Attendance policy: You are expected to attend every scheduled class meeting but are permitted one free cut without comment or penalty. More than one absence jeopardizes your status in the course. If you continue to cut or miss, drop the course. Even with medical or other emergency excuses, high numbers of absences or partial absences will result in a lower or failing course grade.

Reading & Presentation Schedule, spring 2014

(fall 2012 syllabus) (fall 2010 syllabus ) (2002 syllabus)

No Required Textbooks--all texts online

MAPS of NORTH AMERICA

Sacagawea, 1788-1812 Effigy Mounds, Iowa

Discussion Questions: 1. Why do we read literature of the past? What reactions do we have? What learn or gain? 2. Which America do we learn or teach? Dominant culture / Western Civilization, or Multicultural? 3. What advantages to each? What pressures to teach either? 4. Can formal or close reading bridge differences?

Jefferson Nickel Monticello

The Renaissance (1400s-1600+)

early European Exploration and Settlement; First Contact with American Indians

19c Print of Columbus landing in New World

1992 Chicano student demontration at U. of Wisconsin (re 500-year commemoration of Columbus)

European Renaissance Music

Native American Music

Blake, Creation of Eve

Discussion Questions: 1. Intertextuality: What resemblances b/w Columbus & Genesis? With Handsome Lake? If they resemble or reflect each other, what are possible reasons? 2. What assumptions does Columbus make about the Indians, their land and resources relative to the Europeans, their empires, and desires? 3. About "Creation Stories," what advantages to one story vs. many stories? 3a. Similarities: If or when the Indian Creation stories resemble or match the Genesis Creation, how do we react or what do we learn? 4. Differences: How is each creation / origin story unique to its culture? How does an origin story create a culture? What symbols, gender roles, ethics or morality, relations of humanity and divinity? 5. What literary qualities or pleasures do you find in these texts? What balance of instruction and entertainment? 6. Which America do we teach? A "nation of many nations," or "one nation under God?"

Turtle Island

Tuesday, 28 January 2014: No meeting—University closed for weather threat

Discussion Questions: 1. How do today's reading assignments matter to us here and now? (historicism) 2. What kind of pleasure in reading? Information and learning, or escape and engagement?  3. How are the stories by Smith and Cabeza de Vaca like or unlike fiction (which won't appear for about 200 more years)? 4. What different attitudes toward racial or ethnic mixing emerge from North America and Latin America? Term: Mestizo. 5. Since Cabeza de Vaca's story takes place in the Gulf Coast region (including Galveston and San Antonio), how do you see this area differently through that time and his eyes? 6. What picture emerges of the American Indians, and how does it comply or conflict with legends regarding the area's Indians?

Seventeenth Century (1600s)

Reformation & Counter-Reformation; Religion as War & Exaltation

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, 1572 Assassinations and Mob Violence killing thousands of French Protestants painting by Francois Dubois (1529-84)

Bernini, St. Teresa in Ecstasy (1647-52), Rome

Tuesday, 11 February 2014: Puritan utopias (1st generation Puritan settlement of New England) Readings: The Puritans in New England (and England); New England Bradford,  Of Plymouth Plantation (i.e., "the Pilgrims"; selections) John Winthrop (1587-1649), A Model of Christian Charity (Boston Puritans; excerpts) Anne Bradstreet (1612-72), poems term(s): utopia, literary & historical utopias, America's utopian pasts  Student Presentations Reading Discussion Leader(s):  Cohen Landry (Bradford or Winthrop); Victoria Webb (Bradstreet) Web review: Baroque music  Web Reviewer:  Dawn Iven

Agenda: Renaissance & European Renaissance music > Sor Juana: Maryam introduce 17th century / Puritans Bradford / Winthrop: Cohen [break] schedule, assignments Anne Bradstreet:  Vicky > Baroque & Baroque music: Dawn

