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ENGL 2601 SYLLABUS 1 OF 14

English 2601-YA/YAO: American Literature

Course Location: AT-5041 and OA-2020 Class Times: Wed., Fri., 2:30pm–4pm Prerequisites: ENGL 1111/1112

Table of Contents Instructor Information ................................................................................................................1

Course Description ....................................................................................................................1

Learner Outcomes .....................................................................................................................2

Required Course Text(s) ................................................................................................................... 2

Course Website .................................................................................................................................. 2

Course Schedule ........................................................................................................................3

Assignments and Evaluation .................................................................................................. 12

Assignment Policies ......................................................................................................................... 12

Marking Standards ................................................................................................................... 13

Collaboration/Plagiarism Rules .............................................................................................. 13

Course Policies ......................................................................................................................................... 13

University Policies .................................................................................................................................... 14

Instructor Information

Instructor: Dr. Daniel Hannah

Office: RB 3039

Telephone: 343 8663

Email: [email protected]

Office Hours: Wed. 11am–12pm.

Course Description

How have various authors imagined ‘America’? How have American authors grappled

with and reshaped the forms of literature? How have the borders of America been

defined with regards to race, gender, class and sexuality?

Using these questions as our springboard, this course will offer an introduction to

American literature from a variety of genres including travel literature, oral narratives,

plays, poetry, novels, graphic novels and film. No one course can pretend to offer a

comprehensive survey of American texts. For that reason, I have subdivided this course

into a series of themes (see schedule over page). The discussion of texts under these

themes will not always be chronological, although we will be looking primarily at pre-

twentieth-century texts in the first semester and twentieth-century texts in the second

semester.


Learner Outcomes

Students who have completed all the readings, attended all the lectures, submitted all

the assignments, and consistently engaged with the course material should, by the end

of the course, be able to:

read American literature in a variety of genres and in a variety of historical contexts critically, and assess their rhetorical, ideological and aesthetic strategies.

analyze specific literary devices and explain how those devices contribute to the meaning of a literary text.

explain the role of literature in articulating and creating categories of American identity.

explain how American texts are produced by, and produce, their historical and cultural context.

identify and assess social, environmental and other ethical themes presented in American texts.

write well (grammatically correct, clear, effective prose).

communicate ideas effectively and coherently, in both the persuasive essay, and a variety of other forms.

use library resources to research a topic and use what they discover to illuminate a text.

Required Course Text(s)

First Semester:

Norton Anthology of American Literature: Special Package I: Volumes A and B with

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (Norton Critical Edition)

Second Semester:

Norton Anthology of American Literature: Special Package II: Volumes C, D, and E with

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (Norton Critical Edition)

Art Spiegelman, Maus, Volumes I and II (Boxed Set)

Tony Kushner, Angels in America

All texts are available from the university bookstore.

Course Website

Desire2Learn


Course Schedule

FIRST SEMESTER

SECTION 1: AMERICAN IDENTITIES AND MYTHOLOGIES

Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s description of the nation as an ‘imagined

community’, this section of the course will explore the following:

• In what ways can we read ‘America’ as a mythological or imagined space? • What is the relationship between nationalism (in its various guises) and

identity? • To what extent has American national identity been a site of contest and

conflict? • How were early (and indeed later) constructions of America influenced by

understandings of Europe? • How did European immigrants respond to First Nations people? How did

First Nations people respond to Europeans? What part does this legacy play in constructions of American identity?

Week One

Sept. 16 Course Handout and Introduction

Sept. 18 Native American Trickster Tales

Q1 Shape-shifting is a central theme in these texts. How might shape-shifting also play a role in their structure or formal arrangement?

Q2 These transcribed oral texts suggest intimate links between word-making and world-making. How might this challenge our usual expectations for written documents?

Week Two

Sept. 23 NO CLASS

Sept. 25 John Smith, excerpt from The General History of Virginia, New England,

and the Summer Isles

William Bradford, excerpt from Of Plymouth Plantation

Q1 Why has the Pocahontas story become so iconic in popular American culture? Q2 Of Plymouth Plantation, Book II, Ch. XI: What does the writing of the Mayflower

Compact reveal about the Puritan community’s attitude toward “strangers”? Or about the Puritans’ vision of themselves as an “elect” group? What links does it draw between divine authority and the authority of the written word?


