OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this project is acquaint you with two books (or book-length writings) on Musical Theater, and for you to demonstrate your ability to evaluate scholarly work on the topic.

Guidelines

• In brief, you are to write two (2) reviews of books, doctoral dissertations or other scholarly writings, such as would be published in MLA Notes, Music & Letters, or similar professional journals, according to the following guidelines.
• Both of the items that you choose to review must be approved in advance by me. Failure to secure my approval of either item that you review will result in an automatic 25-point deduction from the earned grade. Send complete publication information (author, title, year of publication) to me via email, and wait for my reply.
• You are to choose your two (2) items, one in each of the following categories:
  • A general history, commentary, or reference work (not used in any other assignment in this course) on a significant portion of the history of the American Musical Theater. Such items will deal with multiple shows and broad trends over at least a decade and may be found in the ML 1711 to 1711.8 range (and elsewhere) in the UCF Library.
  • A specialized book or similar item related to the American musical Theater. Suitable topics include biographies of theater composers, lyricists, performers, directors, etc., studies of the works or even a single show by a single composer or other creative individual, studies of narrowly defined aspects of theater, e.g., lighting, costumes, choreography, etc., or any other relatively specific topic.
• The item itself should be at least 100 pages of primarily scholarly or professional text. Longer items that are well illustrated may be allowed, so long as there is sufficient text in them. Similarly, editions of music must contain an equivalent amount of descriptive or analytical text (in addition to the printed music) to merit a review. Items that were written for juveniles, as textbooks, as picture books, or as popular entertainment are not allowed, nor are recordings, DVDs, and similar items.
• Doctoral dissertations over 200 pages (assuming they contain double-spaced text) may be chosen for review, provided they meet all other criteria listed above. If a dissertation has been revised and published as a book, you should consider that later version for review.
• Multiple individuals may review the same book, but as always it is your responsibility to acquire the item you wish to review, and you may not request extensions for any reason related to problems acquiring a particular item.
• You are encouraged to choose an item that relates to your bibliography project or to other professional interests.

Writing the Review

• Again, you must secure my permission to review a particular item, so make sure that your choice conforms to the guidelines above. If possible, have at least 2-3 alternate titles in mind.
• It is your responsibility to obtain a copy of the book from any source that you wish to use. You are not required to purchase a book, although you may, if you desire. Instead, you can find items in the UCF Library, other area libraries, or via ILL. Note, however, that you cannot argue for an extension based on problems in obtaining the item.
• SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT ELECTRONIC FORMATS: You may choose to review a book in an electronic format, i.e. an "eBook" on a Kindle or other reader. You are responsible, however, for ensuring that all technical issues are resolved with the reading device that you own, borrow or otherwise acquire. If you choose an eBook, you should include some comments in your review about the format, its compabilty with your reader and any other relevant technical issues. Also, you may not argue for an extension to complete the assignment based on technical problems with the eBook format.
• The focus of your review should be primarily descriptive and evaluative, and if possible, should place the item into the context of similar publications intended for a professional audience. In addition to describing the item, you should pass judgement on the value of it, including such aspects as the apparent accuracy of the contents, its organization and ease of use, the quality of the object's production, and any obvious errors or problems that you note. You should conclude your review with a comment on the likely users for the item and your opinion of who might need or want to use or purchase this item.
• Although you may want to mention (briefly) similar items for comparison in your review, do not include footnotes to reference such items. Instead give full citations in the body of your review. See recent issues of Notes or other journals for models of how to do that, or ask me for help.
• In general, your review should make effective use of your word-processor's capabilities to ensure that all items of a type, e.g., paragraphs, line-spacing, fonts, etc., are treated consistently. You will be down-graded if your review relies too heavily on hand-formatting, rather than using the program's features, to solve formatting problems. See the instructions for the "major paper" for a more detailed discussion of this matter.

Presentation and Grading of the Final Documents

• NB., You may choose to complete the two reviews in any order that you prefer.
• Create a header for your review that is similar to the ones used in MLA Notes or any other professional journal reviews. At a minimum, the header must include the complete publication information, including the item's ISBN, notice of any series in which the item appears, and a brief physical description of the item and its contents. Again, see Notes or a similar journal for a model.
• Save your review as a WORD file or something compatible with WORD XP, RTF (and similar) files are acceptable, provided the formatting of your paper remains visible. Avoid any program that saves files in a compressed or altered format.
• Submit your review to me as an electronic attachment to an email. Do NOT submit PDFs or other fixed formats (which prevent me from commenting and grading).
• The acceptable minimum length of this review (not counting the header or your signature) is 1000 words, and the maximum is 1500 words. Again, do not include footnotes in the review, but use in-line citations for any references.
• Grading of the review itself will be split between formatting and the physical presentation of the review, i.e., the formatting within the WORD file (10%), basic writing, i.e., grammar, spelling, etc. (40%) and the content of your review (50%).
• The overall grade for each review counts for 5% of your course grade, i.e., 10% for the two (2) reviews.
• The first review is due to me by 5:00 pm on Friday, 23 March 2018.
• The second review is due to me by 5:00 pm on Friday, 13 April 2018.

Approved Titles

General Histories

Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings : The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim - J. Mongerio

Dan Dietz, The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals - M. Lewis (2nd)

Denny Martin Flinn, The Great American Book Musical: A Manifesto, a Monograph, a Manual - C. Rodriguez

Denny Martin Flinn, The Great American Book Musical: A Manifesto, a Monograph, a Manual - J. Cutting (2nd)

Thomas S. Hischak, Off-Broadway Musicals Since 1919: From Greenwich Village Follies to The Toxic Avenger - R. LaVo (2nd)

Nathan Hurwitz, A History of the American Musical Theater: No Business Like It - L Morgan

John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of American Musical Theater - K. Hardin

David H. Lewis, Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History. - K.Y. Chan

Scott Miller, Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre - S. Amann

Ethan Mordden, Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theatre - A. Jowers (2nd)

Ethan Mordden, The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen : the Last Twenty-five Years of the Broadway Musical - K. Arpin (2nd)

Sheldon Patinkin, "No legs, no jokes, no chance": a history of the American musical theatre - A. Ramirez

Peter Riddle, The American Musical: History & Development - A. Soler-Garzon (2nd)

Barry Singer, Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond - N. Costanza (2nd)

Specialized Studies

Ernesto R. Acevedo Munoz, West Side Story as Cinema: The Making and Impact of an American Masterpiece. - N. Costanza

Grace Barnes, Her Turn on Stage: The Role of Women in Musical Theatre - J. Mongerio (2nd)

Henry Bial, Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage - M. Lewis

Myrna Katz Frommer & Harvey Frommer, It Happened on Broadway : an Oral History of the Great White Way - J. Cutting

M. Shane Grant, Under The Rainbow: Post-Closet Gay Male Representation In American Theatre and Television (FSU dissertation) - K. Arpin

Peter Lawrence, Production Stage Management for Broadway - K.Y. Chan (2nd)

Scott Miller, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals - R. LaVo

Lin Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton the Revolution - C. Rodriguez (2nd)

Gerald Nachman, Showstopers: the surprising backstage stories of Broadway's most remarkable songs - A. Ramirez (2nd)

Carol Oja, Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War - K. Hardin (2nd)

Don M. Randel, Matthew Shaftel, and Susan Forscher Weiss. A Cole Porter Companion - L. Morgan (2nd)

Meryl Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life - A. Jowers

Sanford Sterlicht, A Reader's Guide to Modern American Drama - A. Soler-Garzon

Elizabeth A. Wells, West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical - S. Amann (2nd)