Stained Glass of Anne Bradstreet St. Botolph’s Ch., Boston, England

Discussion Questions: 1. How do the Puritans express attitudes that preview democracy, describe or imagine utopias or perfect worlds, or stand for "traditional family values," or the idea that America was founded by "Godly men?" 2. What problems do the Puritans present to modern America? 3. How may New England still represent a "utopian community" in American thought or culture? What's changed? 4. What glimpses of American Indians, and what can we learn of both them and relations with European settlers? How do the Pilgrims'' perceptions of Native Americans conform to or differ from later attitudes? The Pilgrims tell a story of God's plan or story for them, but what about the Indians? How do they fit into that plan, or how do you see glimpses of more than one story? 4a. How does the pop-culture resonance of "the first Thanksgiving" with Pilgrims and Indians compare with the populariity of the John Smith-Pocahontas story? 5. As lyric poems, Bradstreet's writings appear "timeless." But how do they reach across the centuries? To what do they connect? What parts don't connect? What combinations of family and religious identity make her appealing to popular as well as critical audiences?

John Winthrop (1587-1649)

later illustration for Rowlandson's book

Discussion Questions: 1. Rowlandson, b. 1637, is part of the Puritans' second generation in America, and Mather third generation. (Jonathan Edwards [25 Feb] will be 4th generation.) How do their situations and attitudes differ from first, "utopian" generation of the Puritan immigrants? 2. See objective 6 re "biblical narratives" as an interpretation of American history. How does Rowlandson interpret both her experience and the Indians' in terms of a Christian allegory? 3. Rowlandson writes the first "captivity narrative"—a popular genre in American literature. What are the genre's attractions? How does it resemble what we would now consider popular literature that people might enjoy reading? How does it anticipate fiction or the romance? How do Rowlandson's stylings anticipate "the gothic," especially descriptions of Indians and the wilderness? 4. How do Rowlandson's stylings of Indians correspond to our stylings of terrorists? 5. As a woman writer, how do Rowlandson's and Jemison's concerns and style compare to Anne Bradstreet? What are the opportunities for women's writing in early and later New England? 6. Mather (1663-1728) and the Salem Witch Trials occur in Puritans' third generation—what has changed for God's chosen people in America? Why do we remember the Salem Witch Trials and little else about the Puritans? If we don't believe in witchcraft then or now, what's going on in this trial? Why do Americans want to believe in witches, when they might better wonder why religious superstition was used to murder 20 innocent people and damage countless more?

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

The Enlightenment or Age of Reason
& the Scientific Revolution (late 1600s-late 1700s)

Transition from the 1600s to 1700s, from Religion / Revelation to Enlightenment / Reason

Jefferson Memorial, Washington D.C. (Neo-Classical Style of Architecture)

John James Audubon (1785-1851) Gyrfalcons

^examples of Neo-Classical or Enlightenment art^

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) participant in the First Greak Awakening & author of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Questions regarding midterm? Paper copies distributed . . . Discussion Questions: Above all, compare and contrast Franklin and Edwards, born only 3 years apart but very different paths in writing styles and subjects; also public profile and sense of American community. 1. Which author or text seems most "literary" to present standards? What implications to your choice? 2. Edwards: How is Edwards "the Last Puritan?" What has changed? How does he follow earlier Puritan generations? 3. Why is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" the "most famous sermon ever?" Why do readers remember it? Why does it matter now, whether we share its religion or not? How does Edwards's Personal Narrative & note on Sarah Pierrepont show a different side to religion? 4. Identify elements of the gothic and sublime. (Compare to Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative?) 5. Franklin: In contrast to Edwards as "the Last Puritan," how does Franklin represent the new Enlightenment generation that founds the USA? What aspects are more or less attractive or admirable? How does his use of irony and humor allow him to criticize a sensitive subject like religion? 6. How do the religious postures or attitudes of Edwards and Franklin combine to constitute the USA's continuing status quo of "religious people, secular government?"

