American Lit

In American literature, we studied the mythology of Native American Cultures, including "The World on a Turtle's Back" by the Iroquois, and Coyote Stories from the Okanogan tribes. We learned about traits of creation myths, the use of archetypes, such as the Trickster, and techniques such as anthropomorphism.

To display what we learned, we wrote and produced our own Original Creation Myths to explain the existence of at least one thing. We had to include at least one trickster character and an anthropomorphic character.

For creation myth, I decided to write about the origins of music. The entire premise of the story is divine beings teaching the humans about sound one aspect at a time. It starts as a divine mother who learns that anything can create a sound. She then gives birth to 2 children that expand on her ideas. They teach the humans that these sounds can be organized to give different moods, as well as played in different rhythms and tempos to give different styles. These two sons named their ideas music.

What other way to present a story about music than with a song? I organized the song very in a very specific way. The introduction is rather dry, with a staccato C note on every 1 and 4 beat. This represents the raw ideas of the divine mother. The beat then explodes into a more melodic tune of a broken C chord with signing vocals. It then changes into a more dramatic minor chord progression. This represents the ideas of the first son who taught the humans how sounds can be organized to fit different moods. The final part is more of a rhythmic, fast paced phrase that represents the second son who focused on styling these sounds. It finally ends with both of the brothers declaring their creation as music.

Overall, I believe the way I completed this project turned out very well because it allowed me to express my interests and talents as well as get an A.

For this assignment, we were given a list of poems written by the famous Emily Dickinson. The goal was to use our understanding and theme and romanticism to unpack one poem of our choice. The poem we chose was "I Dwell In Possibility". This poem displayed the ideas of art and open-mindedness in poetry through the analogy that poetry and writing is like a house with many windows that provide different perspectives.

For the second half of the assignment, we performed the poem ourselves with our own original score to accompany the speaker. Of course, I was behind the score. I wanted it to have a minor and somewhat whimsical sound to really capture that feeling of romanticism.

Oral Presentation of Final Product

Oral Summary of Project