Week Three

Sept. 30 Anne Bradstreet selection

Cotton Mather, selections from The Wonders of the Invisible World and

Magnalia Christi Americana

Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Q1 ‘The Author to Her Book’: What words best describe the tone adopted by Bradstreet here? How can we describe her attitude toward her own literary accomplishments?

Q2 ‘Burning of Our House’: What is Bradstreet’s consolation for this event? Is it convincing?

Q3 Compare the three poems farewelling dead children or grandchildren. What happens to the way in which Bradstreet represents and works through grief in these poems?

Oct. 2 Jean de Crèvecoeur, ‘What is an American?’ from Letters from an

American Farmer

Thomas Paine, selections from Common Sense

Q1 What are the key traits, for Crèvecoeur, of an ‘authentic’ American? Q2 What is the nature of the relationship between European and American in

Crèvecoeur’s letter? Q3 How does Crèvecoeur handle the presence of First Nations Americans? Or

Black Americans?

Week Four

Oct. 7 GROUP ASSESSMENT #1

Washington Irving, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’

Q1 Why does Irving refer back to Cotton Mather? Q2 How do ethnic or national ties shape the community of Sleepy Hollow? Q3 What is the significance of the narrative frame?

Oct. 9 NO CLASS

Week Five

Oct. 14 Phyllis Wheatley, selected poems

Robert Hayden, “A Letter from Phillis Wheatley”

Q1 How does structure play a role Wheatley’s verse? Q2 To what extent does Wheatley’s verse subvert expectations? Q3 How does Hayden’s poem respond to themes raised by Wheatley’s writing?


SECTION 2: AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISMS

In this section of the course we will be exploring the following questions:

• To what extent do American narratives of the nineteenth century espouse individualism?

• How might American literature be read as the site of competing individualisms?

• How might American literature be read as the site of a clash between individualism and communal narratives? Or between private and public identities?

• How do arguments for and against individualism impact representations of race, gender and class?

Oct. 16 Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Self-Reliance’, ‘Nature’

Q1 As a lecturer, Emerson was widely commended for his ability to captivate an audience. How important is the concept of audience to these essays?

Q2 What is Emerson’s attitude toward reading? Is it consistent? Q3 Is Emerson an ecologically sensitive writer?

Week Six

Oct. 21 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Q1 What aspects of The Scarlet Letter call up the self-reliant transcendentalism of Emerson? Does the novel validate or critique these features?

Q2 How does Hawthorne’s narrator ask us to read Hester’s scarlet letter as a symbol, sign or “type”? To what extent does the novel offer competing interpretations of the letter?

Oct. 23 Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Week Seven

Oct. 28 Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Oct. 30 Herman Melville, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’

Q1 How would you characterize Bartleby’s individualism?

Q2 What do his refusals tell us about identity?


Week Eight

Nov. 4 Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ (cp)

Q1 In lines 381 through 435, Whitman favors shorter lines; in lines 714 through 796, he moves back to very long ones. What connections do you sense between line length, subject, and mood in ‘Song of Myself’?

Q2 How does Whitman deploy the “grass” as a symbol? What does it represent? (See stanzas 1, 6, 17, 31, 33, 39, 49, 52).

Q3 What might connect the “I” of Whitman’s poem to the “self-reliant” subject of Emerson’s writing?

Nov. 6 GROUP ASSESSMENT #2

Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’

Week Nine

Nov. 11 FIRST ESSAY DUE IN CLASS

Emily Dickinson selection (cp)

Q1 What effects are generated by Dickinson’s deployment of the dash? Q2 How does the brevity of Dickinson’s verse affect the way we read it? Q3 How does Dickinson represent poetry? (see 448, 657, 585) Q4 How does she handle the poet’s relationship with nature? (see 526, 1068,

1510, 1755)

Nov. 13 Henry James, “Daisy Miller”

Q1 How might James’s novel be related to the various models of individualism we have explored in the course so far?

