ENGL 2151 American Literature: 1865 to Present A. Course Description 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Common Course Outline for: ENGL 2151 American Literature: 1865 to Present A. Course Description 1. Number of credits: 4 2. Lecture hours per week: 4 Lab hours per week: None 3. Prerequisites: ENGC 0900 or placement in ENGC 1101, and READ 0960 or placement in READ 1106. 4. Co-requisites: None 5. MnTC Goals: Goals 6 (The Humanities and Fine Arts) and 9 (Ethical and Civic Responsibility) Students will study fiction, poetry, drama, and literary nonfiction by a variety of authors representing the diverse viewpoints and experiences of Americans after the Civil War. B. Date last reviewed: January 2020 C. Outline of Major Content Areas 1. Issues & Visions in Post-Civil War America (1865-1910) 2. Regional, Cultural, and National Voices 3. Developments in Women's Writing 4. American Realism 5. Modern Period 1910-1945 6. The Harlem Renaissance 7. Recent Trends in Contemporary American Literature (Multiculturalism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, etc.) D. Course Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to: 1. Demonstrate knowledge of canonical works and major genres and styles of American literature (Goal 6a). 2. Place writers with respect to the major periods and historical developments in American literature and their geographic, cultural, and/or ethnic situation (Goal 6b). 3. Identify the themes of the works read and the characteristic features of their styles (Goal 6c). 4. Articulate the political, social, and economic features of the period, noting literary reflections of or reactions to changes in these spheres (Goals 9b, c, d). 5. Read closely, critically, and analytically, framing the kinds of questions modern students of literature use as their chief tools in arriving at critical insights about their subject (Goals 6e, 2a, b, d). E. Methods for Assessing Student Learning (may include, as determined by instructor): 1. Participation 2. Tests/quizzes 3. Essays 4. Journals 5. Collaborative Projects F. Special Information: None .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-10972-8 - A History of American Civil War Literature Edited by Coleman Hutchison Frontmatter More information A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR LITERATURE Th is book is the fi rst omnibus history of the literature of the American Civil War, the deadliest confl ict in U.S. history. A History of American Civil War Literature examines the way the war has been remembered and rewritten over time. Th is history incorporates new directions in Civil War historiography and cultural studies while giving equal attention to writings from both the northern and the southern states. Written by leading scholars in the fi eld, this book works to redefi ne the boundaries of American Civil War literature while posing a fundamental question: Why does this 150-year-old confl ict continue to capture the American imagination? Coleman Hutchison is an associate professor of English at Th e University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in nineteenth-century U.S. literature and culture, bibliography and tex- tual studies, and poetry and poetics. He is the author of the fi rst literary history of the Civil War South, Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America (2012) and the coauthor of Writing about American Literature: A Guide for Students (2014). Hutchison’s work has appeared in American Literary History, Common-Place, Comparative American Studies, CR: Th e New Centennial Review, Journal of American Studies, Th e Emily Dickinson Journal, PMLA , and Southern Spaces, among other venues.
[Show full text]
Native American Literature: Remembrance, Renewal
U.S. Society and Values, "Contemporary U.S. Literature: Multicultura...partment of State, International Information Programs, February 2000 NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE: REMEMBRANCE, RENEWAL By Geary Hobson In 1969, the fiction committee for the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes in literature awarded its annual honor to N. Scott Momaday, a young professor of English at Stanford University in California, for a book entitled House Made of Dawn. The fact that Momaday's novel dealt almost entirely with Native Americans did not escape the attention of the news media or of readers and scholars of contemporary literature. Neither did the author's Kiowa Indian background. As news articles pointed out, not since Oliver LaFarge received the same honor for Laughing Boy, exactly 40 years earlier, had a so-called "Indian" novel been so honored. But whereas LaFarge was a white man writing about Indians, Momaday was an Indian -- the first Native American Pulitzer laureate. That same year, 1969, another young writer, a Sioux attorney named Vine Deloria, Jr., published Custer Died For Your Sins, subtitled "an Indian Manifesto." It examined, incisively, U.S. attitudes at the time towards Native American matters, and appeared almost simultaneously with The American Indian Speaks, an anthology of writings by various promising young American Indians -- among them Simon J. Ortiz, James Welch, Phil George, Janet Campbell and Grey Cohoe, all of whom had been only fitfully published at that point. These developments that spurred renewed -- or new -- interest in contemporary Native American writing were accompanied by the appearance around that time of two works of general scholarship on the subject, Peter Farb's Man's Rise to Civilization (1968) and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (1970).
