Two Fresh Air Episodes You Might Be Interested In

For those in my mid-century American lit. class, the American popular culture of the Fifties embraced jazz bebop and swing. Here's a look back at a unique jazz vocalist of that era. 

For those in my poetry workshop, here's an interesting conversation with a newly published poet who deals with an incredibly traumatic personal experience in her poems. 

Season Three of Mad Men To Air Soon!

Hi Everyone--

This is especially for my American lit. students and screenwriters, but all might be interested: the terrific and oft-feted AMC TV series MadMen begins its third season Sunday Aug. 16. If you haven't seen the show yet and are unaware, it chronicles the lives in and around a New York City advertising agency from the late Fifties till about 1963. It's incredibly period-accurate and really cool to look at. Besides that, the writing is sharp, sharp, sharp, and deals with many of the issues we'll be talking about in our American lit. classes: gender, racial, and sexual politics, the Red Scare, White Flight, the rise of new media, and the expansion of our American Capitalist system. If you have cable, great! If not, you can find episodes online, through iTunes, and, of course, you can rent older seasons at your local Blockbuster or through  Netflix. Check it out HERE!

Syllabi

Be looking for course syllabi here in the next two weeks or so.

Required Texts for Fall 09

Hi Everyone and welcome to my official blog for all Fall 2009 semester classes: 

LA 390/05 and 06: Readings in American Literature

LA 490B/02: Writing Poetry

LA491/02: Screenwriting

In order to help you save money and time, I'm posting the titles and authors/editors of our texts below. Make every effort to secure cheaper copies through online bookstores, used bookstores, and/or libraries. 

Readings in American Lit.: (Mid-Century Madness!)

1. O'Conner, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Mariner, 1977. 

2. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Vintage, 2004.

3. Albee, Edward. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? NAL Trade, 2006.

4. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Penguin, 2003.

5. O'Hara, Frank. Meditations in an Emergency. Grove, 1996.

6. Lowell, Robert. Life Studies and For the Union Dead. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

7. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Vintage, 1991. 

8. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper, 2006.

Note: This may seem like a lot, but many of these books (especially the plays) you can find used online for just a buck or two (and in plentiful supply at your local library). If you act now, you'll have plenty of time to look around for the best deals. In fact, it doesn't necessarily matter to me which edition you're able to get. We'll work around that issue; I just want you to read!

Screenwriting: (Focusing on Building Believable Characters Madness!)

1. Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Random House, 2005.

2. Various scripts TBA on www.script-o-rama.com/table.shtml 

Writing Poetry: (Recent First Book Madness!)

1. Dawson, Erica. Big-Eyed Afraid. Waywiser, 2007.

2. Kartsonis, Ariana-Sophia M. Intaglio. Kent State. 2006.

3. Rerick, Michael. In Ways Impossible to Fold. Marsh Hawk, 2009.

4. Drury, John. Creating Poetry. Writers Digest, 2006.

Note: You should be able to get used copies of Drury's handbook cheaply and easily. Used copies of Kartsonis and Dawson are available online. Rerick, however, is so new there are no available used copies just yet, but keep checking.