special projects

1. Look closely at the biography of John Cheever, taking copious notes on all references to his attitude toward and relationship with his family's genealogy--his ancestors' social standing and status--and on his relationship with his parents and his brother. Write a report that conveys this to us in detail. You can get a copy of the biography from Al on the first day of class. (Due on January 24.) Ari

2. Look closely at the biography of John Cheever, taking copious notes on all references to his sexuality and his relationship with his children. Write a report that conveys these two topics to us in detail. If you decide the two topics are connected, connect them and explain. You can get a copy of the biography from Al on the first day of class. (Due on January 31.) Lucy

3. Read two of Susan Cheever's novels and write us a report on them. The report should be descriptive and straightforward--for the rest of us who presumably have not read these books. What are the novels' themes, approaches, modes? Do they bear any relationship to the books by Cheever we are reading together? (Due on February 7.) Lara

4. Read Mel Gussow's biography of Edward Albee and describe for us the details of Albee's relationships with his adoptive mother and father. And: how does Gussow say this affected a) his education/schooling, b) the beginning of his career as a writer, c) his sexuality, d) the representations of mothers and wives in his plays? (Due on February 21.) Kate

5. Read the following relatively recent plays by Albee and describe them for us: The Play about the Baby, Occupant, and Knock! Knock! Who's There?. What connections and commonalities are there between these three plays and Three Tall Women and The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?? (Due on March 14.) Sanae

6. Find and read five reviews each for the following recent Albee plays: Three Tall Women, The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?, and At Home at the Zoo. Summarize the reviews and describe them for us. What aspects of these plays do the reviewers admire and what aspects do they dislike? Now read five contemporary (original) reviews of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and compare those old reviews of that breakthrough play to the reviews of these three recent plays. (Due on March 14.) Daniella

7. Read Carson McCullers' story, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," and then read Albee's play adapted from this story, and then watch the film made of them: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Write a report describing how Albee adapted the story, and speculate as to why this particular story might have appealed to him. Feel free to consult Mel Gussow's biography of Albee on this point. Be sure in your report to give us basic descriptions of the story and the film as well as Albee's play. (Due on February 28.) Holden

8. Read the following early Albee plays and describe them for us: The Death of Bessie Smith and Tiny Alice. What connections and commonalities are there between these two plays and The Zoo Story, The American Dream and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?? Describe character, format, style & mode, setting, theme/issues, etc. (Due on February 21.) Lance

9. Write a report on Susan Cheever's teaching of writing: her role as a teacher/mentor, her attitudes (such as you can learn about them) toward how young writers learn to write, etc. Begin this by interviewing Jamie-Lee Josselyn, who has been an MFA student of Cheever; if Jamie-Lee is able to put you in touch with other students of Cheever, speak with them insofar as you can. Watch as many relevant videos (presumably YouTube but elsewhere, surely, as well) in which Cheever talks about the vocation of writing, learning to write, teaching writing, MFA programs, etc. This article might be a way to begin. (Due on February 7.) Sam

10. Read Marjorie Perloff's book Wittgenstein's Ladder and prepare a report that serves the purpose of teaching us--those of us who haven't read the book--what it's about, what its mode is, etc. And describe its connections to the essays and books by Perloff that we are reading (insofar as you can do this, given that you might not have read all of them yet yourself). Read two reviews of this book and summarize their response to Perloff. (Due on April 4.) Amaris

11. Read Marjorie Perloff's book 21st-Century Modernism and prepare a report that serves the purpose of teaching us--those of us who haven't read the book--what it's about, what its mode is, etc. And describe its connections to the essays and books by Perloff that we are reading (insofar as you can do this, given that you might not have read all of them yet yourself). Read two reviews of this book and summarize their response to Perloff's book. (Due on April 11.) Sami

12. Read Marjorie Perloff's book The Poetics of Indeterminacy and prepare a report that serves the purpose of teaching us--those of us who haven't read the book--what it's about, what its mode is, etc. And describe its connections to the essays and books by Perloff that we are reading (insofar as you can do this, given that you might not have read all of them yet yourself). Read two reviews of this book and summarize their response to Perloff's book. (Due on March 28.) Amelia

13. Read Marjorie Perloff's book The Dance of the Intellect and prepare a report that serves the purpose of teaching us--those of us who haven't read the book--what it's about, what its mode is, etc. And describe its connections to the essays and books by Perloff that we are reading (insofar as you can do this, given that you might not have read all of them yet yourself). Read two reviews of this book and summarize their response to Perloff's book. (Due on March 28.) Zoe

