The end is near!

We will be analyzing Tony Kushner’s landmark play Angels in America for our last forum (and interested people can also raise questions about it at the optional final class meeting). As I mention in the Video Lecture, while this is a two-part play, only Part 1: Millennium Approaches is required reading, and there are three acts to that play. My video lecture discusses sections of Act 1 and is 35 minutes this week.

Angels in America often makes a popular choice for one of the texts students write on in their final papers, which will require you to analyze two pieces of literature together (The Paper assignment will be posted very soon). As an ancillary note, though, I recommend reading Earnest Gaines’ short story “Bloodline” and D. W. Gregory's play Radium Girls before you pick your final paper topic. Both of those texts are excellent options for the final paper, and they are both quite readable and connects well to many other things we've read. So that’s my “pitch” for them. But the first priority is Angels in America, so you can do well on our *last* Forum!

(You are invited, of course, to read Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika, (the three act sequel) but it is not necessary to read that in order to write a good Post, or Paper, on it. I think your time would be better spent on Gaines or Gregory, and then Kushner's second play might make good "beach reading" for July or August!)