[Show full text]
Anti-Americanism and Popular Culture
2005 Anti-Americanism and Popular Culture. Budapest: Center for Policy Studies Working Papers. 38 pp. <http://cps.ceu.hu/papers.php>. © Central European University The views in this report are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Policy Studies, Central European University or the Open Society Institute. CENTER FOR POLICY STUDIES CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Nádor utca 9 H–1051 Budapest, Hungary [email protected] http://www.ceu.hu/cps Toby Miller Tisch School of the Arts New York University 721 Broadway, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10003 [email protected] 2005 Typesetting • Tamás Dombos ANTI-AMERICANISM AND POPULAR CULTURE ^ CONTENTS 1. Introduction 5 2. Key Terms I: Anti-Americanism 7 3. Key Terms II: Popular Culture 8 4. Cultural Dominance 10 5. Role of the State 15 6. Opposition 20 7. Conclusion and Recommendations 25 7.1 Recommendations 26 3 ANTI-AMERICANISM AND POPULAR CULTURE ^ Here’s the rub: America is at war against people it doesn’t know, because they don’t appear much on TV. Arundhati Roy (2001) “I like taxis. I was never good at geography and I learn things by asking the drivers where they come from.” “They come from horror and despair.” “Yes, exactly. One learns about the countries where unrest is occurring by riding the taxis here.” Don DeLillo (2003: 16) The core of globalization is to achieve economic hegemony of a few rich states, the United States of America in particular, as well as the hegemony of Western consumer culture, threatening the peoples’ cultures, methods of living and spiritual values.
[Show full text]
Frank O'hara's Oranges : Poetry, Painters and Painting
University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2001 Frank O'Hara's oranges : poetry, painters and painting. Karen Ware 1973- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Ware, Karen 1973-, "Frank O'Hara's oranges : poetry, painters and painting." (2001). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1531. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1531 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FRANK O'HARA'S ORANGES: Poetry, Painters and Painting By Karen Ware B.A., Spalding University, 1994 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Department of English University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2001 FRANK O'HARA'S ORANGES: Poetry, Painters and Painting By Karen Ware B.A., Spalding University, 1994 A Thesis Approved on by the following Reading Committee: Thesis MrectO'r 11 DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to Clare Pearce, because I promised, and to Kyle, through all things. III ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many amazing individuals have taken a seat in the roller coaster construction of this long-awaited project.
[Show full text]
Wabanaki Studies Commission C
F i n a l R e p o r t o f t h e W a b a n a k i S t u d i e s C o m m i s s i o n QuickTime™ and a Photo - JPEG decompressor are needed to see this picture. Submitted Pursuant to LD 291 to: Maine Department of Education Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission University of Maine System Aroostook Band of Micmacs Houlton Band of Maliseets Passamaquoddy Tribe Penobscot Nation October 2003 Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements Section 1. Introduction 1 A. Overview B. Significance of Law C. Purpose of Report D. Recommendations E. Organization of Report Section 2. The Law 2 A. Wabanaki Studies Required B. Commission Created; Responsibilities C. Implementation Steps Section 3. The Commission and Its Work 3 A. Members; Staff B. Supporting Organizations C. Meetings D. Vision E. Concentrated Areas of Study F. Relationship of Wabanaki Studies to Learning Results G. Importance of Assessment H. Materials and Resources for Teachers I. Professional Development J. Commission’s Next Steps Section 4. Wabanaki Studies Summer Institute 7 A. Purpose B. Who Was Involved C. Activities and Syllabus D. Feedback on Institute Section 5. Recommendations and Action Steps 8 A. Eight Recommendations B. Action Steps for Wabanaki Studies Commission C. Action Steps for Department of Education D. Action Steps for the University of Maine System E. Action Steps for the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission F. Action Steps for the Tribes Attachments 1. Public Law 2001, Chapter 403 15 2. Members of the Wabanaki Studies Commission 17 3.
