English 731: Studies in American Literature Before 1900

English 731: Studies in American Literature before 1900

Profesora María Sánchez MHRA Bldg. 3309 Phone: 334-3981 Email: [email protected] Office hours by appointment

Required Readings: All but two of our readings will be available on Blackboard. Those two texts – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables – are yours to purchase however you wish.

Assignments: Attendance and participation, worth 10% of final grade Weekly response papers, 3 pp., worth 25% Two close reading assignments, 5 pp., worth 20% each Final research paper, 15 pp. minimum, worth 25%

Reading Schedule:

Week I: Aug. 24: introduction to class and brief discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self- Reliance” (All of Emerson’s essays are available online if you wish to access them this way. Go to http://emerson.tamu.edu/byemerson/electronictexts.html and click on the links to the University of Virginia’s RWE archives)

Week II: Aug. 31: Emerson readings “The American Scholar,” “The Divinity School Address,” “Self-Reliance”; Gura chapters from American Transcendentalism; first response paper due

Week III: Sept. 7: Emerson, “Nature”; excerpt from Richardson biography

Week IV Sept. 14: Henry David Thoreau, excerpts from Walden; Sattlemeyer and Johnson essays

Week V Sept. 21: Margaret Fuller, “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”

Week VI Sept. 28: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter First close reading assignment due by 5pm Friday, Sept. 30

Week VII Oct. 5: Finish discussion of The Scarlet Letter; essays by Herman Melville and Henry James

Week VIII Oct. 12: Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

Week IX ** Oct. 19: finish discussion of The House of the Seven Gables; essays by Anthony and Lang

Week X Oct. 26: Emily Dickinson, poems #241, 303, 613, 670, 712, 754

Week XI Nov. 2: Dickinson poems #299, 351, 717, 881, 904, 1167

Week XII Nov. 9: Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Billy Budd, Sailor”

Week XIII Nov. 16: Walt Whitman, Introduction and “Song of Myself,” 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass Second close reading due by 5 pm Friday, November 18

Nov. 23: No class – Happy Thanksgiving!

Week XIV Nov. 30: TBD

Final papers due December 10th by 5 pm