LITR 4232: American Renaissance
Original Syllabus for spring 2008 (pre-Hurricane Ike)
Spring 2008, 10-11:20 Tuesday & Thursday, Bayou 1218
Instructor: Craig White Office: 2529-8 Bayou email: whitec@uhcl.edu
Phone: (281) 283-3380 Office Hours: TBA & by appointment
Caveat: Data stated and contracts implied in this syllabus may change with minimal notice in fair hearings at class meetings.
TEXTS:
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. 1826. NY: Penguin Classics, 1986.
Course
Objectives:
1. To use "close reading" and "Historicism" as ways of studying classic, popular, and representative literature and cultural history of the "American Renaissance" (the generation before the Civil War).
2. To study the movement of "Romanticism," the narrative genre of "romance," and the related styles of the "gothic" and "the sublime." (The American Renaissance is the major period of American Romantic Literature.)
3. To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (Historicism), such as equality (race, gender, class); modernization and tradition; the individual, family; and community; nature; the role of writers in an anti-intellectual society.
Graded Assignments (details via links):
Percentages listed are only symbolic of approximate relative weight; grades are not computed mathematically but by letter grades, which may include pluses and minuses. Pluses and minuses may appear on final grades:
In-class midterm (9 October; 20%)
Research Project (Essay or Journal; Proposal due by email 16 Oct.; project due by email 11 Nov.; 30%)
Final exam (9 December, 1000-12:50; 30%)
Presentation, participation, attendance, email (20%)
Presentations (general requirements):
Attendance policy: You are expected to attend every scheduled class meeting, but you are permitted two free cuts without comment or penalty. Attendance may not be taken systematically, but missing more than two meetings jeopardizes your status in the course. If you continue to cut or miss, you should drop the course. Even with medical or other emergency excuses, a high number of absences or partial absences will result in a lower or failing grade.
Meeting and reading schedule
fall 2008
(Except for The Last of the Mohicans, all page numbers refer to The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th ed., vol. B: 1800-1865)
Tuesday, 26 August: Introduction; concept of "The American Renaissance"
Thursday, 28 August: Washington Irving 951-985 (“Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”)
Tuesday, 2 September: conclude Irving, begin James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, chapters 1-3 (pages 1-35 in Penguin Classics edition.)
Thursday, 4 September: Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, through chapter 13 (thru p. 133 in Penguin edition.)
Text-Objective Discussion: Bryan McDonald
Tuesday, 9 September: Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, through chapter 24 (thru p. 254 in Penguin edition.)
Web highlight (midterms on Mohicans): Nicole Bippen
Thursday, 11 September: Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, complete (thru p. 350 in Penguin edition.)
Tuesday, 16 September: Emergence & repression of minority voices. William Apess (Pequot) 1051-58. The Cherokee Memorials 1263-1268; Sojourner Truth, "Speech to the Women's Rights Convention . . . " 1695-6
Text-Objective Discussion: Karina Ramos
Thursday, 18 September: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1106-1113: introduction + opening 5 pages of Nature; 1163-68: opening 5 pages of “Self-Reliance”
Text-Objective Discussion: Martin Bidegaray
Tuesday, 23 September: "First-Wave Feminism." Margaret Fuller 1637-1659, introduction + from "The Great Lawsuit"; 1675-76: "Fourth of July"; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments.
Thursday, 25 September: Harriet Jacobs 1808-29, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Tuesday, 30 September: Frederick Douglass 2060-2143, introduction + (Narrative of the Life . . . + opening of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Text-Objective Discussion: Adrian Holden
Web highlight (midterms): Lisa Wilson
Thursday, 2 October: Henry David Thoreau 1853-1872, introduction + “Resistance to Civil Government” + Backgrounds to Civil Disobedience
Text-Objective Discussion: Nicole Bippen
Tuesday, 7 October: Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1698-1751, 1780-1792: introduction + selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Text-Objective Discussion: Shanna Farmer
Thursday, 9 October: midterm exam
Tuesday, 14 October: Edgar Allan Poe 1528: Introduction; “Sonnet—To Science”; "To Helen" 1534-6: “The City in the Sea”; 1542: “Annabel Lee.”
Text-Objective Discussion: Josh Hughey (poems besides "Annabel Lee")
Text-Objective Discussion: Alicia D. Atwood ("Annabel Lee")
Web highlight (research proposals): instructor
Thursday, 16 October: Poe's
fiction 1543-1579: “Ligeia”; “The Fall of the
House of Usher”; "William Wilson. A Tale" Research Project
Proposal due.
Text-Objective Discussion: Natalie Walker
Tuesday, 21 October: Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1272-76 introduction + 1311-20: “The Minister’s Black Veil.”
Web highlight (research projects): Cheryl Romig
Thursday, 23 October: Hawthorne continued 1289-98: “Young Goodman Brown.”
Text-Objective Discussion: Veronica Nadalin
Web highlight (final exams on gothic with Hawthorne or Poe): Cheryl Romig
Tuesday, 28 October: Herman Melville, introduction + begin Billy Budd: 2304-8 + 2468-2498 (through section 17 of Billy Budd)
Web highlight (final exams on Billy Budd): Martin Bidegaray
Thursday, 30 October: Melville, complete Billy Budd 2498-2523:
Text-Objective Discussion: Alicia D. Atwood
Tuesday, 4 November: Walt Whitman first meeting: introduction 2190-95 + “There Was a Child Went Forth” + selections from Song of Myself : sections 1-5 (pp. 2210-13), 19 (p. 2223), 21 (pp. 2224-5), 24 (pp. 2227-9), 32-34 (pp. 2232-9), 46-52 (pp. 2249-54).
Web highlight (research projects): Bethany Roachell
Thursday, 6 November: Whitman continued: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” 2263-7
Text-Objective Discussion: Cortney Kaighen
Tuesday, 11 November: Abraham Lincoln 1627-37: "House Divided speech," “Gettysburg Address,” + “Second Inaugural Address.” Research Project due.
Text-Objective Discussion: Cathrine Marie Nunn
Thursday, 13 November: conclude Whitman: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” 2282-8
Text-Objective Discussion: Lisa Wilson
Tuesday, 18 November: Research Project due. Emily Dickinson first meeting
Introduction 2554-58
Poems: "I like a look of Agony" (2558); "Wild Nights" (2565); "There's a certain slant of light" (2567); "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" (2568)
Text-Objective Discussion: Bethany Roachell
Thursday, 20 November: Emily Dickinson second meeting
Poems: "I never lost
as much but twice" (2558); "These are the days when Birds come back--" (2559);
"Come
Slowly--Eden!"; "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"
Web highlight (final exams): Adrian Holden
Tuesday, 25 November: Emily Dickinson third meeting
Poems: "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church--" (2563); "I dwell in Possibility" (2576); "I heard a Fly Buzz" (2579); "A Bird came down the Walk--" (2571); "I know that He exists" (2571); "After great pain, a formal feeling comes--" (2572); "Dare you see a Soul at the white heat?"; "A Route of Evanescence" [riddle poem] (2591)
Text-Objective Discussion: Elyse Christine Martinez
Tuesday, 2 December: Emily Dickinson fourth meeting
Poems: "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--" (2579); "This World is not Conclusion" (2572); "I started Early--Took my Dog--" (2582); "I cannot live with You--"; "Because I could not stop for Death--" (2578); "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" (2588)
Text-Objective Discussion: Gena Martinez
Tuesday, 9 December, 10:00am-12:50pm: final exam (in-class or email)