[Show full text]
Hispanic American Literature, Small, Independent Presses That Rely Upon U.S
HISPANICHISPANIC AMERICANAMERICAN LITELITERRAATURE:TURE: DIVEDIVERRGENCEGENCE && C0MMONALITYC0MMONALITY BY VIRGIL SUAREZ n an autobiographical sketch written in 1986, the some of the best work is coming from such sources. respected Chicano American novelist Rudolfo Increasingly, though, with the recognition associated Anaya observed that “if I am to be a writer, it is with the nation’s most prestigious literary awards -- the ancestral voices of…[my]… people who will the Before Columbus Foundation Award, the National form a part of my quest, my search.” Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize -- Hispanic IAncestral voices are very much a part of Hispanic American authors are being courted by the publishing American literature today, a tradition harking back establishment. more than three centuries that has witnessed a Much of the attention of recent times, justifiably, is dramatic renascence in the past generation. As the owed to the groundbreaking work of the Chicano Arts Hispanic experience in the United States continues to movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the confront issues of identity, assimilation, cultural emergence of Hispanic American poets such as heritage and artistic expression, the works of Rodolfo Gonzales and Luis Alberto Urista (“Alurista,”) Hispanic American writers are read with a great deal and other writers who chronicled the social and of interest and passion. political history of the movement. The campaign was In a sense, the literature functions as a mirror, a propelled by grassroots activists such as Cesar reflection of the way Hispanic Americans are viewed Chavez and Dolores Huerta who played key roles in by the mainstream culture -- but not always the the unionization of migrant workers achieved through majority.
[Show full text]
From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American
Civil War Book Review Spring 2011 Article 16 From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil arW Transformed American Literature Cynthia Wachtell Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cwbr Recommended Citation Wachtell, Cynthia (2011) "From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil arW Transformed American Literature," Civil War Book Review: Vol. 13 : Iss. 2 . DOI: 10.31390/cwbr.13.2.17 Available at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cwbr/vol13/iss2/16 Wachtell: From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Review Wachtell, Cynthia Spring 2011 Fuller, Randall From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature. Oxford University Press, $29.95 ISBN 978-0-19-534230-7 Understanding how War Influences Literature Randall Fuller’s From Battlefields Rising focuses upon the northern literary luminaries of the Civil War era. The work, though, is no dry scholarly treatise or exercise in abstruse literary criticism; instead, Fuller delivers an engaging story. He explains in the introduction, This, then, is a story of America’s greatest writers as they struggled to make sense of the Civil War in old and new literary forms and to uphold their highest ideals . It is a story about how these writers came to realize . that upholding their beliefs had come at an enormously high price . It is a story, ultimately, about how the war tested their deepest commitments (9). Fuller is a gifted storyteller. He evokes the small details – the ice that is slow to melt on Walden Pond as Henry David Thoreau lies dying nearby in the spring of 1862, the boy with pneumonia and the soldier shot through the lungs who struggle for breath on either side of Louisa May Alcott as she sits stunned during her first shift as a volunteer nurse in the Union Hotel Hospital – and he gets the details right.
[Show full text]
Ethos and African American Literature
humanities Article Haunt or Home? Ethos and African American Literature Richard Schur Department of Languages and Literature, Drury University, Springfield, MO 65802, USA; [email protected] Received: 21 May 2018; Accepted: 26 July 2018; Published: 10 August 2018 Abstract: The African American rhetorical tradition could be described as a shelter in an alien environment or as a way station on a long journey. A focus on ethos suggests that such a narrow approach to African American literature cannot do justice to these literary texts: how these writers employ images and symbols, craft and deploy examine identities, blend, criticize, and create traditions, explore contemporary issues, and create community. Because of cultural and racist narratives, African Americans could not simply use either the pre-Socratic or Aristotelian approaches to ethos in their fight for social justice. This essay demonstrates how a postclassical approach to ethos that draws on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and is focused on community-building and self-healing is central to the African American literature and rhetoric. Keywords: African American literature; ethos; slave narratives; Phillis Wheatley; Martin Luther King; Malcolm X; W.E.B. Du Bois; Booker T. Washington 1. Introduction In a provocative essay from 1997 entitled, “Home,” Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison compares living and writing in the United States as an African American woman with occupying a house rather than a home. For Morrison, cultural memory shapes contemporary action, and her characters cannot escape how America’s racial history has shaped their lives, coloring how they see the world and influencing their interactions with both African Americans and whites.
[Show full text]
Doctoral Reading List American Literature 1865-1965 FICTION
Doctoral Reading List American Literature 1865-1965 FICTION (Novels and Short Story Collections) Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio Baldwin, James. Go Tell it on the Mountain Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood Barth, John. The Floating Opera Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky Cather, Willa. My Antonia; The Professor’s House Chesnutt, Charles. The Marrow of Tradition Chopin, Kate. The Awakening Crane, Stephen. Maggie; The Red Badge of Courage DeBurton, Maria Amparo Ruiz. The Squatter and the Don Dos Passos, John. 1919 (from The USA Trilogy) Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying Fauset, Jessie Redmon. There Is Confusion Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby Glasgow, Ellen. Barren Ground Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins. Iola Leroy Heller, Joseph. Catch-22 Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time; The Sun Also Rises Howells, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady; Daisy Miller; The Golden Bowl Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs Kerouac, Jack. On the Road Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Larsen, Nella. Passing Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita Norris, Frank. The Octopus O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard To Find: 10 Memorable Stories Paredes, Americo. George Washington Gomez Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer Petry, Ann. The Street Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath Toomer, Jean.
