American Authors and Literary Movements
Research and Presentation Project
Individual Research:
You will present a mini-research paper and creative project, which explores an American author and his or her style, as well as the
social/political, or historical aspects of the time period in which your selected author(s) lived.
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Before you do research on your author, read something by him or her. Read with a pen in hand. If you can print out a
representative piece of writing, you can annotate directly on the page as you close read. After you finish reading an
excerpt from a novel or play, a poem, a short story, an autobiography, or speech, please write a developed paragraph on
what you noticed about the style of your author, and the content of the piece. You may want to use your initial observation
about the author’s style in your research paper.
In your research paper, you may devote a paragraph or two to the biographical basics—where and when your author was
born, what schools he/she attended, BUT, this should NOT be the primary focus of your research. The primary focus will
be the LITERARY CONTRIBUTION your author has made to American literature. We want to know what is so
special about this writer?
You must also be able to discuss one or more of these aspects in addition to the biographical information of your author:
Indicate the time period of the literary movement of your author
Describe the primary genres and styles of written work for that time
Be able to provide the names of other authors writing during this time
Indicate what is happening historically during that time period
Your paper will need to have several components (everything except the note cards will need to be typed):
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A paragraph on your author’s style before you start your research_____________________
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Note Cards(20 cards):___________________________________________________________
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Outline:_______________________________________________________________________
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Research Paper (3-5 pages):______________________________________________________
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Works Cited:__________________________________________________________________
Group/Individual Final Creative Project:
Listed are several possibilities for the creative portion of your project:
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NOTE: For posters or slide shows, do not use a lot of text. You should only have three or so bulleted
points to remind you of what you have memorized about your author. Slide shows and posters need to be
visual aids, not replace your expertise.
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Create a poster
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Provide a visual aid for your audience in the form of a poster.
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Include images that are representative of the movement and the author. NO SMALL PRINT!
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Create a PowerPoint, Prezi, or Key Note—NO VISTA as an operating system!
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Produce a short film
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Produce a commercial
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Produce a parody of the style of a particular author or genre
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Act out a short scene in class
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Teach us about the movement and author(s), and quiz the class
You may work with a group or alone. I think I’ll let you pick your groups this time. You may even pick a group from other
AP Lang classes. Just be sure that you all pick authors in a SPECIFIC literary time period. For instance, you all have to pick
Romantic authors, or Modernist authors—and the authors cannot repeat! You each have to have a different one.
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Col 1: Encounters and Foundations to 1800
o
Native American Voices:
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Joseph Bruchac
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Huron Traditional
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Teton Sioux Traditional
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Nez Perce Traditional
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Dekanawida
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Puritans Voices:
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Anne Bradstreet
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Mary Rowlandson
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Jonathan Edwards
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Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
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Revolutionary Voices
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Olaudah Equaino
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Phillis Wheatley
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Benjamin Franklin
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Robert Fulghum--contemporary
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Patrick Henry
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Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Abigail Adams
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Halimah Abdullah—Contemporary
Col 2: American Romanticism 1800-1860
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William Cullen Bryant
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Washington Irving
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James Fenimore Cooper
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Fireside Poets:
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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John Greenleaf Whittier
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
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James Russell Lowell
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Transcendentalists:
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Henry David Thoreau
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Anti-Transcendentalists, Gothic or Dark Romantics
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Herman Melville
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Edgar Allen Poe
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Don Henly--contemporary
J. D. McClatchy--contemporary
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Col 3: American Masters—Between Romanticism and Realism
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Walt Whitman
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Louisa May Alcott
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Emily Dickinson
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Teresa Palomo Acosta--contemporary
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Linda Pastan--contemporary
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Gary Smith--contemporary
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Pablo Neruda--contemporary
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Col 4: The Rise of Realism 1860-1914:
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Slave Narratives:
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Frederick Douglass
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Harriet A. Jacobs
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Spirituals
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Commonwealth and Freeman’s Record
Civil War Voices:
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Ambrose Bierce
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Stephen Crane
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Robert E. Lee
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Maj. Sullivan Ballou
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Abraham Lincoln
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Mary Chesnut
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Ken Burns
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Chief Joseph
Regionalism/Naturalism/Realism:
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Mark Twain
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William Dean Howells
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Frank Norris
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Henry James
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Stephen Jay Gould--contemporary
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Jack London
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Brett Harte
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Charles W. Chestnut
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Beck Weathers--contemporary
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Gabriela Mistral--contemporary
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Kate Chopin
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Sarah Orne Jewett
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Pat Mora--contemporary
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Willa Cather
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Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Col: 5 The Moderns 1914-1939
Col 5 Subcategory: Make it New! Poets:
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Erza Pound
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T. S. Elliot
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William Carlos Williams
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Marianne Moore
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Archibald MacLeish
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E. E. Cummings
Col 5 Subcategory: Modern American Fiction:
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Ernest Hemingway
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
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William Faulkner
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Horacio Quiroga
Col 5 Subcategory: Midcentury Voices:
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John Steinbeck
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Eudora Welty
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Katherine Anne Porter
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James Thurber
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Robert Frost
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Naomi Shihab Nye
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Penelope Bryant Turk
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Jeffrey Meyers
Col 5 Subcategory: The Harlem Renaissance:
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Countee Cullen
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Langston Hughes
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Lucille Clifton
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Zora Neale Hurston
Col 6: Contemporary Literature 1939-present
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Randall Jarrel
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Elie Wiesel
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John Hersey
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Robert H. Jackson
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Anne Frank
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John Whitehead
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Margaret Bourke-White
Col 6 Subcategory: Contemporary NonFiction
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Richard Wright
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Maxine Hong Kingston
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N. Scott Momaday
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Alice Walker
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James Baldwin
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Toni Morrison
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Sandra Cisneros
Col 6 Subcategory: Contemporary Poetry
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Theodore Roethke
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Richard Wilbur
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Elizabeth Bishop
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Sylvia Plath
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Anne Sexton
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Derek Walcott
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Carolyn Forche
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Claribel Alegria
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Judith Ortiz Cofer
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Rita Dove
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Mark Doty
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Li- Young Lee
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Agha Shahid Ali
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Billy Collins
Col 6 Subcategory: Contemporary Fiction
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Tim O’Brien
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Donald Barthelme
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W. H. Auden
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Raymond Varver
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Jay McInerney
Julia Alvarez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Amy Tan
Jhumpa Lahiri
Alvin S. Toffer
Edwidge Danticat