Web page due Wednesday July 9 by 8pm
In-class presentation on Thursday July 10

In the small groups that you signed up for in class, you will read a portion of The New Age at the Modernist Journals Project website (http://modjourn.org) and analyze it according to the topic your group has chosen. Your group will write up a critique as a page on the course website and then give a 7-10 minute presentation in class, followed by Q&A from your peers. It’s up to you to decide how to approach the material. Our discussion will build on what you bring to the table.

Webpage: Your written analysis should be the equivalent of an organized and insightful 4-5 page paper that gives a “general feel”—with examples—for how your topic is represented in the magazine. Post it in the menu titled <New Age Project> by 8pm on Wednesday July 9. This is so that we can all have time to read each others’ analyses ahead of class and prepare discussion questions. The writeup should:

• Indicate which numbers of the magazine you covered and the authors of the pieces you discuss.
• Describe your approach to the magazine: did you search for terms, look for thumbnails that had certain typographical qualities, read a chronological series of issues, etc.?
• Analyze the manner in which various pieces (i.e. poems, fiction, essays, advertisements, correspondence) contribute to your topic, noting any patterns, agreements, or disagreements among the magazine’s contributors.

If there are significant typographical arrangements among your pieces, it would be helpful to include an image of the page in your writeup. The best way to do that would be to view the page in the “View Page Images” mode, save the .jpg file to your computer, and then insert it in your writeup. Email me if you need help with this.

Presentation: Your entire group will have 8-10 minutes to discuss semi-formally the highlights of your analysis and what you learned in your reading of The New Age. Each member of the group should speak, and it’s up to you to decide how to organize that. Rather than merely reiterating what is in your writeup, the presentation should focus on what you thought most important in your analysis, possibly expanding on a given part of it more thoroughly than you could in the written assignment, and also discuss the process of how you worked on this project. There will be a few minutes for Q&A after each presentation and then a general discussion for the latter portion of class.

Possible Topics:

Gender
Feminism
Sexuality
Psychology
Politics
War
Imperialism
History/The Past
Liberty
Science
Art/Avant-Garde
Advertising
Commerce
Visual/Plastic Arts
Fiction
Poetry
Drama
Cinema
Music
Essay / Criticism
Old vs. New
Social Renewal
Civilization
Economics