14. In addition to being a scholar and critic of modernism, and a literary historian of modernist poetry, Marjorie Perloff is known as a supporter of contemporary avant-gardes. Her current book expresses her new interest in what might be called "the conceptual poetry movement," although the term "movement" is arguable in this case (and generally). But there was clearly a "movement" that she promoted, supported, even (one might say) championed or ballyhooed. That was "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry" or "Language writing." There are certainly so-called Language Poets whom Perloff admires more than others and aspects of this style she likes less than others, but overall there was a time when she was rightly considered the most influential eminent critic writing about and teaching about these poets. In your project, trace the history of her support of the Language Poets. Read (and date) her writings on them, try to track her talks on them, and reviews of their books. And talk to as many of these poets as you can about their view of her support of them and of the movement as a whole. Summarize their responses to your questions. Finally, read the introductory pages to her newest book and elsewhere where she recently comments on the Language "school" and summarize her current view for us. Evaluate, as best you can, overall the importance of her support of the Language Poets to their success and influence. (Due on March 28.) Gareth

15. Interview Kenneth Goldsmith on the importance of Marjorie Perloff generally and to him specifically. Your report should be a summary--with quotations, when apt--of your talk with him. (Due on April 18.) Jocelyn

16. Interview Joseph Perloff to get his perspective on the development of Marjorie Perloff's career as a critic and teacher. What is his view on the importance of the Jewish exile experience of her family to the development of her attitudes toward art and culture? What is his view on the importance of the economic theorists surrounding her family (her grandfather and her parents) on the development of her attitudes toward art and culture? (Due on April 4.) Marisa

17. Interview Marjorie Perloff to get her perspectives on academia, on universities, on the state of teaching literature in English departments, on the relationship (positive and/or negative) between academia and poetry, and on the distinctions between Comparative Literature programs and English Literature programs. What is her current view of the youngest generation of poetry critics--including critics and scholars of poetry who are not poets and, distinctly, academic critics who are poets? (Due on April 11.) Rivka

18. Make video recordings of our course and our Fellows' visits throughout the semester. Edit this into a 20-minute video by the time of our "final word" at the end of the semester. Then edit this into an 8-minute video by June 1. Ross

19. Read 15 stories by John Cheever (discuss with Al how you will choose which 15) and write a report that describes themes of family, children and addiction. What commonalities across the stories do you observe? Is there any sort of consistent or semi-consistent point of view conveyed through narrators and/or protagonists or through what you can discern from an authorial view (the latter is tricky so be careful)? (Due on January 31.) Kim

20. The main danger of studying Edward Albee's plays the way we will study them is that we will miss a sense of the theater. Plays are not meant to be read like poems or novels. They are meant to be performed--produced, staged, acted, words said by people in their roles as characters. Your report should do whatever it takes to correct or balance out the misperceptions that naturally come from (mostly) only reading the plays. Research the production of Albee's plays. Learn about his approach to producing and directing. How "hands on" is he in production? How much rewriting takes place when Albee sees a play performed in rehearsal? How does he generally view the work of the playwright once the play has been written? Does he like to see his plays performed? Taking into consideration just the plays we are reading together in this course: are there any or some for which there were major problems associated with production, performance, actors, staging, set design, etc.? Can you find out what some directors or some actors have said about putting on an Albee play? If you can, interview Cary Mazer about these questions. (Due on February 28.) Jess

21. Do a lot of reading and researching on the response to the gay themes in Edward Albee's plays. What role, if any, has Albee played in the gay liberation/gay rights movement? Does he believe there was or is a distinctive gay aesthetic? How did he respond to critics of Tiny Alice? What has he written or said, outside the plays, about being gay? Following is a quotation from a blog called "Gay for Today": "Albee had a major success with Three Tall Women, a play whose central character is a dying woman who has spurned her gay son. In 2001, Albee's The Goat or Who Is Sylvia, a tale of taboo love, which may be a parable about homosexuality, won the Tony Award for Best Play. Albee's place in the history of gay drama is as ambiguous. His early off-Broadway work was, for its time, daring in his mention of homosexuality and its implied homoeroticism. Yet Albee's homosexuality and the gay subtext of his early work came to haunt him. Some heterosexist critics, angered by Albee's scathing picture of modern marriage in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, insisted that George and Martha, the feuding central couple in the play, had to be a crypto-gay couple (by this logic The Taming of a Shrew is a crypto-gay play) or that the play was an act of homosexual spite. By this time, leading New York critics were becoming increasingly hostile toward the more openly gay work of Williams, William Inge, and Albee. When Albee's allegorical Tiny Alice, in which a cardinal and a lawyer are bickering ex-lovers, opened in 1964, critics attacked furiously. Phillip Roth lambasted the play's 'ghastly pansy rhetoric.'" Explore some or all of these issues by reading and research and write a report on Albee's concerns as a gay writer. (Due on March 14.) James