Research Question: HOW DOES YOUR SPECIFIC AUTHOR HELP DEFINE THE LITERARY MOVEMENT IN WHICH S/HE WAS INVOLVED?

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1 Research Question: HOW DOES YOUR SPECIFIC AUTHOR HELP DEFINE THE LITERARY MOVEMENT IN WHICH S/HE WAS INVOLVED?

2 Assignment: To gain a better understanding of a particular Literary Movement: Think about how your author fits the Literary Movement of the time. Use the following ideas as a guide: Consider what is interesting and unusual about this author's life. Decide which events in the author's life affected his/her writing. Think about the number and type(s) of books the author has written. Consider the audience(s) of the books this author writes. Has the author won any prizes? What does that tell you about the book/the author? What relationship did the author have with other authors of the time? What kinds of settings appear in the author s writing?

3 Harlem What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? By Langston Hughes

4 Where to start? Wikipedia, of course! Lived: Ancestors active in antislavery movement Abandoned by his father Disjointed, unstable childhood Left college due to racism Travelled the world extensively Arnold Rampersad, the primary biographer of Hughes

5 Where to next? Print sources These, like Wikipedia, can often help you locate related terms. Databases Literary Reference Center is the perfect fit for this project Also try Gale Literary Databases Online sources Yes, there are good sources out there, but you need to evaluate whether they re valuable or not.

6 Literary Reference Center Can browse by authors Name Country Culture Genre Movement Can browse by works Title Genre Locale

7 Searching by movement First: Click on Browse Authors Then click on Genre Search for your Literary Movement: Harlem Renaissance

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9 Franks, Carol. "Langston Hughes." Magill s Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-7. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb Langston joined his mother and stepfather, Homer Clark, in Cleveland, where Clark was then a steelworker. Clark shifted jobs frequently, and often the family was financially insecure or impoverished (Franks). In 1921, when Hughes arrived as a student at Columbia University, he learned that the school had an unstated policy not to house black students. Though the university s authorities reluctantly assigned Hughes a room, the event set the tone for the one year that he spent there (Franks). Hughes, whose writing career spanned more than half a century, was diverse in his themes, which included connectedness, transitoriness, racism, integration, poverty, myth, history, and universal freedom. Particularly unique to his work was his integration of his writing with blues and jazz. He wrote operettas, and many of his poems were set to music (Franks).

10 Peck, David. "The Life Of Langston Hughes." Magill s Literary Annual 1989 (1989): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Feb Hughes was always struggling to make ends meet: to live by his writing (as no black had ever done), and to make black America not only the major raw material of his art but also... his main audience (Peck). the essence of Hughes s career as a writer had been from the start an interplay between art and social conscience, with a need to defy. The artist with a social conscience has never found life easy in America, and neither would Hughes (Peck). Hughes would be hounded constantly for his radical past. J. Edgar Hoover denounced the writer in 1944, rightwing groups would pressure sponsoring organizations to drop his speaking engagements throughout his career, and his talks were often disrupted by hecklers or pickets. Investigation by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations meant that Hughes s books would be dropped from American libraries abroad. (Peck). Hughes recognized that much of this harassment occurred because he was a black writer with a radical past. His radicalism had never been especially political, but like a great number of writers with social consciences in the 1930 s, he had often backed left-wing causes and had always tried to make his art into a vehicle of social comment. (Peck)

11 Patterson, Anita. "Jazz, Realism, and the Modernist Lyric: The Poetry of Langston Hughes." Modern Language Quarterly 61.4 (2000): 651. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb Hughes s poems challenge the critical distinction between realism and the avant-garde : even his simplest, most documentary, and most historically engaged poems evince a characteristically modernist preoccupation with the figurative implications of form (Patterson, 652).

12 Determine YOUR THESIS. Example thesis statement: Langston Hughes is the epitome of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement because he used his writing to express connectedness, racism, integration, poverty, myth, history, and universal freedom. Write your presentation to support your thesis statement. Example: On my first slide I will introduce Hughes and my thesis statement. On the second slide, I will talk about his major works and any awards he has won. On the third slide I will talk about the time period in which Hughes lived and how that influenced his writing. On the fourth slide I will give quotes about Hughes and his experiences racism and segregation. On the fifth slide I will paraphrase other authors talking about how Hughes lived his life. On the sixth slide I will quote Hughes s writing that address themes of the Harlem Renaissance. In the conclusion, I will tie this all together and talk about how Hughes is a perfect example of the Harlem Renaissance Literary Movement.

13 Don t plagiarize! Use summaries or paraphrases. Use quotations marks for direct quotes. Cite ALL sources correctly! Example: In his poem You and Your Whole Race, author Langston Hughes writes, I dare you to come one step nearer, evil world, With your hands of greed seeking to touch my throat (Hughes) as if to exhort African Americans of the time to rise up against the injustices they faced in their lives. Hughes, Langston. "You And Your Whole Race." Poetry (2009): 329. Literary Reference Center. Web. 25 Apr

14 MLA Works Cited Franks, Carol. "Langston Hughes." Magill s Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-7. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb Hughes, Langston. "You And Your Whole Race." Poetry (2009): 329. Literary Reference Center. Web. 25 Apr Patterson, Anita. "Jazz, Realism, and the Modernist Lyric: The Poetry of Langston Hughes." Modern Language Quarterly 61.4 (2000): 651. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb

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16 How Do You Create Your Bibliography? Use Databases They do the work for you! Use citation creators

17 How Do You Make Sure You Don t Plagiarize? Track Your Sources Carefully! Use plagiarism checkers to make sure