| Course
Description:
Welcome to the second half of the American Literature
survey. The prevailing philosophy of presenting materials in survey courses
is to provide students with tiny samplings of as many authors, styles,
and schools of thought as possible. Usually students in surveys are asked
to by a huge anthology that contains snippets of hundreds of authors, as
well as historical, social, and cultural background materials. My idea
of teaching a survey course is different from this. I find that reading
little bits of things doesn't give the reader enough time or space to explore
important ideas or to become familiar enough with an author's style to
feel comfortable expressing her or his thoughts. So, instead of using an
anthology, we'll read several complete works -- novels, a couple of plays
and a sampling of poetry.
Even in a traditional approach to a survey course, something
or someone has to be excluded. Everybody who designs a course like this
one has to be selective. My selection of writers and movements has been
based around two issues -- gender and race. I've tried to select texts
that will help us to explore the ways in which Americans in this period
have developed strategies for coping with oppressive political and social
systems and for adjusting to the tremendous ideological, philosophical
and cultural shifts that have occurred in the last century and a half.
As progress through the semester, I hope we will accomplish
the following goals:
1. Learn effective ways to read, appreciate and discuss
a variety of texts from this period of American Literature.
2. Learn relevant critical terminology along with historical,
philosophical and artistic contexts important to this period of American
Literature.
3. Learn to communicate ideas and observations about
American Literature of this period through concise and well-planned papers
and exams.
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| Come
in a dialogue of we You and me reacting,
responding Being something
new Discovering. --Sandra
Maria Esteves
Course Methods:
We will rely on three basic methods of learning in this
course. First, I will provide you with basic background information on
the authors and their times through lectures. Second, we will spend time
discussing the texts in class. This is an important part of the methodology
of the class for me because I believe that knowledge is created as we work
together, pooling our responses and shaping new ones as we take in new
information. Third and finally, we will do a lot of writing. Toby Fulwiler,
a composition theorist, claims that writing is "an important index
to intellectual thought and development." He believes that
The more people write, the better they learn; writing
is the most powerful use of language for developing sustained critical
thought; it helps people to visualize thought and therefore to modify,
extend, develop, or criticize it. {T]he more that students write, the more
active they become in creating their own education; writing frequently,
for themselves as well as for their instructors, helps students discover,
rehearse, express, extend, and develop their own ideas.
Because it is so important for you to "create your
own education," we'll do a lot of writing in and out of class.
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| If
you can read and understand this poem send something
back: a burning strand of hair a
still warm, still liquid drop of blood a shell
thickened from being battered year on year send
something back. --Adrienne Rich
Attendance and Participation –
You’ve got to come to class to do well in the class. In
order to share your responses and to help us construct a shared meaning
of the texts we’ll read, you have to be here to participate in the discussions.
However, because I realize that life is chaotic, everybody gets three free
absences. After three, you lose a third of a letter grade for each absence.
(That is, if you have a B for the class, but you’ve missed 5 classes, your
final grade will be a C+.) Because being late disrupts class activities,
, you will also be penalized for coming into class late – three "lates"
equals one absence.
Not only do you have to show up; you also have to speak
up. Your participation in discussions is important to me when I make decisions
about grades. I ask myself the following questions: Have I heard your voice?
How have your comments influenced the other students in the class? Participation
is determined by the following criteria: 1) how much you say, 2) how thoughtful
and useful your contributions are to other writers, 3) how carefully you
listen to the contributions of others. Lack of participation or inappropriate,
distracting participation can adversely affect your grade.
Late work will not be accepted. I'm adamant about
this. There will be no exceptions to this rule. If you don't have the writing
in your hand in class on the day we're going to be working with it, you
don't get credit for it -- you will receive an "F" for that assignment.
Do your work ahead of time. Print your essay or response out the night
BEFORE it's due. Don't wait until the last minute to dash something off.
Be sure you back up all the work you do on your computer so that you have
a copy on your hard drive and a copy on disk. I will not accept excuses
of ANY sort for late work – computer, printer,
and disk problems included.
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| Course Requirements:
Reading Quizzes
Quizzes over the reading will be given throughout the semester.
Reading the texts is the most important task we have to accomplish this
semester. I hope the quizzes encourage you to keep up with the reading.