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), contributor to both the Declaration of Independence & the U.S. Constitution, here conducting experiment w/ lightning / electricity

Tuesday, 4 March 2014: midterm & research plan, in-class or email (email submissions due by Wednesday 5 March 9pm) Instructor responds to research proposal upon receipt of midterm email Midterm grades + notes returned by or after 18 March (Instructor will be out-of-state and off-line 8-14 March)

Tuesday, 11 March 2014:  no meeting—Spring Break Holidays

First Research Post Due 19-26 March

Tuesday, 18 March 2014: Enlightenment and Religion Readings: Thomas Jefferson on religion Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason, from The Crisis, & from Common Sense Biographical information on Thomas Paine Abigail & John Adams on Dr. Franklin Reading Discussion Leader(s): Josh Cobb Poem: Jupiter Hammon, "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries" (1760) ; Poetry Reader: Instructor Web review: The Enlightenment; Deism; The Great Awakening; Religion & Literature Web Reviewer: instructor Web review: Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations (1776) Web Reviewer: Cristen Lauck Web review: David Hume, "On Miracles" (1748) Web Reviewer: instructor

Agenda: Grampa White midterm, research posts, & assignments Discussion: Josh [break] The Enlightenment, modernization, secularism, materialism, etc. poem: instructor (preview 1 April)

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826); 2nd President USA; ptg by Rembrandt Peale, 1805

Overall question: If what we're reading this week and next is "literature," how does that change or challenge what most of us love and enjoy as literature? What do we gain or lose by expanding the category or definition of literature?  Discussion Questions: 1. Compare / contrast Enlightenment writings on religion with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. 2. What's at stake in the debate over the Founders' religion? How does this debate count as a Creation / Origin Story? Consider values, heroes, traditions, change, gender roles. 3. What is the Enlightenment style? What are its attractions and detractions, its virtues and shortcomings? (Irony?) 4. The eighteenth century (1700s) is most Literature students' least favorite period of study, yet its literature and history establish the political and economic institutions we continue to live by: science, capitalism, public works, human rights, limited government, separation of church and state. What does this conflict between usefulness and entertainment tell us about literary study and what counts as literature? 5. As in previous class, what model of religion is developing in the USA so that religion remains alive without becoming oppressive or limiting?

John Adams (1735-1826): 2nd President USA; ptg by Jn Trumbull 1792

Tuesday, 25 March 2014: Constitutional Government Readings: review Mayflower Compact & A Model of Christian Charity (2 Feb) The Great Law of Peace (Iroquois / Haudenosaunee); The Cherokee Memorials The Declaration of Independence (and its echoes) + Texas Declaration of Independence U.S. Constitution, Articles of Confederation,   Instructor Presentation: selections from The Federalist Papers (students welcome to read but not required) Reading Discussion Leader(s): Thomas Dion Web review: The Trail of Tears  Web Reviewer: Liz Nolen Web review: wampum   Web Reviewer: Randi Hall

Agenda: research posts; acceleration / depth of history literacy, literature, and self-government; pre-Constitution texts: Thomas [break] assignments Randi on wampum > Great Law Cherokee Memorials > Trail of Tears: Liz

Andrew Jackson, U.S. Pres. 1828-36

Rationale for class on constitutions: Recent scholarship expands the definition of "literature" from creative writing (fiction, poetry, drama) to "extraliterary" texts including historical documents. What are the attractions and complications of such an expansion? What audiences or constituents does it serve? How does it change the "English Major" or "Literature Major?"—or the teaching of literature and language in public schools? Discussion Questions: 1. What upsides / downsides to reading legal or historical texts as literature? 2. What parts of texts come alive for literary interests and why? 3. Using process of elimination, if today's texts don't count as literature, what does? 4. How do such questions and analyses help us define literature or extend our definition of literature? As teachers of literature, what are we teaching our students to do?

Trail of Tears

First Research Post Due 19-26 March

Tuesday, 1 April 2014: Who's in and out of the Enlightenment State? (transition to Romanticism) John Woolman, selections from The Journal (1753, 1762) on The Quaker Page Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative . . . (1789; first slave narrative) Samson Occom, A Short Narrative of my Life (1768) Abigail & John Adams's letters on America's new government Reading Discussion Leader(s): Carmen Halbison (Equiano);  Cristen Lauck (Adams' letters) Poem: Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought From Africa to America" Poetry Reader: Elisa Cortez Poem: Phillis Wheatley, "On Imagination" Poetry Reader: Instructor  Instructor presents:  The Quaker Page