Q2 How might the story of Daisy be a story of individualism, or of the struggle between the individual and society?

Week Ten

Nov. 18 Henry James, “Daisy Miller”

SECTION 3: AMERICAN GENEALOGIES

In this section of the course, we will consider how questions of race and gender

inform understandings of the nation, nationalism and national space in works of

literature.

In her study of the interlinking of racism and nationalism, Alys Eve

Weinbaum explores how “ideas of reproductive genealogical connection secure

notions of belonging in those contexts in which the nation is conceived of as

racially homogenous” (8). Accordingly, we will be thinking about:


(a) how American nationalism and visions of America are tied to

“homogenous” understandings of whiteness during the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries;

(b) how the woman’s body, as a site of reproductive futurity, is called on to

represent the nation in various texts;

(c) how writers on the margins of the nation (for instance, Frederick

Douglass) contest the linking of whiteness and Americanness.

Nov. 20 Frederick Douglass, Narrative (cp)

Q1 What connections might we draw between slavery and a genealogical notion of nation and nationalism?

Q2 How do questions of genealogy influence the form of Douglass’s narrative? Q3 How does Douglass handle the relationship between plantation and nation?

Week Eleven

Nov. 25 Frederick Douglass, Narrative (cp)

Q1 How might we describe the representation of violence in the opening chapters of Douglass’s narrative?

Q2 How do these early scenes compare with Douglass’s narration of his confrontation with Covey?

Q3 How does Douglass’s narrative evoke and/or challenge an Emersonian vision of the self-reliant man?

Nov. 27 GROUP ASSESSMENT #3

Kate Chopin, ‘The Storm’

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘Turned’ (cp)

Week Twelve

Dec. 2 Willa Cather, My Ántonia

Immigration and Emigration

Q1 What is the significance of the personal pronoun in Cather’s title? Q2 What qualities does Cather attribute to the immigrants Jim encounters? Q3 How would you characterise the novel’s response to American immigrant

communities? Q4 How would you characterise the novel’s depiction of rural Nebraska?

Dec. 4 Willa Cather, My Ántonia

Gender and Desire

Q1 How should we read the scene in which Jim kills the rattler? Q2 Ántonia is physically coarsened and toughened by working on the family's

farm. Does Cather's narrative see this change as a diminishment of her femininity? Or is Ántonia's increasing physical strength seen as an asset?


Q3 Why is it significant that Jim would have liked to have had Ántonia as “a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister” (152)? Is there “something queer” (105) about Jim?

SECOND SEMESTER

SECTION 4: AMERICAN MODERNISMS

In this section of the course, we will be considering the cultural contexts of

American modernisms in the early twentieth century. Key questions to be

explored include:

• To what extent did modernism constitute something “new” in American literature?

• What is the relationship between modernism and the “modern”?” • What connections exist between modernism’s formal experimentations and

cultural shifts during this period? • Why were figures of displacement and waste so crucial to American

modernist aesthetics?

Week One

Jan. 6 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Q1 What does ‘The Waste Land’ reveal about Eliot’s attitude toward the canons of Western and non-Western literature?

Jan. 8 Eliot, The Waste Land

Q1 How do class and gender structure Eliot’s responses to the modern and to the urban in this poem?

Week Two

Jan. 13 Marianne Moore and H. D. selection (cp)

Q1 How does Moore’s poetry differ from the formal experimentations of ‘The Waste Land’?

Q2 What aspects of the modern are being explored in ‘The Fish’? Q3 How does Moore’s poem ‘On Poetry’ offer a way into thinking about her own

practice as a poet?

