Draft/Sample Syllabus, Undergraduate Survey of American Literature 1865-present

Description

This course surveys American Literature from the end of the Civil War to the present, with a particular focus on innovations in literary form as interventions in social, cultural, political, and technological change. In addition to introducing students to major periods, movements, genres, and diverse authors in modern and contemporary American literature, the course will also foreground how literary works from the past 160 years revise and complicate boundaries between the US and the world; major and minor; citizens and foreigners; culture and politics; literary genres; literature and other arts and media; and art and life.

Texts

  • The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume II: 1865 to the Present, shorter ninth edition, ed. Michael A. Elliott, Mary Loeffelholz, and Amy Hungerford (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017).
  • Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (Mariner Books, 2011 [1962])
  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (Vintage, 2019)
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014)
  • Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (Pantheon, 1996 [1980-1991])
  • All other texts will be provided.

Course Information and Policies

Grading

  • Participation: 10%
  • Paper 1 (2-3 pages): 15%
  • Paper 2 (3-5 pages): 20%
  • Paper 3 (5-7 pages): 30%
  • Final Exam: 25%

Papers

Instructions for papers will be distributed well in advance of the due dates. Extensions will only be granted with advance permission from your section leader, according to their policies for late work. Otherwise, late work will be marked down 1/3 of a grade every 24 hours and will not be accepted after one week. I will work with the section leaders to establish fair grading standards, so grades are not negotiable unless we’ve made a calculation error.

[Academic integrity policy & generative AI policy]

Exam

The final exam for the course will cover material from lectures and readings. The exam will primarily consist of passage identification & brief descriptions of their significance in American literary history. The exam will also include a short essay as an exercise in synthesizing your formal, historical, and/or theoretical observations about multiple texts into coherent and cogent analysis. I will provide sample/practice questions in advance and section leaders will conduct a review session at the end of the term.

Attendance and Participation

Attendance is crucial for both lectures and sections. If you must miss a class, please notify your section leader and consult a classmate’s notes. You may miss up to two section meetings with no questions asked, but further absences will lower your grade.

Participation includes thorough preparation and active contributions to section discussions. Contributing to section discussions involves not only speaking thoughtfully, but also listening carefully and contributing to a balanced, dynamic, and collaborative conversation (i.e., refraining from dominating or derailing discussions). Please do not use electronic devices in ways that might distract you or those around you (e.g., by doing anything other than note-taking and occasional internet searches).

If you find yourself struggling to join the conversation or feeling uncomfortable with the class dynamic for any reason, please let me or your section leader know. I can help, and if relevant, connect you with further resources and support.

Inclusion and Accessibility

I am committed to making this class accessible to students of all backgrounds and aim to adhere to principles of Universal Design for Learning. Some topics and readings from the course, particularly those related to violence and discrimination, may be uncomfortable or disturbing; some level of discomfort is necessary and productive for intellectual growth, and in section discussions, students should feel empowered to try out ideas, disagree, and revise their positions in a respectful environment.

If your work for this class requires special arrangements because of disability, please contact [Disability Services Office] as soon as possible. If relevant, please also reach out to me and/or your section leader if there are additional adjustments that might improve your ability to participate fully in the course but might fall outside [the Disability Services Office]’s scope.

Office Hours and Course Communications

[Explain office hours & encourage/welcome students to attend. Explain scope & limitations of email communication]

Schedule

⁂ = Norton Anthology

Part 1: 1865-1945

Week 1: Literature, Memory, and History

  • In class
    • Handout on two tensions: Nation/World and Major/Minor
      • Wai Chee Dimock et al., introduction to American Literature in the World: An Anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler, 1-2
      • Ankhi Mukherjee introduction to What is a Classic?, 9-13
    • Images from Alexander Gardner, Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War (1866)
  • Walt Whitman
    • Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865)
      • “Beat! beat! drums!”
      • “Vigil strange I kept on the field one night”
      • ⁂ “The Dresser” (AKA “The Wound-Dresser”)
      • ⁂ “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
    • “This Dust Was Once the Man” (1871)
  • Emily Dickinson
    • ⁂ “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –”
    • ⁂ “I cannot live with You –”
    • ⁂ “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – “
    • “Color – Caste – Denomination –”