Agenda: Posts, semester capitalism & secular state; religion and literacy Equiano: Carmen Wheatley: Elisa Wheatley: instructor [break] Periods: Enlightenment & Romanticism assignments Occom: instructor > Romanticism as voice of inside / outside: Cristen Quakers & Woolman: instructor

Olaudah Equiano

Overall Discussion Question: Continuing "which America to teach," what is gained or lost by reading "outsiders" to the nation's founding and its dominant culture? What gains or losses? What literary power or prestige? What do we learn about North American culture, both good and bad? (e.g., it has a history of exclusion and oppression still with us today, but it also has ideals and mechanisms for equality and progress?) 1. In both Equiano and Occom, note the connections between religion and literacy. 2. How does Equiano's writing in both style and content resemble that of the Founders and the Enlightenment. What qualities separate it from the Puritan style? 3. Equiano shows slavery as horrifying, but in contrast to most later, Romantic slave narratives, he mostly advocates its reform rather than its abolition. How is this attitude representative of Enlightenment thinking? Contrast Romanticism. 4. Americans who feel defensive about slavery often point to existence of slavery in Africa. What similairites and differences between traditional African slavery and modern American slavery? 5. Why do most Literature majors like reading works such as those by Equiano or Occom more than texts by the Founders? 6. Reading Woolman's Journal is like reading the life of a saint. What pleasures or rewards? What benefits and risks of reading moral or pious literature in public schools? What kinds of moral quandaries does Woolman face that prevent simple yes-no moralism? [43] How does Woolman differ from the Enlightenment? In what ways is he a potentially a Romantic figure, or not?

Jonathan Edwards

Early Romantic Era (late 1700s-early 1800s)

17th Century > Enlightenment > Romanticism

Tuesday, 8 April 2014: Peace, Change, Great Awakenings + begin Women's Romance Readings: Sermon Selections of George Whitefield The Great Awakening & The Second Great Awakening John Adams, letter on southern preaching Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782) Charlotte Temple (read most of Volume One) Student Presentations  Reading Discussion Leader(s): Elizabeth Sorensen (Charlotte Temple) Web review: "Classical" Classical Music (Enlightenment) Web Reviewer: Laura Tompkins

Agenda: 2nd research post, Occom & literacy, maps American nation: two paradoxes: community of individuals? Decline or progress? Review Quakers Enlightenment / Romanticism classical classical music: Laura Enlightenment art Crevecoeur, Great Awakening, Adams, Whitefield [break] schedule, assignments Charlotte Temple: Elizabeth fiction; final exam

Abigail Adams (1744-1818)

Overall question: How are thought, literature, and religion turning from the Enlightenment to Romanticism? What continuities or differences? Whitefield: After the Constitution's separation of church and state, where does religion matter? What about Whitefield's sermons is potentially Romantic or contrary to Romanticism? What features of popular evangelical Christianity are familiar even today? John Adams: How is "southern preaching" representative of the Great Awakening? What religious values of New England does Adams pose in opposition to those of the Southern USA? Crevecoeur: How is "the American" a new identity created by the Melting Pot? What contrasts to other cultures? Relate to American Exceptionalism How are African American slaves excluded from the Melting Pot? How is Crevecoeur's attitude toward American Indians "Romantic?" Charlotte Temple: What balance is struck between "instruction" and "entertainment?" Entertainment: Why was Charlotte Temple so popular? What pleasures may be found in the story? Instruction: What moral lesson does the novel offer? How  do the entertainment pleasures of the narrative contradict this moral? Does the novel proclaim a traditional moral while depicting its modern violation?

