Your final project is due Thursday 4/19; deliver it to the metal shelf inside Biddle 200 at class time. It is 30% of your Final Grade and should be over seven pages (over 2,300 words). Late papers will not be accepted. The final draft must be accompanied by a first draft with a partner’s peer critique comments. The first draft should be over 4 pages long.

Your Final Project has two major features: your personal, creative responses to music and your critical, thesis-driven research.

Your Final Project must be inspired by some theme or idea from Marcus’s text.

In Mystery Train, Marcus is interested in those songs that “dramatize a sense of what it is to be an American; what it means, what it’s worth, what the stakes of life in America might be” (4). In a sense, Marcus is a sociologist or anthropologist interested in identifying and examining American experiences and characteristics. One of his theses is that popular artists are influenced by culture. If that’s true (and how could it not be?), then we should be able to examine a singer’s music (both its sound and its lyrics) and, as a result of our examination, learn something about our country.

Another of his theses is that popular musicians influence culture. If that’s true (do you think our artist’s help shape our culture?), then popular musicians do not just reflect culture, but also lead culture. In other words, they tap into “strains of American experience and identity” and then perpetuate, mold, or subvert those strains (Marcus xv).

In analyzing popular music, Marcus is offering his opinions on democracy, community, individual autonomy, social movements, cultural changes across generations, challenges to mainstream ideology, different manifestations of religion in our lives, what it means to have an audience, the power of music, the power of words, etc. etc.

You are expected to join this conversation. You must use Mystery Train as a primary source from which to draw inspiration and key terms. But then you can go in any direction you want, you can add to this conversation in any way.

I expect you to get deeply involved in citing, paraphrasing, and then interpreting other people’s words. Not just Marcus’s, but other sources that you discover through research. What will your other sources be? Articles from Psychology Today? Rolling Stone? Various sociological journals? History books? One of the many books mentioned by Marcus? This is totally up to you, but you must have at least one source beyond Marcus and whatever songs you chose to examine.

I also expect you to get deeply involved in citing and interpreting the lyrics and music of artists of your choosing.

A Final Project Proposal is due Tuesday 3/27 of Week 13. In one paragraph (175 words), you are to: identify a topic for your Final Project and state a tentative thesis; describe the direction your research might take; describe the direction your own opinions might take; pose some preliminary questions that will help you to focus your research and first draft. Look through Hacker sections 48 and 51 before completing your proposal.

It is perfectly acceptable for you to continue to re-shape or make radical changes to your vision of this assignment after you turn in your proposal.

Your Final Project must conform to MLA standards regarding a Works Cited page and use of parenthetical citations. You must avoid plagiarism at all costs.