American Literary Traditions (270-1-01)

Instructors

Jay A Grossman

Meeting Info

Locy Hall 111: Mon, Wed 12:00PM - 12:50PM

Overview of class

This is part one of a two-quarter survey that covers writings produced in North America between the time Native peoples encountered Europeans for the first time and the turn of the twentieth century.

In the first quarter we'll explore the history of North American literature from its indigenous beginnings—including the migration by Europeans to what they imagined as a "new world"—through the crisis of slavery in the mid-1850's. We will be centrally engaged with a set of related questions: What is American literature? Who counts as an American? Who shall be allowed to tell their stories, and on whose behalf? We embark on this literary journey at a moment of questioning the relations between the present and our "literary traditions": various organizations are debating how to commemorate the four hundredth anniversaries of the years 1619 (the year the first ship bearing enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia) and 1620 (the year of the Plymouth settlers' landing in what is now Massachusetts); at the same time, people are calling for the removal of monuments to Christopher Columbus and to the Confederacy. We will be reading authors that canonical literary histories have usually included—Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Frederick Douglass, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—alongside Native American authors who told stories of European encounter and African American accounts that radically contest the meanings of some of the key terms of U.S. literature, history, and culture: discovery, citizenship, representation, nation, freedom.

Teaching Method

Two lectures per week, plus a required discussion section.

Evaluation Method

Evaluation will be based on two short (3-page) essays, in which students will perform a close reading of a literary passage from one of the texts on the syllabus; a final examination, involving short answers and essays; and active participation in section and lecture. Attendance at all sections is required.

Class Materials (Required)

Some of the authors whose works we will read include: Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Christopher Columbus, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Powhatan.

Class Notes

Note: English 270-1 is an English Literature major and minor requirement; it is also designed for non-majors and counts as an Area VI WCAS distribution requirement.

Class Attributes

Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
SDG Reduced Inequality
SDG Gender Equality

Associated Classes

DIS - University Library 3670: Fri 12:00PM - 12:50PM

DIS - University Library 3670: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM