My Cultural Object Assignment: Whitman and Broadway Part Three

So here is a quick summary of what we would have discussed before the assignment:

1. Students should come to class having read the poem and highlighted any confusing parts.
   
2. Start the class by answering any questions. Proceed to an American history review, asking them what they know about the United States in 1850 and filling in any relevant gaps.
3. Introduce the cultural object, a painted lithograph, and Sanford Robinson Gifford's A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove). Then ask the students to work on a free-write focusing on how these images could relate to the landscape of Whitman's poem.
4. Break the class into groups and have them use their free-write and excerpts from the poem to try to guess what the painted lithograph is about. The following questions might help:
• How does this environment differ from A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove)?
• Looking at the rows of buildings and horse-drawn carriages, what kind of impression do you get?
  
• How does that compare to the representation of the gorge?
• What different types of people do you see? How do their actions make them stand out?
  
• What makes this space seem democratic?
5. After some time, the groups would give their best guess. I would explain that the picture is of Broadway in 1888, and provide some more context based on my previous blog. Then, as a class, we would discuss bigger themes such as democracy, the individual as part of a whole, and the urbanization of America, relating the painting to the poem. This would probably take up the most time and be the most important part of the class.
   

Based on your free-write, your group's analysis of the paintings, and our in-class discussion, choose one of two options to post to your blog (about three to five paragraphs):

1. Examine this print of a parade in Broadway from 1855. Employing the same techniques we used in class today, "read" the print. How does this image compare to the speaker's notion of urbanity in Leaves of Grass? Be sure to support your assertion with evidence from the poem.
2. Choose at least one passage from Leaves of Grass that depicts an urban landscape and analyze it. What is the significance of this description? How does it contribute to our understanding of the poem as a whole?
   

Evidence of learning: A blog post that suggests an understanding of at least one major theme, free-writes, class participation.

A successful post relates one small bit of "Song of Myself" to an overarching theme in the poem and supports it by both analyzing the formal qualities within the text and considering any historical and cultural context.