Cowell (Colorado St )

General Information

Abstract:

The focus of the course is primarily pre-twentieth century. I structure lectures, discussions and assignments to provide historical contexts for studying U.S. literatures and cultures in particular and analytical tools for studying literature in general. I explore with students a series of "story frameworks" and/or thematic concepts that have structured the development of U.S. cultures: discovery and invention, exceptionalism and continuity, adventure and domesticity, identities, epistemologies, nature and society, confrontation and adaptation. Students keep a running journal of responses to assignments, topics, and class sessions and share them periodically with each other and with me.

Class sessions are frequently framed by a question or series of questions, either from me or from students' journals or discussion. teaching modes include lecture, large and small group discussion, question-answer interchange, individual conference and AV screenings (e.g., "The Yellow-Wallpaper").

Population:

This class, which typically enrolls 45 students, will contain first-through-fourth year undergraduates, though lower division students predominate. It meets requirements for general education as well as for the English major so student interests and backgrounds vary tremendously. I usually expect approximately a third of the class to be English majors. For some non-majors, this is the only literature course they will take. For others, it is the first of many such courses. Still others will have already taken another introductory course or two. The class usually enrolls slightly more women than men. Students are predominantly Anglo.

Texts

Required Texts: The Heath Anthology of American Literature , Paul Lauter ed. et. al.,Vols. 1 and 2

Recommended Texts: C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature, 5th ed.

Readings & Pedagogy

Week # 1

Native American/The New World

Native American Traditions: Winnebago , Pima, Navajo, Tlingit, I, 3-5, 22-26, 40-52, 59- 64;

The Spanish and the New World: Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Perez de Villagra , Hopi responses , I, 7-10, 67-72, 89-99, 120-131, 52-55

Week # 2

ENGLISH COMMUNITY

John Smith , Thomas Morton , John Winthrop , William Bradford , I, 10-21, 146-148, 149-153, 176-177, 183-187, 188-192, 193-198", 198-199, 210-211, 215-220, 221-225;

PURITAN POETRY

Anne Bradstreet , Bay Psalm Book , Edward Taylor , I, 256-261, 272-277, 308, 312, 342-346, 363-365, 373-374

CAPTIVITY NARRATIVE

Mary Rowlandson , I, 317-342

Week # 3

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TENSIONS

Elizabeth Ashbridge , John Woolman, Lucy Turell, Milcah Moore, Sarah Wentworth Morton, anonymous women, I, 579-590, 590-592, 604-610, 641- 643, 658-659, 670-672, 674-677; Hendrick Aupaumut , Fray Carlos José Delgado , Benjamin Franklin , Judith Murray , I, 751-756, 756-761, 790-793, 815-821, 1024-1026, 1032-1039; Franklin : I, 776-789, 829-839, 874- 881

Week # 4

POLITICAL TENSIONS

Iroquois, Hall , Paine , Jefferson , Abigail Adams , Franklin , I, 774-776, 56-59, 685-687, 936-937, 940-955, 957-964, 930-931, 821-822;

NORTH AMERICAN IDENTITIES

Equiano , Occom , Crèvecoeur , Jefferson , I, 694-712, 728-735, 890- 891, 895-899, 969-971

NEOCLASSICAL POETRY

Wheatley , Freneau , I, 712-715, 718-720, 724-725, 727-728, 1042-1043, 1048-1049, 1059-1061, 1062-1063, 1065; JOURNALS DUE

Week # 5

CONSTRUCTING AN AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY

Hispanic tales , James Fenimore Cooper , Catharine Maria Sedgwick , I, 1214-1216, 1228-1231, 1236,1280- 1289, 1308-1322

VERSIONS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

Ralph Waldo Emerson I, 1467- 1474,1478-1482, 1494-1498, 1578, 1579 (begin reading for next class)

Margaret Fuller , Henry David Thoreau , I,1580-1585, 1604-1626, 1964-1981

Week # 6

SLAVE NARRATIVES

Frederick Douglass , Harriet Jacobs , I, 1637-1639, 1673-1680, 1723-1736, 1742-1750

VERSIONS OF NATURE

Seattle, Thoreau , Caroline Kirkland , Emily Dickinson , I, 1769-1772, 1981-1991, 2008-2016, 2286-2297, 2895-2896, 2861-2862

VARIETIES OF NARRATIVE:

Nathaniel Hawthorne , Harriet Beecher Stowe , I, 2065-2082, 2307-2323

Week # 7

VARIETIES OF NARRATIVE:

Melville , I, 2400-2431

POETIC TRADITIONS

Aztec and Inuit , Songs and Ballads , Harper , I, 2663-2671, 2671-2675, 2679-2686, 1915-1922

Week # 8

POETIC TRADITIONS

Walt Whitman , I, 2709-2712, 2727-2740 (11. 1-349), 2772-2778 (11. 1198-1336); Dickinson , I, 2838-2844, Poems numbered 67, 130, 211, 249, 252, 258, 280, 324, 327, 341, 435, 448, 465, 501, 613, 657, 712, 754, 1129, 1755

