How American musicals reflected the shifts in American society and culture throughout the 20th century

AMS MUS 237 American Musical Theater

Fall 2020, Prof. Kahan

Final paper, due on Wednesday, December 16, at 5 p.m.

The goal of this final assignment, due on Wednesday, December 16 at 5 p.m., is for you to demonstrate your skills in doing research, writing, and creating footnotes and a bibliography. The paper should be 10 full pages long (including footnotes), plus one page of Bibliography.

This is, first and foremost, a research paper. You are going to present a thesis and argue your thesis, using scholarly and journalistic sources to bolster your argument. Of course, your opinions, insights, and analyses can be part of the paper. But mostly the goal of the paper is to show how well you can read and digest scholarly and high-quality journalistic writings and how well you can cite these sources. Your own conclusions should be based, in part on the writings of reputable scholars and journalists.

You may write about any topic related to the American musical theater, but you must clear it with me. Once you and I agree on a topic, I will help you find sources online.

You should cite from at least 10 sources. At least half of these sources must come from print sources (books and articles). At least two sources should be articles from the New York Times.

Online sources

Wikipedia may NOT be used as a primary source, only as a starting point. There should be NO Wikipedia articles in your Bibliography.

On the other hand, many Wikipedia article provide bibliographies, many of which can help you identify scholarly sources that will help you pursue your topic.

Citation

Please do not use “citation creator” or other footnote-makers included in your software. I expect you to type out your footnotes by hand. Clearly not all of your “citation creators” use Chicago style in the way that I have taught it to you. If you cut-and-paste your citations, be prepared to rewrite whatever doesn’t follow the directions that I have given you. If you need help with your citations and Bibliography, please ask me. I will help you.

Moreover, I notice that when some of you cite The New York Times, the name of the paper comes out repeated twice and not italicized. Type out the text by hand. Spell out full words for dates.

Footnotes

Footnotes are cited First Name Last Name. Parts of footnotes are separated by commas. Publications details are in parentheses and must include the city of publication: the publisher and the year. The page range follows the second parenthesis mark and is preceded by a comma. Here is an example:

Elizabeth A. Wollman, A Critical Guide to the American Stage Musical (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 23-25.

Use ibid. if the next citation is also by Elizabeth Wollman. All you’ll need to add is the page range.

If you cite Wollman again later on, use short form:

Wollman, A Critical Guide, 92.

Bibliography

The full bibliography from the Wollman book is on Blackboard. Note that the author’s names go Last Name, First Name, in alphabetical order. Parts of the citation are separated by periods. The publication information does not include parentheses. You don’t have to put the page range or the chapter number in the bibliography.

Reminders

Names of musicals are italicized.

Names of songs are “In Quotation Marks.”

Check your spelling. Look for the little red squiggles under words – that will tell you when a word is misspelled. Blue squiggles indicate that you’ve repeated a word or that a word is missing. Go through the whole paper and check for these.

And, finally

If you need help, ask for it. But please don’t wait until the last minute to do so.

The deadline for submission of the paper is final, and there will be no “do-overs.”