Introduction. Review syllabus.
Background: "American Jazz Culture in the 1920s"--read
Jazz Moves Up River;
Jazz Greats of the 1920s;
Jazz: Dictator of Fashion;
Jazz and Women's Liberation;
Jazz Exacerbates Racial Tension
(online).
Music:
Jazz Listening Tips (online).
Jazz & Blues: 1920s-30s
(online)--listen to King Oliver's "Doctor Jazz"; "I Wish That I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate"; Paul Whiteman's "Charleston"; "Black
Bottom"; and Bessie Smith's "Jazzbo Brown
from Memphis Town" (in the "Hot Jazz" section).
Dance: 1920s Charleston (YouTube).
Video: F.Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (49 min.)
Background: The Roaring 20s: Jazz, Flappers and the Charleston;
(online).
The Flap over Flappers; Flapper Jane; A Flapper's Appeal to Parents; Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation? (online).
Discuss Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs her Hair" and Flapper essays
Begin reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "May Day" (in Babylon Revisited and Other Stores, 25-74) or May Day (online).
Finish F. Scott Fitzgerald, "May Day" (in Babylon Revisited and Other
Stores, 25-74).
Background: The Poetry of Dorothy Parker and
Rebel Without a Pause [Zelda Fitzgerald] and
Louise Brooks (online).
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
First Fig;
Second Fig;
What Lips These Lips Have Kissed;
Recuerdo;
Only until this cigarette is ended;
To Inez Milholland
(online). Bring copies of poems to class.
Begin reading Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises--read 1/5.
Video: Intimate Portrait: Josephine Baker (60 min.)
Continue reading Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises--read 2/5.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises--read 3/5.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises--read 4/5.
PAPER #1 ASSIGNED. Due: Wednesday, 2/16. See writing directions.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises--finish.
H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Sheltered Garden; Eurydice; Fragment Thirty-six--note some of the Sappho "fragments" as you scroll down the page for H.D.'s "Fragment Thirty-six"; Fragment Forty One (online). Bring copies of poems to class.
Video: The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson (89 min).
Video: The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson.
PAPER #1 DUE.
Discuss The Jazz Singer
Music: Jazz & Blues: 1920s-30s
(online)--scroll down to "Gerschwin's Symphonic Jazz" section and listen to Gerschwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."
Rudolph Fisher, "Miss Cynthie" (in Classic Fiction, 242-53).
TAKE-HOME #1 EXAM ASSIGNED. Due Fri., 2/25.
Background: Garth Tate's Harlem: The Early Years
and The Effects of Racism on Chicago Jazz 1920-1930
(pages 43-47) and
Jelly Roll Morton
(online).
J.A. Rogers, Jazz at Home (online--click on "Edit" and then on "Find"; type "jazz at home" in the "Find" box and click on "Next.")
Background: Biographies of Louis Armstrong
and Duke Ellington (online).
Music: Jazz & Blues: 1920s-30s
(online)--listen to:
Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (scroll down to the "Hot Jazz" section).
Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" and
"What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" (scroll down to "Louis Armstrong" section--bring lyrics to class).
Duke Ellington's "Jungle Nights in Harlem"
and "Mood Indigo" (Duke Ellington section--bring lyrics to class).
Betty Boop Jazztoons: Minnie the Moocher (with Cab Calloway) and I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You (with Louis Armstrong).
TAKE-HOME #1 EXAM DUE: Turn a hard-copy in to my office (Grubbs 450) or e-mail it to me (as an attached .doc or .rtf file). No class.
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (in Classic Fiction, 105-237)--read 1/3.
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem--read 2/3.
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem--finish.
Background: Biographies of Ma Rainey and
Bessie Smith (online).
Music: Jazz & Blues: 1920s-30s
(online). Listen/view these selections in the "Queens of the Blues" section:
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"; "Down-hearted Blues"; "St. Louis Woman"; "Wild Women Don't Have
the Blues"; "Backwater Blues"--make copy of these lyrics.
Billie Holliday's Strange Fruit
(YouTube).