George Whitefield (1714-70)

Second Research Post Due 9-20 April

Tuesday, 15 April 2014: complete Women's Romance Readings: Charlotte Temple (complete); historical information on Susanna Rowson & Charlotte Temple Thomas Jefferson, letter on women's education & novels begin Edgar Huntly (chapter 1); term: gothic; novel; fiction; defamiliarization Student Presentations  Reading Discussion Leader(s):  Brenda Trejo (Charlotte Temple) All students have a passage from anywhere in Charlotte Temple for question, comment Web review: Romantic Music  Web Reviewer:  Sarah Robin Roelse Web review:  Enlightenment / Romantic visual art   Web Reviewer: Stephanie Ali

Agenda: schedule; LITR 4232 Romanticism: emergence of women readers & writers Jefferson; instruct & entertain conclude Charlotte Temple (1791): Brenda discussion [break] Lucy Temple (1828): instructor Romantic art: Stephanie Romantic music: Sarah  gothic > Edgar Huntly

Susanna Rowson (1762-1824) author of Charlotte Temple

Discussion Questions: Charlotte Temple: Class Assignment: All students have a passage from anywhere in Charlotte Temple for question, comment 1. For past generations of college students, Charlotte Temple would likely have been excluded from a Literature course on account of its sentimentality and its appeal to popular tastes. What is gained from reading such a novel in terms of women's writing, the romance genre, cultural studies, popular culture, early American history? 2. By reading an early work of fiction like Charlotte Temple, what do you learn about the style of fiction you take for granted now? 3. How is Charlotte Temple like a telenovela, a soap opera, a chick flick, or other current genres of popular literature? 4. Compare / contrast Charlotte Temple as a sentimental romance novel with Edgar Huntly as a gothic romance novel. Continue questions on Charlotte Temple from previous class.

Second Research Post Due 9-20 April

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)

Discussion Questions: 1. Edgar Huntly was never popular like Charlotte Temple. Why not? What distinctions between popular and classic literature? What balance is struck between "instruction" and "entertainment?" 2. How can both be classified as Romantic (or occasionally anti-Romantic)? 3. Examples of the gothic and sublime? How is the gothic attached to the American wilderness rather than gothic castles, etc.? What is the significance of the gothic? Why does it keep returning? How does it keep working? 4. Edgar Huntly is the first serious American attempt at serious or literary fiction. What does he get right and wrong? What can you learn about fiction from his successes and errors? What do you want more or less of? 5. What is the overall effect on a reader from reading Edgar Huntly? How does this effect or purpose differ from that of earlier literature?

wilderness gothic

Tuesday, 29 April 2014: conclude Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly Readings: Edgar Huntly (complete) Student Presentations Reading Discussion Leader(s): Jon Anderson, Cristen Lauck (one reading selection, objective or comment, & discussion question each) Poem: Freneau, "The Indian Burying-Ground" Poetry Reader: Victoria Webb

Agenda: [copies of final, poem] research posts Romanticism: 17.23, 3.1; 8.76, 1.26-27, 9.18, 19.44 Poem: Victoria exam; models  Novel: Cristen, Jon

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

Discussion Questions: Ask any questions regarding expectations for Final Exam Assignment. 1. Does Edgar Huntly come to any satisfying end or resolution? What balance of instruction and entertainment? Since this is a book you never would have read if you hadn't taken this course, can its study be rationalized or justified? 2. Examples of the gothic and sublime? How or why is the gothic attached to the American wilderness rather than gothic castles, etc.?What significance to the gothic? Why does it keep returning? How does it keep working? What about us responds to the gothic? How does the gothic respond to the Enlightenment? 2a. More on the gothic: How may Edgar & Clithero qualify as doppelgangers or twins? Examples of such twinning elsewhere in gothic literature? (e.g. Poe, the Brontes, Frankenstein) 3. Edgar Huntly was never popular like Charlotte Temple. Why not? What distinctions between classic & popular literature? 3a. Edgar Huntly is the first serious American attempt at "literary fiction"—written not just to sell copies or teach a lesson but to extend and influence the evolution of literary thought and technique. What does the novel get right and wrong? What can you learn about fiction from his successes and errors? What do you want more or less of? 4. A captivity narrative makes part of the novel's action, only now it's fiction. Compare Mary Rowlandson or Mary Jemison. 5. How may Edgar Huntly maintain interest as an example of modern or even Modernist literature? Consider its interest in the unconscious mind (e.g., somnambulism or sleep-walking; gothic as unconscious nightmare-life; also 27.41, 27.47) and the unreliable narrator.

