which lead to Myrtle's death. All the strands of the novel come together. How does the scene relate to Fitzgerald's overall intention?

• The Great Gatsby, Chapter Eight and Nine (154-189)  (GoogleDocs Eight and Nine) Study Guide Eight and Nine

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The Great Gatsby (1925) Dust Jacket Illustration by Francis Cugat

Homework:

Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

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Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, newlyweds,  3 April 1920

Essay on The Great Gatsby due Friday, April 17th at 3:30 pm.

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• Natalie Goldberg's Rules

One Act Playwriting Project:

• Day One 
• Wesley's Monologue from Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard

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• Monologue Assignment
• People Photos

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• Monologue Assignment
• The "Well Made Play" Engine: The Day the Thunderstorm Breaks

• Laura
• Amanda's Blue Mountain Monologue (5)

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