Each group of students takes charge of one chapter. You can vary the sources within each category if you find something more interesting to you. Each group will work with primary sources (novels, films, paintings, for example) and secondary sources (academic essays, reviews, histories, for example).  I use the time frames here as rough divisions but each group will come up with a title and a sharper focus on your own.  You can do the detective work to find the most interesting sources!  This is meant as a start.

 19th Century Geisha 

                  Possible sources: Impressionist paintings; Gilbert & Sullivan's 1885 musical, The Mikado; Sidney Jones 1894 musical, The Geisha; travelogues; newspaper reports.
websites of interest: http://www.baxleystamps.com/litho/hasegawa/hase_kohana.shtml
Angela, Emily, Kath,  Mei, Merry Belle

20th Century Madame Butterfly

                 Associated with the "geisha girl" and first created by Pierre Loti in his 1887 novel, Madame Chrysantheme, Madame Butterfly had a long life in 20th century fiction and fantasy.  You can find a novel, a play, an opera, six movies and contemporary tourist sites in Nagasaki.  Several secondary sources are easily available.  The play and film titled M Butterfly and the musical Miss Saigon put a different spin on the story for late 20th century audiences.
Feitong, Joann, Jiwon, Ravi, Zach
 

Books by and about Japanese Women in the 1920s and 30s
           An interesting phenomenon during this period is the popularity of autobiographical books in English by Japanese women such as Daughter of a Samurai, Restless Waves, and Facing Two Ways.  Geisha still figure in books such as Akiyama's 1937 Story of the Geisha Girl; Related material might be found in such books as Kimono, by John Paris. 
Imprint New York, Boni and Liveright [c1922] 
 

Cold War Geisha
               "Geisha girls" were popular characters in postwar American films such My Geisha, Cry for Happy, Teahouse of the August Moon, and in a somewhat different form in Boy Geisha and Sayonara.  Several novels and non-fiction books are available, too.
Ash, Cameron, Robyn, Sarah
 

Late 20th century Geisha
              There are several art books, popular histories of geisha and biographies of individual geisha (such as Sadayacco), the autobiographical work, Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki. Websites, tours, and popular novels featuring geisha are part of this era.
Brittany, Cam, Chandler, Chelsea, Farrah, Kate