Final Project: Topics

This handout will be distributed later this week, but it'd be a good idea to read it over and begin collecting ideas:

LTEL155B: Regions of the United States—San Francisco (Fall, 2008)
FINAL ESSAY TOPICS & PROCEDURES:

As announced at the beginning of the class, the final paper will consist of a “research” essay, ranging in length at around 8-10 pages, and in the form of critical (or creative) analysis with footnotes and bibliography where appropriate.

The main topic will be to pick any “San Francisco” author, site, institution, genre, social community, film, or cultural phenomenon and discuss some of the cultural, geopolitical, and social dynamics making this object a distinctive expressive phenomenon. Group projects will be allowed, and each person will receive the same grade for what is presented as the final project. To choose topics, you can use your personal experience, historical background, research, imagination, and conceptual and critical skills; we will be open to any projects that touch upon some materials and themes discussed in the class and apply them to SF urban space and culture in some informed and interesting way.

A) To get started on this, you will need to provide a one-page outline of your proposed topic and discuss it with your TA as you begin to work on it. You will need to describe this topic in a one-page written or email statement to your TA: Jessica, Stephanie, Eireene, or Jonathan will set the specific deadline for this one-page outline for your section. (If you do a creative project, you will need to provide a one-page description of what you are aiming to achieve, some techniques used, and SF authors and materials drawn upon as model or source.) Please see the suggested “prompt” questions below for help on “getting started.”

B) Your typed, footnoted, and proofread essay will be due in Humanities Steno Pool office mailroom by 4PM on Tuesday, December 9. [Please note: there will be no final exam for this course, so you need to do a good job on the final essay! If you want to get this written work back, please submit a stamped, self-addressed envelope with your final essay. Otherwise, you will have to arrange to get it back from RW or your TA during winter quarter in 2009. Late paper submissions will be downgraded for lateness.

Whatever topic you decide upon, make sure that you have some kind of compelling “thesis” and that you back up this interpretation with details/quotations from the relevant texts and have a title for your work.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The following are possible essay topics, although you can define a topic or focus upon one that is of particular interest to you (see topic “g” below:
a) Focusing upon two or more works or authors, define some recurring “theme,” image, subject matter or problem that, in your own terms, ties these works together and has been an important part of the “San Francisco literature” materials you have read in this course.

b) Present an interpretive reading of one or more movies set in San Francisco: What are some of the key themes and conflicts as portrayed in the movies, and how are these resolved? What kind of racial conflicts, gender dynamics, and social hierarchies are shown? How are the city spaces of San Francisco uses in the movies? How do the history, values, and social energies of San Francisco get reflected and expressed in the movies? (If you want to write a convincing reading, it would help to do some research into the production history, interpretations, and reviews of the movie.)

c) How do one or more of the writers read for the course express a counter-cultural or “Beat” vision of what Gray Brechin calls “the San Francisco contado”? Or, another way to approach this topic: what are other angles of vision or works that might be used to critique or supplement the imperial-capitalist contado vision of Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco?

d) How does an author we have not read or may have just alluded to in this course (for example, Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Spicer, Diane Diprima, Michael McClure, Robert Gluck, Gary Snyder, Michelle Tea, Lew Welch, Lenore Kandel et al) distinctively express the literature and geo-material history of San Francisco? (You will need to connect this author to some works read or critical frameworks discussed in the class.)

e) Pick a social movement, neighborhood, or institution in San Francisco—Haight Ashbury hippie movement, rock music scene, Castro, City Lights Books Store, San Francisco Poetry Center at SF State, performance works of Margaret Cho or Frank Chin—and describe some of the values, goals, and expressive forms of this phenomenon.

f) Pick any one essay from Relocating San Francisco or San Francisco Stories, and use this as a critical starting point to discuss or reflect a movement, work, art form, neighborhood, or some SF social, art, or literary movement you are interested in. For example, create your own “meta-tourist” narrative for a tour of San Francisco.

g) Define your own distinctive “SF” topic and, as you do so, make sure to consider and come to terms with the “prompt” questions below. (Please discuss the suitability of this topic with your TA.)

*Whatever topic you pick, here are 5 “prompt” questions each student should consider as you begin to define your topic and approach to writing on a SF subject:

a) What is the topic you are interested in pursuing and why?

b) How does this topic relate to San Francisco materials or frameworks read for the course? Which of the readings are particularly relevant to this topic?

c) What are some of the other materials you will need or want to read and/or inter-connect to cover this topic?

d) What is your provisional “thesis” (hypothesis) at this point concerning this topic and these materials?

e) What problems or limitations do you anticipate in pursuing, framing, researching, and writing on this topic?