Here are the requirements in sum: A Powerpoint slide presentation on the album of your choosing with one slide devoted to author biography, one to major themes in the artist's work and three slides devoted to discussion of individual songs (the songs are of your choosing). Each slide should have two to three bullet points focusing the reader's attention on what you want to highlight. The biography slide, the themes slide and at least one of the songs slides should be accompanied by audio that you have recorded of yourself speaking, providing context as you see fit. I would say the minimum time on the audio should be 2-3 minutes, but of course, if you go over, that's fine. Pick one artist: Beyonce or Selena Quintanilla

First, you will pick a work to analyze. For this assignment, I'd like you to do an album/cd/record/mixtape/whatever they're calling these days from a musical artist who interests you. Pick a work that you have something interesting to say about, and that you can analyze thoughtfully. You will want to analyze this work just as we've been analyzing the various texts from the humanities over the course of the semester, so you'll need to be able to situate it as a significant work of art. I do not make a judgment about the work you choose, however. I'm only interested in seeing how well you can place a more contemporary work next to some of the earlier works we've read. This should give you an opportunity to connect the attitudes and ideas we've been talking about in relation to "classic" works of art to a more modern context. In short, it's an opportunity for you to begin to articulate how our own period also offers us important meditations on major themes of human searching. It also gives us an opportunity to turn our attention to the art of musical and lyrical cultural productions, something we haven't spent much time on this semester. Once you've picked the album you want to analyze, you need to: read as much as you can about the author (googling is fine for author research) listen to the music, and pick three songs you'd like to focus your analysis on. Finally, you need to put together a powerpoint presentation like those I've put together for you over the semester. You are used to these now, and you should follow the following basic format: One slide for relevant artist biographical information. We don't need to know everything about the artist, but be as creative as you can be. You can use things like interviews that you find online, info from the album, etc... Also, whatever you can find on google is probably ok. Just be sure that you pick two or three biographical details that you think are MOST relevant to understanding the poet's work. Sum these up with bullet points, or however you see best fit, and add a little audio recording to clarify your bullet points with discussion. One slide for an overview of the album's major themes. This slide should simply point to patterns that you notice in the author's work overall--over all the songs in the collection, and maybe even in other places (songs you've found online, other works, etc...) You should pick two or three major themes to focus on, and again, you should provide audio for this, with some elaboration of your thinking. Three slides focusing on individual songs. Pick three songs you'd like to analyze further, and devote one slide to each, breaking down the song, focusing on major issues in the song. Major issues may arise because of the content of the song--the ideas being expressed. Major issues may arise because of the structure of the song--the way it the ideas are presented or put together, its musical feel, etc... For each of these slides, use two or three bullet points with text that clarifies the major issues, and again provide some audio in at least one of these three to provide context.