IDS 101-04 College Colloquium Oh Canada! Fall 2009

Assignment 1 ‘I am American’ (not Canadian!)

Write 300 words of lyrics, for pop song entitled ‘I am American’ to be used to market a hypothetical beer/soda.

Content:

Think about America in relation to temporality, spatiality, performance, and otherness.

Give your Beer/Soda a nationally symbolic or resonant name. Be creative!

Your song should articulate a thesis about American identity. Be thoughtful!

Crucially, try to respond to what you take to be perceptions about the nature of Americans from people within and beyond the United States, including and perhaps especially Canadians. Be aware!

Make clever allusions to historical and contemporary national events, figures, places, symbols and so on within your lyrics, and where you manage to do so provide (at least 10) helpful footnotes explaining them in third-person formal prose (for an additional 500 words in total).

Grab pertinent graphic imagery to include in your webpage for the libation in question.

Form:

The lyrics could rhyme, and if so preferably without heavy reliance on monosyllabic words.

Don’t worry about setting your song to music, rather it should fit the melody/tune of an already popular song that you identify.

Optimally, your lyrics should be elegant and evocative, and unless there is some artistic reason to do otherwise, your writing should be mechanically flawless, i.e., free of spelling mistakes, grammatical slips, typographical errors, and speculative punctuation.

Consult your Hacker, Pocket Style Manual!

Process:

Consult twice, once with your Writing Consultant, Marie Olsen, and once with Prof.
In thinking about the content of your lyrics, feel free to also consult (and cite) a wide range of sources.

Due Dates

F, 9/4 Draft of Assignment 1 hard copy for discussion in class
W, 9/9 Assignment 1, hard copy and posted online in time for class