My Cultural Object Assignment: Whitman and Broadway Part 2

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 hilighted 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 ask the students to work on a free-write focusing on how the painting could relate to the 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 painting is about. The following questions might help:
• Does the painting look like it occurs in a quiet or a chaotic area?
• What kinds of people do you see in the painting?
• Does the environment seem to invite all kinds of people, or is it exclusive?
• What parts of the poem seem to refer to a similar type of environment?
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 this, choose one of three options to post to your blog (about three to four paragraphs):

1. Pick an excerpt from "Song of Myself" that describes an urban environment and analyze it according to one of the themes discussed in class. How is it similar to the painted lithograph? How is it different? How do historical context, cultural objects, imagery, metaphors, and other tropes influence the representation of this theme?
2. Create a short poem describing an urban setting in 1855 (it does not have to be New York, but it can be) and explain how it addresses one of the major themes in "Song of Myself," supporting your assertion with textual evidence. Some questions you might want to consider:
   
• How does your cityscape promote or undermine the notion of the collective whole?
  
• If you choose to focus on urbanization, what message does your poem send about industrialization, and how does it compare to Whitman's?
  
• Is Whitman's depiction of urbanity elitist or egalitarian? Explain your reasoning.
3. Examine this print of a parade in Broadway from 1855. Using evidence from the poem, answer the following questions:
   
• How does this picture compare to the speaker's notion of democracy?
  
• How is the imagery in the picture similar to/different from Whitman's description of the city?
  
• How does the crowd in this picture compare to one of Whitman's collective groups? Is the message similar or different? Why or why not?
• What other themes does the image evoke?
  

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.