The editions of Wharton's and Crane's work we are using in class are considered "cultural editions" by most publishers because they include not only the primary texts of the writers' work but also selected other writings by Wharton or Crane; contemporary criticism positioning their work within specific political, cultural, or intellectual contexts; and criticism or other documents from the late 19th-century that help readers understand the culture out of which the texts were created.

For your final project, you will create an anthology devoted to developing the cultural contexts of work by any three writers we have discussed in class this quarter. The final, hypothetical manuscript will include both primary texts -- a selection of relevant works by the authors, and 6-8 secondary documents -- additional materials that will help further readers' understandings of the context from which the writing was created (material from the late 19th-century) and the context in which it is read today (contemporary perspectives on the texts).

A few words of caution: The anthology you create should not attempt to encompass every aspect of the contemporary criticism nor of the culture out of which the writing emerged. Instead, you should choose a specific focus (or two) for approaching the work of all three writers included in the anthology For example, you might:

Your final project should include:

For a more thorough explanation of each of these elements, please see Writing It further down on this web page.

• You may include the author on which your group presented among the three covered in your anthology.
• You may include EITHER Stephen Crane OR Edith Wharton among the three covered in your anthology, but not both of them.
• You may include some documents and contemporary criticism from the cultural editions we have used in class, but you must also provide a significant amount of "new" research as well.
• You should include SELECTED texts by the authors you choose. This means that you cannot include every poem Emily Dickinson ever wrote in your anthology, but you may include poems that are especially relevant to your anthology's focus.

Choose authors and work that truly interest you. This type of research can actually turn into an exciting adventure in research for you, if you are interested in the work you are doing. When I was an undergrad, I thought I'd never have a favorite research project, but I was proven wrong at the end of my first year of graduate work when I had the opportunity to write a critical paper on the representation of 1950s American women as artists in Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody and Robert Frank's The Americans (a project in photography). While this may or may not sounds like an "exciting adventure in research" to you, I was quickly captivated by my topic and actually looked forward to the hours I'd scheduled for research each day ... (and it paid off academically, as well: I was the only person in the class to get an A on my paper, virtually unheard of for a first-year MA student in this prof's class).

Here are some questions for you to consider as you begin to sort through topics:

The title page for your anthology should include, of course, the title (hopefully one that is more informative, interesting, and specific than "American Literature Final Project"). Remember that you are an editor in this situation, not an author, and please use a pseudonym for yourself here. You'll include your real name on the last page of the manuscript.

Your table of contents should include all material that would be included in the anthology, even though you need not actually reproduce the primary texts that we have discussed in class.

Your introduction should develop the specific focus of the collection ... the aspect of the cultural context you are focusing on. You'll want to

• emphasize the ways in which this focus is relevant to our contemporary understandings of the texts ... in what ways do they complicate our interpretations and reading experiences? in what ways do they clarify the reception of the texts when they were published?
• Explain the ways in which (and for what reasons) this specific focus is so important to you as a scholar, and to our considerations of America and its literature in the late 19th- and early 20th- centuries.
• Explain the ways the primary authors you've chosen to include work together to develop a dialogue about the issue at hand ... how do each of them expose a different aspect of the issue (assuming they do)? what different responses to the issue do they offer?
• Include brief synopses of the 6-8 secondary documents included in the anthology and the ways in which they fit into the framework you've established for the collection.
• A Works Cited page in correct MLA format.

You must provide the clearest copies possible of all material included in your anthology which we have not read in class. Remember that you may use documents/criticism from the Wharton and Crane cultural editions, but you must also bring in supplemental materials you have found during your research.

Introductions to each primary author included in the anthology should address the author's interest in, experience with, and reaction to the aspect of their contemporary culture of interest in the anthology. You may include relevant biographical info on the writers, refer to work not included in your anthology which also addresses this focus, include photos of the authors, if you wish. Consider this introduction as a justification for why this specific work by this specific author is included in the anthology.

Introductions to 6-8 secondary documents should be explain the significance of the documents to the specific focus of your anthology. If necessary, you shold also provide any background information that is necessary for readers to understand the documents' significance. In most cases, these introductions should be limited to a paragraph.

The final page of your project should include your real name.