Ella Fitzgerald's Cry Me a River (YouTube).
PAPER #2 ASSIGNED. Due: Monday, 3/28. See Writing Directions.
Langston Hughes, biography (online) and "The Blues I'm Playing" (in Classic Fiction, 367-79).
Langston
Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
and The Weary Blues
(online)--11 poems. Bring copies to class.
Videopoem: The Weary Blues (YouTube)
Background: The Cotton Club
(online)
Video: Cotton Club (129 min.)
Video: Cotton Club
Video: Cotton Club
Jazz Poetry: 1920s-30s (online).
Browse the jazz artwork on this page; then click on the "print-friendly" link and make copies for class of these poems:
Sterling Brown, "Ma Rainey";
Gwendolyn Bennett, "Song";
Helene Johnson, "Poem" and "Sonnet To A Negro In Harlem";
Frank Marshall Davis, "Jazz Band";
Langston Hughes, "Juke Box Love Song" and "Dream Boogie" and "Trumpet Player."
Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me."
See also Hughes'
Harlem [Dream Deferred] and
Song for Billie Holliday
(YouTube)
PAPER #2 DUE.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God--219 pp--read 1/4.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God--read 1/2.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God--read 3/4.
TAKE-HOME EXAM #2 ASSIGNED. Due: Mon., 4/11.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God--finish.
Jean Toomer, from Cane: "Karintha"; "Blood-Burning Moon"; "Bona and Paul" (in Classic Fiction, 19-37)
TAKE-HOME EXAM #2 DUE. Turn a hard-copy in to my office (Grubbs 450) or e-mail it to me (as an attached .doc or .rtf file). No class.
Eudora Welty, Powerhouse (online).
Ralph Ellison, Prologue to The Invisible Man. Make sure
you click on the additional pages at the bottom of each webpage. Alternate source:
Prologue to Invisible Man--
print pages 3-12 only.
Music: Jazz & Blues: 1920s-30s
(online)--review
Louis Armstrong's
"What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" (scroll down to "Louis Armstrong" section--bring lyrics to class).
Visual jazz: Jeff Wall's After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Preface.
See info. about this photo here: MoMA: Jeff Wall photo.
James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues
(online)
Music: Ethel Waters, Am I Blue? (YouTube).
Beat Literature: Jazz and the Beat Generation
(online).
Jack Kerouac,
239th Chorus [Charlie Parker]
from New Mexico Blues (online) and
Kerouac, Charlie Parker & Bop Prose (YouTube) and
Excerpt from The Subterraneans
(online);
Black Arts Movement: Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Obituary of Miles Davis (online);
Jayne Cortez, How Long Has Trane Been Gone?
and Jazz Fan Looks Back (online).
Jazz Elegies:
Frank O'Hara, 'The Day Lady Died'
(online--scroll down the page);
Rita Dove, Canary
(online); alternate source: Jazz Poetry--'Canary.'
Sonia Sanchez, Liberation/poem;
For our lady (online);
A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald (online);
Marilyn Chin,
Blues on Yellow (online);
Joy Harjo, Strange Fruit
(online).
Music: Miles Davis, Blue In Green, from 'Kind of Blue' (YouTube);
John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (YouTube);
Ella Fitzgerald, How High the Moon (YouTube).
August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom--read 1/2.
August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom--finish.
Visual Jazz: Romare Bearden and The Music in his Art (online video with Coltrane, Mingus, and Gillespie).
Toni Morrison, Jazz (256p)--read 1/5.
Toni Morrison, Jazz--read 2/5.
Toni Morrison, Jazz--read 3/5.
TAKE-HOME #3 EXAM ASSIGNED
Toni Morrison, Jazz--read 4/5.
Toni Morrison, Jazz--finish.
FINAL: TAKE-HOME EXAM #3 DUE--Fri., 5/13 (or before).
Turn a hard-copy in to my office (Grubbs 450) or e-mail
it to me (as an attached .doc or .rtf file). NO CLASS.
Painting, top-left:
Aaron Douglas, "Song of the Towers"
Web page designed by knichols
