1.

Drawing widely and effectively on any and all of the materials in "Act 1" of the course, discuss the ways gender and status (social, economic) figured into the popular culture of Edo's "floating world." In your opinion, did considerations of gender and status expand or limit the popularization of popular culture in Edo? How and why? Ultimately, how "floating" was the "floating world"?

Your effort should be about 1500 words. Due Tuesday, March 12th.

2.

First: look through the course materials, surf the Web, and scan recent news media and mags for an item, practice, or phenomenon which you could count as belonging to "Popular Culture in Urban Japan." Pick something that interests you--something that you could find out more about and discuss in relation to some of the themes and ideas presented in our course. Example items might include popular music, sports, festivals, food, drink, anime, manga, TV, movies, advertizing, pachinko, fashion, fads, mizu shôbai, some aspect of consumerism, etc.
HAVE YOUR TOPIC APPROVED BY ME BY THURSDAY, MARCH 5!

You should strive to provide some historical context and to apply some original analysis to your topic. How you go about making historical links may vary according to the kind of item, practice, or phenomenon that you're dealing with. You might compare and contrast a current situation with a past precedent. Or, you might elucidate the historical conditions that gave rise to the item, practice, or phenomenon. Or pehaps historical content is contained within your object of study (as in the case of manga or anime). If you need help, see me.

This writing assignment is NOT intended to be a full-scale "comprehensive" research paper. Rather, its goal is to get you to investigate and to some degree explicate an aspect of Japanese popular/mass culture, and to do so in a format that will allow you to offer and argue your opinions, analyses, and interpretations. Don't limit yourself to mere description. You might think of your paper in three parts (but it doesn't have to be formatted like this):

1) Description of your item/practice/phenomenon
2) Discussion of some relevant historical background
3) Analysis and interpretation that springs from 1, 2, and you

Document your sources appropriately, following Chicago style citations as described in A Pocket Style Manual or any other consistent social science or humanities format. The rough draft should consist of at least a representative chunk of the full paper (4-5 pages) and a detailed outline of the rest.

You will be graded on the process as well as the final product of your writing. This means that I will be evaluating the quality of your first draft as a first draft and the quality of the final product as an improvement and refinement of the first draft. The final product should be around 3000 words (10-12 pages. I will take aesthetics into consideration! It should look attractive to read.
I will also look at penultimate drafts as the need might arise.

Rough draft is due Thursday, March 28th.
Final draft is due:
Tuesday, May 14th (for 3 points extra, email or hard copy)
Thursday, May 16th (for 1.5 points extra, email or hard copy)
Saturday, May 18th by High Noon (for no points extra, email only)
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