[Show full text]
Writing the Nation: a Concise Introduction to American Literature
Writing the Nation A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO AMERIcaN LITERATURE 1 8 6 5 TO P RESENT Amy Berke, PhD Robert R. Bleil, PhD Jordan Cofer, PhD Doug Davis, PhD Writing the Nation A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO AMERIcaN LITERATURE 1 8 6 5 TO P RESENT Amy Berke, PhD Robert R. Bleil, PhD Jordan Cofer, PhD Doug Davis, PhD Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature—1865 to Present is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon this work, even commercially, as long as you credit this original source for the creation and license the new creation under identical terms. If you reuse this content elsewhere, in order to comply with the attribution requirements of the license please attribute the original source to the University System of Georgia. NOTE: The above copyright license which University System of Georgia uses for their original content does not extend to or include content which was accessed and incorporated, and which is licensed under various other CC Licenses, such as ND licenses. Nor does it extend to or include any Special Permissions which were granted to us by the rightsholders for our use of their content. Image Disclaimer: All images and figures in this book are believed to be (after a reasonable investigation) either public domain or carry a compatible Creative Commons license. If you are the copyright owner of images in this book and you have not authorized the use of your work under these terms, please contact the University of North Georgia Press at [email protected] to have the content removed.
[Show full text]
That in the End We Go to Poetry for One Reason, So
Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. Christian Wiman [Blacks and Jews remain] “watchful of each other, mindful of hurts and wrongs, not forgiving, but still friends.” Emily Budick Copyright by Colleen H. McCallum-Bonar 2008 ABSTRACT Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance explores the relationship between African Americans and Eastern European immigrant Jews (Yiddish-speaking / Ashkenazic Jews) by examining the depictions of each in their respective literatures. The thrust of my project will address the representations of African Americans in Yiddish literature. An investigation of the depictions of Jews by Harlem Renaissance writers will contribute to the understanding of an African American/Yiddish interface in which attitudes towards each other are played out. This linkage of African American and Jewish history, traditions and reflections regarding identity, culture, and language appears at a significant point in the grand narrative of ethnicity and race ideology in the United States. For Yiddish writers, their works regarding African Americans revealed their projection of what it meant to be Black, just as those of Harlem Renaissance writers projected their concept of ii what it meant to be Jewish, all in a milieu which saw the redefinition of what it meant to be black, to be white, and to be American. Yiddish writers addressed concepts of Blackness and Jewishness with an understanding of what could be gained or lost; the push to become American, the opportunity for social, political and economic mobility and racial alterity was countered by the pull of conflict with respect to assimilation, American conceptualization of exclusion based upon race, and a Jewish consciousness which rejected both.
[Show full text]
The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick As Test Case
The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case Lawrence Buell This essay is an interim report on a long-term study of the chimera of the great American novel—the dream either of writing it or seeing it written. The project has three main facets: a chronicle of the dispensations of authorial, critical, and readerly pronouncements (a story with a distinct beginning, several middles, and no end); a historical-formalist comparative examin- ation of several dozen aspirants and/or nominees; and a nation-and-narration metaperspective conceptualizing “American” narrative, in broadest terms, as part of a world system inflected by what Pascale Casanova calls the “Herder effect” (78–81), the pos- tulate of each nation speaking in its own voice, within and against which its writers must thereafter contend, even such resolute cos- mopolitans as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. This might seem a distinctly unfashionable project, out of phase with the push to think beyond/outside the confines of nation- ness for which Americanists, myself included, have lately been calling as a counterweight to the overemphasis on US literary and cultural difference—the “literature of our own” phase, as it were— that long marked Americanist field-defining work. But beyond this, great American novelism as such might seem so quaintly paleolithic, long since dead as a viable subject for literary history, criticism, and theory. As one recent manifesto by Alan Williams begins by asking, “Aside from pissing off the literati, does the Great American Novel, a monumentally 19th century concept, serve any higher purpose?” Indeed, the dream of the “GAN”—initially reduced from Great American Novel to acronym status by none other than Henry James1—has been killed off not once but at least twice.
[Show full text]