Italian American Literature and Film Final Paper Topics

Option a: Expand on class texts

Italian American Literature and Film For the final paper, you may choose any topic you wish within the broad confines of Italian American an, cinema, and literature. In this class, we have looked at a variety of literary and filmic texts, and have studied an array of critical texts addressing these works. It is your job now to take some of the things we have seen and discussed and expand on that discussion in some way. The topic you choose is entirely up to you, but it must relate to the Italian American experience in some fundamental way. Below are some possible leads for finding a topic.

 

a) You might choose to expand on a text or texts we saw in class that you haven't already written about. For example, you might want to write about the film Do The Right Thing through the lens of the essay "On being White Female and Born in Bensonhurst," adding in examples from The Sopranos and other texts as reference points. Such an essay might explore race relations between Italian Americans and African Americans and explore questions of whiteness and race as a construct. Or, you might choose simply to write about Moonstruck and its use of the Operatic, comparing it to its source material La Bohetne, using outside sources as evidence.

 

b) You might choose to take something from outside class and apply it to some of the things we've talked about so far. For example, you might choose to write about a novel by DeLillo or John Fante, Italian writers we haven't talked about, or a film like Once Upon a Time in America or Bronx Tale, as they apply to the Mafia genre. Exploring a text we haven't looked at, which is distinctly Italian American, and creating a thesis about that text, is a good way to approach the final.

 

c) You may choose, if you wish, to take a more creative route. Apply some of the texts we've seen and talked about to your own experience. Create a piece of literary nonfiction exploring some of the themes we've addressed vis a vis your own experiences. Interview a relative. Talk about the role of food in some of the films and relate it to the role of food in your own Italian American family. Etc. 

Whatever you choose to do, the only real rules are: the paper must be constructed around a unified academic thesis that is borne out through careful analysis and it must have something to do with Italian American literature and film. I really need help with this Final Paper for my English class because this will determine my final grade for this semester. I can't do it because I'm feeling sick. Please help me and thank you. To help get started, the texts I have read and used were Christ in Concrete and Paper Fish. The films I saw and used were The Sopranos, The Godfather, and Goodfellas. You can choose to use any other text or film to do this final paper if you want. Guidelines are in this final paper.