The quizzes consist of 5 questions over plot or characterization. They're
very easy if you've done the reading. The average of all of your quiz scores
for the semester will equal 10% of your grade.
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Mini papers
Six 1-1/2 page, single-spaced, typed essays, due approximately
every other week. Each paper should have a clear and interesting point
to make about the text under scrutiny. I do not want you to use the
papers to summarize the texts. If I read your papers and all I find is
summary, that paper will receive a failing grade. I do want you to
use the papers to develop thoughtful and critical approaches to the books.
Each of the essay should be presented with the following sections: 1) title,
2) concise statement of your organizing idea or thesis, 3) clear and articulate
presentation of your exposition or argument supported by references to
the text.
Some questions you might answer in your papers include,
but are not limited to the following:
- How does what you’ve read connect with your own experience?
- How does what you’ve read connect with what you learned
in history or sociology or psychology or philosophy class?
- How does what you’ve read change your view about an idea,
an opinion, a prejudice, you’ve held dear for many years?
- In what ways do you feel challenged by this author?
- What does this author teach you about people, about life
in America during his or her time, about yourself, that you didn’t know
before?
- What do you think about the way the writer tells her
or his story? What do you like or dislike about the way s/he writes?
- How are the style and/or content of this piece different
from or similar to the style and content of other works you’ve read?
- Can you make connections between the intellectual, historical,
and cultural events we discuss in class and the writer’s style and ideas?
- Can you make connections between the author’s life and
times and her or his work?
- How does your own background, your race, gender, sexual
preference, class, religious and educational upbringing affect how you
make sense of these works?
- How does the author use imagery, symbolism, language,
to push forward a theme?
- What comments about the book by your classmates were
most intriguing to you? What response do you have to those comments?
The due dates for the papers will revolve. I’ll publish
a schedule as soon as we know who’s staying in the class and who’s going.
Each of the six papers you submit is worth 5% of your final grade.
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Participation in an
on-line discussion of the texts.
If you don't turn in a journal on a particular text, then
you'll be responsible for posting to an on-line forum over that text. You're
responsible for accessing the forum through the class web page and for
posting an answer to the prompt. Participation in the on-line discussion
is worth 10% of your final grade.
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Midterm and Final Exams
At midterm and at the end of the semester you’ll read over
your journals and the questions and answers on the on-line discussion site,
you’ll think about our in-class discussions and the lecture notes you’ve
taken. Have you been thinking a lot about the different ways men and women
authors portray characters in their texts? Have you been writing and thinking
about how greed affects the American psyche? Have you been looking at race
relationships in two or three of the texts? Have you been looking at dialect
or language use in the texts? Have you noticed patterns of images in the
texts? Have you been thinking about the structure of the poems or novels?
Shape your thoughts from the journals into three questions. I will select
two of those questions for you to answer on your exam. You will have one
weekend to write the exam. We will share and discuss our answers with the
class. Each exam is worth 15% of your final grade.
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A Research Project
The research project has two parts or sections. For the first
part, you must put together an oral and written report on an author from
a certain period. Choose a realist, a naturalist, a modernist, a post-modernist,
a protest writer, and find out what you can about them. In both your oral
and written report include the following information: 1) A BRIEF biography
-- no more than three paragraphs. In this biography summarize the important
personal, political and literary influences of the author's life. 2) A
photograph or two. 3) A quote that illustrates the main thought of the
work you read or a quote that describes the author's attitude about his
or her work. 4) A summary of the work you read by this author. You don't
have to read a novel, a short story or a selection of poems will do.
For the second part of the project, you must write a critical
analysis of the text you chose to deal with. This analysis should include
at least 2 references to outside sources and a brief bibliography (10 sources)
of important criticism about the author and the text you've chosen to work
with.
Each half of the project is worth 10% of your final grade.
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| Texts and other Expenditures:
Crane, Stephen. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.
Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie.
Hwang, David. M. Butterfly.
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand.
LeSueur, Meridel. The Girl.
McClatchy, J. D. Ed. The Vintage Book of Contemporary
American Poetry.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony.
Viramontes, Helena Maria. The Moth and Other Stories.
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