For Tuesday

First, a reminder that we will not meet as a class on Thursday. Instead, be sure to spend a significant amount of time on background reading related to a potential essay topic. For Tuesday, please complete the following:

1. Choose a general topic you may want to write about.
2. Read broadly about this topic and skim as many texts related to your topic as possible. Your goal is to see what kinds of things others are writing about, and what kinds of claims they are making.
3. Select four of the texts that you find most interesting.
4. For each of these texts, list at least four possible subtopics (or, if you’re feeling ambitious, claims).

What you hand in might look something like this:

General topic: The films of David Lynch.

Possible texts:

1.   Wild at Heart
2.   Blue Velvet
3.   Mulholland Drive
4.   Lost Highway
5.   The Elephant Man
6.   Twin Peaks
7.   Walk Fire with Me
8.   New Yorker article about Lynch’s disagreements with ABC.
9.   Review of Blue Velvet
10.   Lynch’s performance in Louie

Most interesting texts and subtopics/claims:

1.      Wild at Heart

a.       The film’s violence

b.      The film’s Wizard of Oz imagery

c.       The film as a road movie

d.      The film’s role in Nicholas Cage’s career (claim: the film was the last artistic movie Nicholas Cage made).

2.      Blue Velvet

a.       Public outrage

b.      Dennis Hopper’s performance

c.       The film’s music

d.      References to American popular culture of the 1950’s (claim: the film helped spark the retro/nostalgia craze of the 1990s and 2000s).

3.      Twin Peaks

a.       Connections to the film Walk Fire with Me

b.      The film’s ending

c.       Lynch’s disputes with ABC

d.      The series’ influence on later television (Claim: The Sopranos and Breaking Bad would not have existed without Twin Peaks).

4.      The Elephant Man

a.       The film’s awards

b.      Costuming and makeup

c.       Lynch’s choice of black and white

d.      Parallels to the historical “Elephant Man” (Claim: Much of the film’s integrity and power comes from its historical accuracy).