This course provides a basic history of American social, economic, and political development from the colonial period through the Civil War. It examines the colonial heritages of Spanish and British America; the American Revolution and its impact; the establishment and growth of the new nation; and the Civil War, its background, character, and impact. Readings include writings of the period by J. Winthrop, T. Paine, T. Jefferson, J. Madison, W. H. Garrison, G. Fitzhugh, H. B. Stowe, and A. Lincoln.
Studies the national literature of the United States since the early nineteenth century. Considers novels, essays, and poems, focusing on efforts to define and reform a sense of American identity amidst increasing awareness of cultural diversity. Readings usually include works by Hawthorne, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Dickinson, Frost, Faulkner, Maxine Kingston, and Amy Tan. This is a HASSD -CI course. Like other communications-intensive courses in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, it allows students to produce 20 pages of polished writing with careful attention to revision. It also offers substantial opportunities for oral expression, through presentations of written work, student-led discussion, and class participation. The class has a low enrollment that ensures maximum attention to student writing and opportunity for oral expression, and a writing fellow/tutor is available for consultation on drafts and revisions.
Works by major American novelists, beginning with the late eighteenth century and concluding with a contemporary novelist. Major emphasis on reading novels as literary texts, but attention paid to historical, intellectual, and political contexts as well. Syllabus varies from term to term, but many of the following writers are represented: Rowson, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Wharton, James, and Toni Morrison. The theme for this class is "American Revolution." We will read authors who record, on the one hand, the failures of the American revolution, with its dream of democracy and freedom for all, and on the other hand the potential for narrative to reenact that revolution successfully. In different ways, these authors overturn traditional or unethical authority through their literary innovations. Although certain classic American historical, political, and cultural issues will be at the center of our study--democracy, slavery, gender equity, social reform--we will concern ourselves primarily with literary strategies, with language and its uses. Essays will pursue close readings of the texts and develop students' abilities to think creatively and critically about fictional works.
This course explores the metaphorical, historical, social, and psychological value of ghosts in the American novel. Using the theme of "haunting" as a flashpoint for class discussion and a thematic center for our readerly attention, this course examines the American novel in the context of the various histories which might be said to haunt fictional characters in the American novel, to haunt the American novel itself, and ultimately to haunt us: America's colonial past, its slave past, and other memorable and painful chapters in its past.
Intensive study of a range of texts by a single author or by a limited group of authors whose achievements are mutually illuminating. Some attention to narrative theory, and biographical and cultural backgrounds. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Joyce's Ulysses and Its Legacy.
Intensive study of a range of texts by a single author or by a limited group of authors whose achievements are mutually illuminating. Some attention to narrative theory, and biographical and cultural backgrounds. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Joyce's Ulysses and Its Legacy. This seminar looks at two bestselling nineteenth-century American authors whose works made the subject of slavery popular among mainstream readers. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain have subsequently become canonized and reviled, embraced and banned by individuals and groups at both ends of the political and cultural spectrum and everywhere in between.
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