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February 20th Class Review

Again, Social Darwinism, Manifest Destiny, and Racism headlined our events in history (and the literature of the era) this week. I did not give out a pop quiz this last week and I'm not sure if I will give one out this next week, but if I did, I'd really want to make sure you are fully comprehending the definitions of social Darwinism, imperialism, and isolationism. These three ideologies find their way woven throughout much of our modern history.

We touched on the annexation of the Philippines, how McKinley thought we should keep the Philippines for our national glory, commerce, racial superiority, and evangelism. That didn't go as well as planned and we found ourselves entangled in another war. We also see a rise in the Anti-Imperialist League, with forerunners like William Jennings Bryan, Carnegie, and former Presidents Cleveland and Harrison calling for the U.S. to withdraw from the Philippines. Overall, the Philippine-American war killed 126,000 U.S. troops, 200,000 Filipinos (mostly civilian), and cost America $600 million dollars.

We also learned about the Open-Door Policy and the Boxer Rebellion in China, which eventually faced defeat by an international police force.

Finally, we discussed Teddy Roosevelt, including his "Big-Stick" diplomacy.

In literature, we discussed jazz music, listened to Miles Davis and Billie Holiday and read some poetry from Langston Hughes. Jazz poetry is a literary genre defined as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music. Pay attention to the way jazz poetry encompasses a variety of forms, rhythms, sounds, and rhetoric.

We finished our class with a look at how poetry, images, and music engage with each other and how the poem "Bitter Fruit" inspired one of the most important songs in American History "Strange Fruit," sung by Billie Holiday (although it has been covered at least a dozen times.) This title has become a metaphor for lynchings under the Jim Crow South, but in 2013, Kanye West used this metaphor in his song "Blood on the Leaves" to describe something else. Your assignment this week is to write a response considering this prompt:

After reading the poem and hearing Billie Holiday’s performance of "Strange Fruit," reflect how the article from NPR informs our reading of this text. Next, consider how Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves” borrows from or departs from the meaning of the original song. Discuss the significance you see in this choice in approximately 500 words. Include examples from at least two of the texts to support your position.

For those of you that missed class, we used a clean version of West's song and discussed his allusions to drugs and relationships as the destruction faced in the metaphor rather than the original poem's meaning. This song had pretty mixed reviews and reactions, and I think that's justified. How far can we stretch a metaphor before we water it down and lose the impact or importance of the original? Is this new reading just as important? Does the victim face the same kinds of oppression and crimes as the original? Consider other metaphors we use in society.  

Here's a link to the NPR article on Abel Meeropol.

For your reading this week, make it through the first 30 pages or so of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Also, I will come around and check your progress this week for your project, so be prepared to show me what you've accomplished in the last two weeks.

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