Greetings LitBloggers!
It was a pleasure to meet you today and I look forward to a semester of engaging discussions and writings on our ventures through early American Literature.
Below, I've pasted the syllabus for reference:
Required Texts:
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Package 1 (Volumes A & B), 7th Edition.
isbn: 978-0393929935
&
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
isbn: 978-0374530112
Catalog Description:
American writers since the very beginnings have inscribed the natural landscape and crossed frontiers of the human heart and soul. We will explore these frontiers and the authors who transcend boundaries into uncharted space in stories of Spanish conquistadors and Native Americans; the narratives of English colonists, African-American slaves, and explorers Lewis and Clark; nature essays of Emerson and Thoreau, illustrated by the Hudson Valley School; poetry by Bradstreet, Wheatley, Whitman, and Dickinson; fiction by Hawthorne, Melville, and Beecher Stowe. Offered alternate years. Prerequisite: PAID 111, 112 or transfer equivalents. (HEPT, Hist)
Course Description and Objectives:
In the episode “Extra Large Medium” of The Family Guy, Chris and Stewie chase a butterfly and get lost in the woods. Chris justifies their wandering off, saying, “I came out here to observe nature. What did you come out here for?” Stewie responds, “I came to the woods because I wished to live deliberately and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Then, Stewie interrupts the narrative flow by looking at the camera and asking us, the audience, to log on and take a quiz of who said this. The quiz appears on the screen: (A) Robert Frost, (B) Henry David Thoreau, (C) Thornton Mellon. When the “results” appear, it’s 15% Frost, 18% Thoreau, and 67% Mellon. To which, Stewie remarks, “This is why the other countries are beating us you know.”
I start with this little scene because it reminds us that cultural knowledge is relevant even in what many people consider low-culture productions like The Family Guy. But more importantly, the joke is based on the idea of a national literary tradition. [As a side-note, Thornton Melon is a character in the film Back to School, which is considered low-culture, but they got the very famous author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. to do a cameo appearance.] Bracketing the jokes now, the idea of a national literary tradition is a complex concept that raises a lot of questions regarding its three components, all of which are also matters of AMERICAN FRONTIERS.
Nation: Is there a split between American colonies literature and U.S. national literature? Is U.S. literature postcolonial? If America includes the North and South, why do we limit American literature to the U.S. borders?
Literature: What is literature? How do we know it when we see it as opposed to other, non-literary texts? How do we decide which literature to read amidst the volumes and volumes of it? What does literature do for individuals and societies? What does literature contribute to your liberal arts education?
Tradition: How and why are these old literary texts still relevant? What aspects of them haunt us? How have later U.S. writers written in conversation with these texts, and, for that matter, how were early American/U.S. literary texts written in conversation with European literary traditions? Finally, what fates do these texts face in our increasingly digital era?
This course engages with these and other questions. While you will finish the course with answers, they will likely be provisional answers that can be refined the more you read and contemplate.
To that end, this course is a survey of major literary writers, movements, genres, and themes in the literature of the American colonies and the United States to 1860, just before the Civil War. The course structure includes 4 basic units:
I. Indigenous Culture and Spanish Encounters;
II. Puritans: History, Theology, Poetics;
III. Independence;
IV. Issues and Authors: Nature, Women’s Rights, Slavery & Abolition, Poetics; Poe, Whitman, Dickinson.
This course takes as its main objective acquiring a core set of skills required to analyze, appreciate, and enjoy works of literature with an interest in content, form, and context. You will develop these skills through close reading a wide range of literary works in a variety of genres, writing responses and formal essays about those works that pique your interest, and by completing 2 projects that might even be fun! =]
Throughout this quarter, you should strive to obtain and cultivate the following abilities:
• Develop a thoughtful, informed, and sophisticated perspective on the field of “American Literature” on any given text within that field.
• Situate your perspective in the context of the college, the field, and/or the specific literary studies conversations at hand.
• Communicate your perspective clearly through writing to the appropriate audience, though a digital-media project, and through in-class discussions.
Course Assignments:
Regular Attendance and Rabid Participation:
You are expected to attend class having read the assigned material and prepared to participate in active discussions. Since we are a small group, most class days will include significant discussion in addition to my occasional and short lecture presentations on key topics related to the day’s readings. Significant absence or late arrivals will lower this portion of your grade.
