LITR 4231 Early American Literature 2012 Student Midterm Samples 3. Web Highlights: Review at least 3 posts from course website's Model Assignments (4-6 paragraphs)

Adam Glasgow

Literature as a Tool to Better Understand Our Past

I found Jeff Derrickson’s essay, entitled “The Soul of the Times,” to be one of the most immediately relatable texts of the bunch. His thoughts on literature as a way to immerse oneself in another culture mirrored my own feelings on the subject. Traditional history textbooks are a fine way to understand our past in a very literal and rigid way, but nothing, I’ve found, helps us to understand our collective past like literature can. Literature – everything ranging from short stories, to poems, to personal letters, to novels – offers a real glimpse into not only the mind of the author of the work, but of the world that author has grown up in. This aspect of literature is invaluable.

It is through the lenses of literature that we can better understand those who came before us, even when the world of the past feels alien like to us. Take, for example, Lori Arnold’s findings via her studies on the subject of women’s education of yesteryear. Reading of a time when women’s education was primarily focused on teaching girls how to be housewives and appear attractive to potential husbands feels so strange it almost makes me queasy. I know feminist bashing is a popular hobby, even among women, but quite frankly with a history like this it is hard for me to imagine why more women are not currently radical feminists.

How easy is it to forget how far women’s rights have come since the days of early America? A mere 93 years ago it was illegal for women to vote in this country. There are people who are alive today that were also alive when women were not allowed to vote. Small mental reminders like this help to ground myself whenever I imagine where we stand today on history’s never ending timeline. Reminders like this also serve to cause me to examine my life today. Who is it around me that upcoming generations will look down at us for mistreating? What kinds of popular social beliefs exist today that will be seen as archaic and bigoted by my children? What about their children? It is, at least partially, because of literature that questions like these get asked, and questions like these is how social progress is made. And if we aren’t progressing, what are we doing?

Like Nicole Bippen notes in her essay titled “The Struggle for a Voice for Minorities,” thoughtfully structured classes like this one are wonderful introductions into the world of the oppressed. A central theme of Dr. White’s class has been “what America do you teach?” Understanding the traditional canon of literature is important, no doubt, but delving into less known texts from sources that we are not as comfortable reading about proves an effective way to understand what was previously foreign. The plights of the Native Americans, of slaves, of women, and the role that our forefathers played in perpetuating those issues, are all waiting to be explored through literature and classes like ours. Here’s hoping that future students get as much out of these texts as I have.