Jan. 15 Ernest Hemingway, ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’

F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Babylon Revisited’


Week Three

Jan. 20 Nella Larsen, Quicksand

Jan. 22 Nella Larsen, Quicksand

Week Four

Jan. 27 Richard Wright, ‘The Man Who Was Almost a Man’

Jan. 29 GROUP ASSESSMENT #4

Eudora Welty, ‘Petrified Man’

Flannery O’Connor, ‘Good Country People’

Week Five

Feb. 3 Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Q1 Who is the protagonist of Streetcar? Blanche or Stanley? Q2 At the conclusion of the play, with whom do our sympathies lie? Q3 What oppositions are set up by the clash between Blanche and Stanley?

Feb. 5 Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Q1 What is the significance of the title? Q2 What does Blanche desire? Q3 Is the play about other characters’ desires?

SECTION 5: READING HISTORY

Hayden White argues that history makes sense of the past through the act of

“emplotment” (397) – it essentially literary, a process of fiction-making (398). In

this section of the course, we consider the relationship between fiction and the

(re)writing of history with a particular eye to the following issues:

• How fictions complicate our understandings of history as a discourse; • How history engages in a writing of the nation and a policing of people in

the margins; • How oral histories resist and contend with written History; • How written literature seeks to capture a sense of orality.


Week Six

Feb. 10 Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Lullaby’’ (in Norton)

Haydyn White, ‘The Literary Text as Historical Artefact’

Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Yellow Woman’, ‘Language and Literature from a

Pueblo Indian Perspective’ (these texts to be placed on course website)

Q1 Can we connect Hayden White’s ideas about the “emplotment” of history and Silko’s ideas about language and literature?

Q2 Do the stories told in “Lullaby’ and ‘Yellow Woman’ adhere to the ideas of storytelling outlined in Silko’s talk?

Q3 What connections do Silko’s stories make between storytelling and community?

Feb. 12 GROUP ASSESSMENT #5

Simon Ortiz, Preface and from Sand Creek

Week Seven

READING WEEK (FEB. 16-19)

Week Eight

Feb. 24 Sam Shephard, True West

Feb. 26 Adrienne Rich, selected poetry

SECOND ESSAY DUE IN CLASS

Week Nine

Mar. 2 Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus

Q1 How does Spiegelman’s project in Maus correspond to Hayden White’s notions of “emplotment” and “metahistory”?

Q2 What is the role of metaphor in Speigelman’s work? Q3 What commentary does Maus offer on the legacy, representation and the

narratability of the Holocaust/Shoah?

Mar. 4 Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus

Q1 Given the subtitle ‘A Survivor’s Tale’, to what extent are storytelling and survival interlinked in Maus?

Q2 What is the role of language/s? Q3 To what extent might this also be read as a story about silence, absence and

resistance to storytelling?


Week Ten

Mar. 9 GROUP ASSESSMENT #6

Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus

SECTION 6: AMERICAN POSTMODERNISMS

Mar. 11 Raymond Carver, ‘Cathedral’

Thomas Pynchon, ‘Entropy’

Week Eleven

Mar. 16 Toni Morrison, ‘Recitatif’

Mar. 18 Gloria Anzaldua, selections

Week Twelve

Mar. 23 Sherman Alexie, ‘This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona’

Mar. 25 Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Q1 What elements of Kushner’s play make the word “postmodern” a useful shorthand description?

Q2 As a play, how does Kushner’s work stylistically differ from Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire?

Q3 How should we read the subtitle, “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”? How is the “gay” content of the play linked to “national themes”?

Week Thirteen

Mar. 30 Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Q1 How does Kushner’s vision of liberal pluralist America at the end of Perestroika accommodate women?

Q2 How do Kushner’s plays parallel the struggles of women, gay men and African Americans as marginalized citizens?

Q3 How balanced is this system of parallels? Does the play privilege any one group over another?

April 1 Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Exam Review


Assignments and Evaluation

Assignment Due date Value Length

Group work (best 5 of 6)

Throughout course (see schedule for dates)

15% Approx. 2 pages each

Essay #1 November 11, in class 25% 6 pages

Essay #2 February 26, in class 30% 7–10 pages

Participation Throughout course 5% n/a

Final Exam TBA 35% 3 hours

Assignment Policies

Detailed instructions for each assignment will be provided and must be followed.

All assignments, except the group work, are individual assignments and cannot be completed collaboratively.