Blog Writings:
You will create and maintain your own blog for this course. There will be regular writing assignments to be completed and posted on your blog by the deadlines indicated—typically your blog writings will be due the night before class meetings. These writings will range from informal to formal in style and will be evaluated based on the requirements established for each assignment. They will help you chew over readings with focus, arrive at class with something in mind to discuss, and they can be very useful when it comes time to write your essays!
Boston Tea Party Project:
We hear a lot about Tea Parties today, but we don’t often hear much about the actual events of 1773 that came, eventually, to be known as the Boston Tea Party. This project calls for reading and research into that particular historical event. Specific instructions will be handed out in class, but the project does consist of research and an in-class round-table discussion in which you’ll draw upon your findings to advance everyone’s knowledge of the BTP.
Digital Media Group Project:
In this project, you and your group-mates are going to put the “Book” back in Facebook. More precisely, you will create and present a digital media homage to one of the texts from our syllabus as a way of thinking about its literary forms and themes and about what opportunities we have for literature in the age of Facebook. Specific instructions will be handed out in class, but this project might entail re-telling a story through character Facebook profiles or other digital formats and tools.
Two Formal Papers and Draft Workshops:
You will write two evidence-based, thesis-driven essays this semester. One is a close-reading analysis of a single text. The second essay synthesizes close readings of 2-3 texts along with research. Your essays will go through draft workshops aimed at helping you revise the final versions. Attendance is required at the workshops—failure to attend or failure to bring a substantial draft will result in an automatic 1/3 reduction of your grade for that paper (i.e. a B becomes a B-). These assignments will be handed out well in advance of the due dates so you can start planning and drafting early. You will receive your graded essay one week from turning it in to me.
Midterm and Final Exams:
The midterm exam is Friday, October 21 during our regularly scheduled class meeting. The final exam is scheduled for December 14th, 1:15-3:15pm. I will distribute review suggestions in advance of both exams.
Grading/Evaluation Policies:
Blog 20%
Boston Tea Party Project 5%
Digital Media Group Project 15%
Essay 1 15%
Essay 2 20%
Mid-Term Exam 10%
Final Exam 15%
Submitting Your Essays:
Your essays must be submitted to me on the assigned dates (see schedule below). In case of medical or other emergency, contact me before the due date to discuss an extension; extensions are granted only under highly exceptional circumstances. Late papers will receive a 1/3 grade reduction for each day past the due date, and no papers are accepted after the final exam.
Office Hours:
You are greatly encouraged to use my office hours early and often! I have found office hour meetings significantly productive, whether in the brainstorming phases of writing, working through a challenging literary work or idea, or in the midst of essay revisions. I have listed office hours, but I will often work in my office and usually with the door open so please drop by.
Academic Honesty:
With regard to plagiarism, don’t do it! Whether the work of others is submitted through purposeful mendacity or for lack of familiarity with what constitutes plagiarism, it is a serious academic offense that you will do well to avoid. I am happy to help you avoid this issue, so bring any questions to class or office hours before the assignment is due.
Modifications:
Course schedule subject to change with notification from instructor. Course policies will be modified only if absolutely necessary.
ENG 352: American Literature to 1860: Fall 2011
Schedule of Reading and Writing Assignments
You are expected to complete assignments for the day on which they are listed. You will be notified of any changes to this schedule well in advance both in class and electronically.