Week 2: Reconstruction and Speculation

  • Excerpt from Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888)
  • Frederick Douglass
    • “Reconstruction,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1866
    • “There Was a Right Side in the Late War: An Address,” New York City, May 30, 1878
    • “Give Women Fair Play: An Address,” Washington, D.C., March 31, 1888
  • W.E.B. Du Bois
    • The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
      • ⁂ “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
      • “Of the Dawn of Freedom”
      • “The Sorrow Songs”
    • “The Comet” (1920)

Week 3: Realism and Naturalism I: Mobility and Immobility

  • Charles Chestnutt, “The Passing of Grandison” (1899)
  • ⁂ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
  • ⁂ Henry James, “The Real Thing” (1892) and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903)
  • Sui Sin Far, “In the Land of the Free,” in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912)
  • Mark Twain, “Jim Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn” (1880) and “How to Tell a Story” (1895)

Week 4: Realism and Naturalism II: Industrial Capitalism and Class

  • ⁂ Jack London, excerpt from “What Life Means to Me” (1906)
  • Start reading Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
  • ⁂ Edith Wharton, “The Other Two” (1904)

Week 5: Realism and Naturalism III: Labor, Biology, and the Animal

  • Frank Norris, “After Strange Gods” (1894)
  • Hamlin Garland, “Under the Lion’s Paw” (1889)
  • ⁂ Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (1908)
  • Finish Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)

Week 6: Modernism at Home and Abroad

Week 7: Modernisms Regional and National

  • ⁂ William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” (1930)
  • ⁂ Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921), “I, Too” (1925), “Let America be America Again” (1936)
  • Zora Neale Hurston, introduction to Mules and Men (1935) and ⁂ “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928)
  • Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
  • ⁂ Richard Wright, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” (1940)

Part 2: Post45 and Beyond

Week 8: Postmodernism and Literature After Auschwitz

  • Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1980-1991)

Week 9: Postmodernism, Media, and Globalization

  • Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Week 10: Multiculturalism, Ethnicity, and Representation

  • Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong, preface to Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers (1974)
  • ⁂ Maxine Hong Kingston, “No Name Woman,” in The Woman Warrior (1976)
  • ⁂ Toni Morrison, “Recitatif” (1983)
  • ⁂ Leslie Marmon Silko, “Lullaby” (1981)
  • Anna Deavere Smith, excerpts from Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities (1992) and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1993)

Week 11: Twentieth-Century Youth Cultures

  • ⁂ Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (1956)
  • Saidiya Hartman, excerpt from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019)
  • J.D. Salinger, “Franny” from Franny and Zooey (1961)
  • Todd Solondz, Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) (film)
  • Karen Tei Yamashita, excerpt from “1968: Eye Hotel,” in I Hotel (2010)

Week 12: American Lyric, American Elegy

  • ⁂ Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina”
  • Gwendolyn Brooks, ⁂ “the mother” (1945), ⁂ “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till” (1960), and “Boy Breaking Glass” (1987)
  • ⁂ Lucille Clifton, “the lost baby poem” (1972)
  • Thom Gunn, “Lament” (1985)
  • Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [‘I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison’]” (2017)
  • W.S. Merwin, “For a Coming Extinction” (1967)
  • ⁂ Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” (1965)
  • ⁂ Adrienne Rich, “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” (1970)
  • Tracy K. Smith, “My God, It’s Full of Stars” (2011)
  • Natasha Trethewey, “Elegy for the Native Guards” (2007)

Week 13: Bodies and Borders I

  • Gloria E. Anzaldua, ⁂ “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and other chapters from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987/1999)
  • George Saunders, “The Great Divider” (2007)

Week 14: Bodies and Borders II

  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (2019)

Week 15: Bodies and Borders III

  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)