VOICES FROM THE WORKPLACE

Mark Twain , II, 214-243

Week # 9

VOICES FROM THE WORKPLACE

Rebecca Harding Davis , Corridos , II, 41-68, 798-801

REGIONAL VOICES; WESTERN

Hamlin Garland , II, 658-688

REGIONAL VOICES; NEW ENGLAND

Mary Wilkins Freeman , II, 135-159

Week # 10

REGIONAL VOICES; SOUTHERN

Charles Chesnutt , II, 445-455, 462- 473; Kate Chopin , II, 626-637, 645-652

Week # 11

THE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT

William Dean Howells , II, 510-512, 533-542

PSYCHOLOGICAL TENSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

Henry James , II, 548-550, 597-626; JOURNALS DUE;

POLITICAL TENSIONS AND VISIONS;

W. E. B. Du Bois , Booker T. Washington , II, 782-790, 851-853, 866-877

Week # 12

VERSIONS OF NATURE

Stephen Crane , II, 689-691, 697-714, 722-725; Frost , II, 1099-1104, 1107- 1108, 1113, 1115, 1116-1117; Sherwood Anderson , II, 1118-1127

Week # 13

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TENSIONS

Edith Wharton , II, 985-1000, 1024- 1033; Susan Glaspell , II, 1076-1087; Charlotte Perkins Gilman , II, 760-773

Week # 14

AMERICAN IDENTITIES:

Marietta Holley , Edith Eaton , Gertrude Bonnin , II, 754-759, 884-895, 910-921

THE USES OF MEMORY

Bobbi Ann Mason, "Shiloh," II, 2116- 2126; Langston Hughes , "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," II, 1488-1489; Adrienne Rich , "Power," II, 2413-2414; Joy Harjo , "Remember," II, 2548.

Reading Journals

Instructions

Reading Journal Instructions: The purpose of this assignment is to help you think in writing about your reading. Essentially, the assignment is to reactto your reading. Your reactions may be free-form or formal. They may (and probably will) vary tremendously as the reading assignments change. Here are some possibilities. This list is NOT comprehensive, but merely suggestions to get you started.

1. Write a series of questions the readings raise for you. 2. Compare some of the works you've read. What similarities strike you? What differences? 3. List the problems you had with the reading. Was the language archaic? Was the historical background unfamiliar to you? Did the writer seem to work from assumptions or values you are uncomfortable with? 4. Discuss an issue in the readings that seems relevant today? Has the issue changed? Why? Why not? 5. Write a brief reaction to your reading. After the class has discussed the assignment, react again. Have any of your ideas changed? Why? Why not? 6. Focus a series of entries on a concept we're discussing in class. You might write several entries on characterization, on Puritanism, on nature, on regionalism, on multiculturalism, on racism, on "the woman question," on the invention of the new world, on the construction of identity, etc. 7. Imagine you are living at the time and in the place that a particular work is written. Which of your assumptions about the physical world would likely be different? Which assumptions about human culture and human relations would likely be different? Are there things you could think then that are inconceivable now? Are there things you think now that would have been inconceivable then? 8. Create your own entries. Or get some ideas from others by sharing your journals with other students in the class. (To avoid plagiarism, don't forget to use their ideas only as springboards to your own.

LOGISTICS;

1. Keep your class notes separate from your journals. 2. Do not simply rehash class discussions in your journals. While you may wish to comment on those discussions occasionally, make the journal your own. 3.Twice during the semester, I will collect your journals and read selected entries in them. I will ask you to designate the five most interesting entries, by whatever criteria you choose (most perplexing? most complex? best written? most angry? most whatever). During the final examination period, I will collect the journals for a third time and skim the single entry you select for me. I plan to return the journals during that period, but if time does not permit, journals may be picked up in my office with the final examinations.

Midterm Questions

1. Compare an aspect of Benjamin Franklin 's enlightenment-based world view with a parallel aspect of Ralph Waldo Emerson 's romantic vision.

2. Discuss the ways in which cultural diversity shapes early North American literature.

3. Contrast the treatment of nature in neoclassical and romantic texts. Include specific examples to illustrate your contrasts.

4. Compare Prince Hall 's arguments with the arguments of the Declaration of Independence.

5. Identify key cultural and social tensions identified by Ashbridge and Woolman .

Final Examination

1. We have discussed the differing constructions of American literature and culture embodied in the contrast between ideas of exceptionalism and continuity. Identify your place on the spectrum between these concepts. Defend your position by providing "readings" of at least three writers from two different centuries discussed this semester.

2. The autobiographical impulse marks a great many works of nineteenth-century American literature. Identify three such works by three different writers and explain how an understanding of that autobiographical tendency illuminates a reading of the texts.

3. Many of the North American writers we have been discussing develop themes relating to marriage. Compare/contrast three such writers to illustrate the variety of ways in which pre-modern writers thought about marriage relationships and institutions. Be sure to support your comparisons.