Wed., Aug. 31 Course Introduction
Fri., Sep. 2 Indigenous Narrative Flows
Native American Trickster Tales: Winnebago, Sioux, Clatsop Chinook, Navajo, pp. 72-86; 91-103
Mon., Sep. 5 Spanish Conquests and Encounters I
Christopher Columbus, Bartolome de Las Casas, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca pp. 31-47
Wed., Sep. 7 Spanish Conquests and Encounters II
Screening: Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain)
Fri., Sep. 9 Spanish Conquests and Encounters III
Film Discussion, Preparing for the Puritans
Mon., Sep. 12 New England History: Puritans, History, Theology I
John Smith; William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation Chapters IX-END, pp. 55-72; 114-138
Wed., Sep. 14 New England History: Puritans, History, Theology II
Thomas Morton The New English Canaan, John Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity, pp. 138-158
Fri., Sep. 16 Puritan Poetics
Anne Bradstreet Poems, Michael Wigglesworth from The Day of Doom, pp. 187-234
Mon., Sep. 19 Puritans Reflected
Nathanael Hawthorne “Young Goodman Brown” “The May-Pole of the Merrymount” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”
(1289-98; 1304-20)
Wed., Sep. 21 Captivity Narrative: An American Genre
Mary Rowlandson Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Hannah Dustan’s Captivity and Revenge, pp. 235-267; 343-353
Fri., Sep. 23 American Frontiers I
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur from Letters from an American Farmer, pp. 595-616
Mon., Sep. 26 American Frontiers II
James Fennimore Cooper from The Pioneers, William Cullen Bryant Poems, pp. 985-1002; 1044-51
Essay Draft Workshop
Wed., Sep. 28 Transition Day: From Settling the Frontiers Toward the Nation
Fri., Sep. 30 Benjamin Franklin “The Way to Wealth.” “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One,” “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” Autobiography [Part I], pp. 449-518
Mon., Oct. 3 Boston Tea Party Week
Readings To be distributed
Essay 1 Due
Wed., Oct. 5 Boston Tea Party Week
Readings To be distributed
Fri., Oct. 7 Boston Tea Party In-Class Discussion
Mon., Oct. 10 Whitman, Federalist Papers
Walt Whitman “Democratic Vistas” (pdf file)
Wed., Oct. 12 The Deleted Revolution I
Alejo Carpentier The Kingdom of this World, Part I pp. 1-47
Fri., Oct. 14 The Deleted Revolution II
Alejo Carpentier The Kingdom of this World, Parts II-III pp. 49-150.
Mon., Oct. 17 The Deleted Revolution III
Alejo Carpentier The Kingdom of this World, Finish the Novel
Wed., Oct. 19 Midterm Exam Review
Fri., Oct. 21 Midterm Exam
Mon., Oct. 24 Fall Break—No Class
Wed., Oct. 26 Fall Break—No Class
Fri., Oct. 28 Transcendentalists I
Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature, “Self Reliance”
pp. 1106-38; 1163-80
Mon., Oct. 31 Transcendentalists II
Ralph Waldo Emerson “The American Scholar,” “The Poet,” “Each and All,” “Brahma”, pp. 1138-51; 1180-95; 1244-45; 1251
Wed., Nov. 2 Transcendentalists III
Henry David Thoreau Walden Chapters 1 “Economy” and 5 “Solitude” pp. 1872-1914; 1940-45
Fri., Nov. 4 Transcendentalists IV
Henry David Thoreau Walden Chapters 2 “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” and 9 “The Ponds,” pp. 1914-24; 1963-77 and the Map on p.2022
Mon., Nov. 7 Women and “The Spheres” I
Rebecca Harding Davis Life in the Iron-Mills, pp. 2599-2625
Wed., Nov. 9 Women and “The Spheres” II
Margaret Fuller from The Great Lawsuit, pp. 1640-59
Fri., Nov. 11 Women and “The Spheres” III
Herman Melville “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”
pp. 2389-2405
Digital Media Group Project Due
Mon., Nov. 14 Writing Lives out of Slavery I
Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
pp. 2064-129
Wed., Nov. 16 Writing Lives out of Slavery II
Harriet Beecher Stowe from Uncle Tom’s Cabin Chapters III, VII, and IX pp. 1708-32
Fri., Nov. 18 Writing Lives out of Slavery III
Catching up on Reading and Discussion
Mon., Nov. 21 Labor and Alienation
Herman Melville “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, pp. 2363-89
Wed., Nov. 23 Thanksgiving Break—No Class
Fri., Nov. 25 Thanksgiving Break—No Class
Mon., Nov. 28 Putting American Literature on the European Map
Edgar Allan Poe “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amontillado”
pp. 1536-39; 1612-16
Essay 2 Draft Workshop
Wed., Nov. 30 Inventing the Detective Story
Edgar Allan Poe “The Purloined Letter,” pp. 1599-1611
Fri., Dec. 2 Pillar of Poetry I: Walt Whitman
Song of Myself, pp. 2210-54
Mon., Dec. 5 Pillar of Poetry II: Emily Dickinson
Poems on pp. 2558-80
Wed., Dec. 7 Mapping Our Literary Peregrinations
Essay 2 Due
Fri., Dec. 9 Final Exam Review
Wednesday, December 14th Final Exam: 1:15-3:15pm