(after) Tuesday, 29 April 2014: Final Exam Assignment — email anytime after class on Tuesday 29 April and by 9pm Sunday 4 May.

Course Objectives

Content

1. To learn about early North American and U.S.texts and cultures and make them matter now.

2. To read Early American Literature as an origin story about the beginnings of North American culture and literature.

"Creation Stories" and "Origin Stories" available in course:

• Native American origin stories

• The Pilgrim or Puritan Fathers (& Mothers) of New England (

• Founding Fathers (& Mothers)

• African American slave narratives

• Hispanic, Latino/a, Mestizo, or Mexican-American: the Virgin of Guadalupe & La Relacion of Cabeza de Vaca

• Genesis and Evolution

To explore related concepts of progress, utopia, decline, and apocalypse (or end-times)

3. Emergence of “Literature” as we know it today from earlier genres like letters, pamphlets, public documents; spoken and written literatures and cultures

4. To reconcile the "Culture Wars" over which America is the real America?—To ask hard questions without simple or final answers. (Answers evolve with changing world.)

• Which America to teach?

  • "Founding" by "great white fathers" and / or multicultural voices of African America, Native America, Spanish and French colonization, women, and others?

  • To acknowledge “heroes, villains, and victims” as symbols necessary for a good story but also recognize cross-cultural, intertextual, evolutionary, and other narrative dynamics.

• Is America a religious nation peculiarly blessed by God or a secular state with people of various beliefs devoted to materialist lifestyles?

• Is American government a strong, centralized national state or union, or is it a confederation of state and local governments with prevailing rights?

• Can there be a community of individuals?

• Is America in decline or making progress?

5. To gain literary and cultural knowledge of historical periods & attempt trans-historical unity:

• Renaissance / Age of Exploration (1500s)

• Seventeenth Century: Religious Reformation and Warfare (1600s)

• Enlightenment, Age of Reason (late 1600s-late 1700s)

• Romanticism (late 1700s-1800s) (continues in LITR 4232 American Renaissance, spring 2012)

6. Can American history tell a single story? Trans-historical unity?

Options:

• Providential history: from "fate / destiny" to Biblical narratives, incl. models for secular story-telling

• Evolution as continuity + change

• the romance narrative of quest or journey as progress or decline

• Ongoing transition: tradition > modernity [> + religious or cultural reaction of retrenchment & revival]

Cross-cultural strategies

syncretism

Mestizo identity

intertextuality

Critical Theory / Critical Thinking

Close reading or formalism: attention to language and its mechanisms

Textuality & Intertextuality—not reading “one text at a time” but how texts create a network of shared meaning

Death of the Author: empowering readers, opposing autobiographical interpretations and "what the author meant to say"

Historicism: reading past literature in its historical context and ours

• What aspects of the past do we relate to and why? If we don't relate, what can we learn from difference?

• What is historical and what is timeless? If “timeless,” what is the connection between them and us?

• How can we think of the past? What are mental powers of storytelling and limits to inclusion?

• “History in their own words”—and not, say, in the language of a modern textbook

• American Studies: the interdisciplinary study of American identity and culture in literature, history, religion, gender studies, and economics, whether dominant-culture or multicultural. 

• People may exploit the past to exploit people who know nothing of the past and have to believe what they hear.

Spoken & Written Cultures

Critical thinking:

unity & diversity, or identity and difference: How to tell a continuous story about America that involves “other Americas?”

succession and progression: is America in decline, in progress, or just evolving?

resistance to conspiracy theory while recognizing its attractions.

Teaching

Class Organization

• Course webpage as evolving teaching tool

• online texts for a face-to-face classroom

• Student-led discussions

Attitudes

• Build on what students already know (or may recognize or relate to)

• Emphasis less on what to think than on how to think and discuss

• Research posts as knowledge gathering + exams as opinion and analysis

• Begin inclusion of Meso-America, Spanish colonization, and Hispanic / Mexican identities

George Washington author's page

Review of Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (2012) by Timothy Matovina

Annie Murphy Paul, “Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer”

North America