Write an essay of about 2500 words (7 to 9 typed, double-spaced pages) on one of the following topics. Please remember that these are suggested topics only, and that you need to narrow and refine your argument; think carefully about exactly what central claim or thesis you want to present in your work. Although this is not necessarily a research paper, I will expect you to do an adequate amount of background reading, and to demonstrate some familiarity with or fluency in the material we have been discussing in class. Please use the current MLA format for documentation. Due in class on Friday, April 4.

1. In The Importance of Music to Girls, Lavinia Greenlaw frequently describes her resistance to being perceived as or made to act like a girl. With reference to the work of two writers or songwriters on the course syllabus (or to television programs or videos we have watched), discuss the fabrication of gender roles, and the ways in which those roles are either advocated or critiqued.

2. Bruce Springsteen has won an academy award for one of his songs. With reference to the work of two writers or songwriters on the course syllabus, discuss the ways in which song is used on the big or the small screen. How do songs contribute to soundtracks, for example? What are the correlations between the auditory and the visual? Do songs use -- or are they materially affected by -- conventions of visual culture?

3. The discourse of race is a key issue in Zora Neale Hurston's work and in Roddy Doyle's novel. How does the work of two songwriters or writers address the politics of race? How is race framed as an issue in this music?

4. Most of the material we have examined is concerned with national identity, whether American, British, Irish or Canadian. With direct reference to the work of two writers or songwriters on the course syllabus, discuss the representation and the rethinking of the nation. How do songs relate to what Benedict Anderson famously defines as an "imagined community"?

5. Discuss the tension between mass and popular culture in the work of two writers or songwriters on the course syllabus. How is their work presented as populist? Do they present ideas of audience or of response in their work? In what ways is the popular song a form of public discourse? Of democratic debate?

6. Freaks and Geeks focuses on, among other things, the nuclear family. Discuss the presentation of family life in the work of two songwriters or writers on the course syllabus. How is family sturcture upheld or critiqued by this work? How does popular song contribute to the formation of heteronormative identities? What are family values in these texts and songs?

7. Media theorists such as Jonathan Sterne and Friedrich Kittler, among many others, study the relationship between communications technologies and the texts and other works that a culture produces. What are the significant technologies for the production and dissemination of pop song? (Think about iPods, Walkmen, headphones, microphones, mixing boards, turntables, etc.) How do these technologies emerge from, impact upon, or otherwise relate to, the form and content of the songs themselves? How are technocratic means of organization and social controlled challenged by -- or accommodated in -- these songs?

8. Paul Muldoon, John K. Samson, and many other of the writers we have examined focus in their work on concepts of place and displacement. With direct reference to the work of two writers on the course syllabus (including Freaks and Geeks, if you wish), discuss the idea of place. How are these songs, narratives and poems linked to particular urban or rural spaces or to particular geographies?

8. A project of your own devising. Please consult with me before you begin to write.

Due in class on Friday, April 4.