Written assignments are due by 2:30pm in class on the dates indicated. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

If you require an extension, you must ask for one BEFORE the due date. Extensions will only be granted for medical conditions with a doctor’s note or for other extenuating circumstances.

The final exam must be written on the date scheduled, so do not make travel plans for the exam period until the exam schedule is posted.

Participation will be graded on careful preparation for and involvement in class discussion. Read carefully, think of responses to the study questions on the schedule and think up your own questions in advance, and conduct yourself in a way that enables other students to learn. The mark may also be based upon unmarked group work, occasional in-class writing and small assignments.

Guidelines for Written Work

Paper: Use 8.5 by 11 inch paper

Margins: Use 1 inch margins all around.

Spacing: Your essay should be double-spaced throughout, including blocked quotations, notes, and the works cited page.

Title Page: Your paper does not need a title page. At the top of the first page at the left-hand margin, type your name, your instructor’s name, the course name and number, and the date – all on separate, double-spaced lines. Then double-space again and center the title above your text. Double-space again before beginning your text. The title should be neither underlined nor written in caps. Capitalize only the first, last, and principal words of the title.


Page numbers: insert page numbers throughout the document.

All requirements for the formatting of quotations and references can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers – available from the reference section in the library. You can also consult the following online source: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

Works Cited: every essay must include a works cited page, which will include all texts cited in the essay (including primary texts). Refer to the MLA Guide for proper works cited format.

Marking Standards

All assignments will be marked in accordance with the English Department Marking

Standards. If any of your assignments have different marking standards, they should

also be indicated here.

Collaboration/Plagiarism Rules

Include the section on plagiarism and academic misconduct from the English Department Marking Guidelines. You should also be clear on any specific course rules or policies regarding collaboration on graded academic exercises.

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of someone else's words and/or ideas. Not

acknowledging your debt to the ideas of a secondary source, failing to use quotation

marks when you are quoting directly, buying essays from essay banks, copying another

student's work, or working together on an individual assignment, all constitute

plagiarism. Resubmitting material you've submitted to another course is also academic

dishonesty. All plagiarized work (in whole or in part) and other forms of academic

dishonesty will be reported to the Dean, who is responsible for judging academic

misconduct and imposing penalties. The minimum penalty for academic misconduct is a

0 on the assignment in question. It might also be subject to more severe academic

penalties. See the Code of Student Behaviour.

Course Policies

1. Please keep in mind that proper class participation includes appropriate interactions between students and appropriate behavior in the classroom. Please refrain from speaking when others are speaking. Sexist, homophobic, and/or racist comments or behavior will not be tolerated.

2. While I will distribute powerpoint presentations after classes through WebCT, these will not substitute for your own notetaking – these powerpoint displays will make little sense unless you have attended the class. Taking detailed notes will serve you well during exam time.

3. Students are expected to complete ALL assigned readings prior to class. 4. All assignments must be handed in, in class, on the due date, and must

follow the “Guidelines for Written Work” appended to this syllabus. No late assignments will be accepted. Emailed or faxed papers will not be accepted.

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/english/marking-standards

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/english/marking-standards

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/faculty-and-staff/policies/student-related/code-of-student-behaviour-and-disciplinary-procedures


5. Keep a copy of all written work – accidents happen, and essays and assignments can go missing. It is the student’s responsibility to have a backup ready should this occur.

University Policies

Students in this course are expected to conform to the Code of Student Behaviour:

Lakehead University provides academic accommodations for students with disabilities in accordance with the terms of the Ontario Human Rights Code. This occurs through a collaborative process that acknowledges a collective obligation to develop an accessible learning environment that both meets the needs of students and preserves the essential academic requirements of the course.

This course outline is available online through the English Department homepage

and/or the Desire2Learn site for the course.

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/faculty-and-staff/policies/student-related/code-of-student-behaviour-and-disciplinary-procedures

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/faculty-and-staff/departments/services/sas

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/faculty-and-staff/departments/services/sas

https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/departments/english

https://mycourselink.lakeheadu.ca/

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