ENGL 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature
Fall 2001
Section 1: Thompson E-122, T 5-7:20 pm
Office: Fenton 240; MW 2-5, T 1-4, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon
AMERICAN MIGRATION NARRATIVES
About the Course Web Pages
This web site is designed to help you get as much out of this course as possible--you can use it to find out how you will be graded, what reading, research, oral and written assignments are due and when, how to subscribe to the course listserv, what books are on reserve for your use in Reed Library, and how to use the world-wide web for research. Please get in the habit of checking back to these pages to keep track of changes to the syllabus, advice on papers and research projects, and to surf the ever-expanding list of links to interesting web pages related to the course. And please contact me anytime (see above for my coordinates) if you have ideas about how to improve these pages or the course as a whole.
Course Description/Goals
This course examines selected works from a range of time periods, cultures, and literary traditions that center on the experiences, consequences, and legacies of migrations to and within America. Our goal is to recognize--and to analyze the stakes of--commonalities and differences in the American migration narratives we're reading, so as to better understand and reconsider defining narratives in the self-conception of United States such as "the chosen people," "manifest destiny," "the melting pot," "a nation of immigrants," "cultural pluralism," and "multiculturalism."
Texts. There are nine books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
In addition, there are a number of works on reserve at the circulation desk in Reed Library, some of which contain assigned readings that you are responsible for copying and bringing to class on days when we are discussing them (see Schedule of Assignments and Bibliography, below).
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to your grade in this course:
Attendance/Participation (15%): Regular attendance and thoughtful participation are crucial to your enjoyment of and success in this course. If there is absolutely no way for you to avoid missing a class, you are expected to contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by e-mail. Barring emergencies, each absence after the second will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade (e.g., with three absences, an A would become an A-; with five, a B+ would become a C+).
More important than showing up on time, of course, is coming to class prepared and focused. I expect you to read what has been assigned for a given date at least once (and preferably more than that!) by the time we begin to discuss it in class. This is a graduate seminar, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in discussions, activities, and in-class writing. As there is no final examination in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation in class and on the course listserv (see below) as a different but equally important method of assessing your effort and learning in the course.
Course Listserv (10%): This listserv will be your space; I will keep my own input to a bare minimum. Although you may use the listserv in any number of ways, you must use it in the following way: no later than 11 pm Monday of every week, you must post to the course listserv at least one sustained observation and three well-developed and carefully-chosen questions that you believe would spark discussion for that Tuesday's class meeting.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the number of on-time sets of observations and discussion questions you post to the course listserv: 9 or more sets of questions=A; 8=B+; 7=B; 6=C+; 5=C; 4=D; 3 or less=E. The quality of your observations and discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above); the more carefully-considered your questions are, the more likely they are to provide a seed for an in-class presentation or critical/comparative essay, as well.
Research-Based Class Presentation (25%): Your class presentation must present an argument that relates to the central issues of the course and draw on library and internet research. Presenters are the only people who must have read the critical readings that are optional for everyone else in a given week; it is expected that your presentation will in some way draw on or relate to all the readings for that week. In it, you may (a) compare and contrast two of the assigned readings thus far in the semester, (b) put one of the assigned readings we've read thus far in the semester in historical or social context, (c) relate one of the works on reserve at Reed Library to one of the texts we have read thus far in the semester, (d) relate a migration narrative from the course to one from outside it, (e) describe and justify a lesson plan you would generate in order to teach a given reading from the course, an excerpt from it, or an issue stemming from it, or (f) develop a topic of your choice (with my approval). Please consult with me well in advance of your presentation.
Creative/Critical Family Migration Narrative (25%). Your ten-to-fifteen-page family migration narrative is an opportunity to relate migration in your family history to texts and issues in the course. In it, you may (a) write a fiction of your own based on some aspect of migration in your family history that is in intertextual relationship (thematically, structurally) with at least one of the literary, one of the historical, and one of the theoretical texts, (b) retell and analyze the meaning and significance of a story about migration often shared among your family members, using the literature, history, and criticism we've read to help you make sense of it, (c) do research on a specific migrant in your family history, the period in which he/she migrated, and the places he/she migrated from and to, and contextualize his/her migration in terms of the reasons for emigration, the experience of being an immigrant in America, or the legacy of that migration for your family; or (d) develop a topic of your own choice (with my approval).
Critical/Comparative Essay (25%). The topic for and argument of your twelve-to-eighteen-page critical/comparative essay are open, but you must turn in a 2-3-page research-based proposal that provides a compelling justification/rationale for your project after Thanksgiving break. We will arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your final paper after Thanksgiving break.
Schedule of Assignments
I will be regularly updating the schedule of assignments on the syllabus here (including pages to be read when not yet listed on this syllabus). Please remember that your observation and discussion questions are due by 11 pm the Monday before each class, and that readings listed under Criticism are optional/recommended for everyone but the person giving a presentation that week, for whom they are required.
Setting Out
T 8/28/01 Welcome; Introductions; Set-up
Errand into the Wilderness: Reimagining Puritan Legacies of Migration
T 9/4/01
Literature: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (to roughly 1634, vii-290)
Criticism: Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (preface and title essay, vii-15) [on reserve]; Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (preface and "The Puritan Errand Reassessed," xi-xvi, 3-30) [on reserve]
T 9/11/01 CLASS CANCELLED: We'll carry over these readings to next week.
Literature: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (roughly 1634-1646, 290-385); John Winthrop, from "A Modell of Christian Charity" (in Myra Jehlen and Michael Warner, eds., The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800 151-159)
Criticism: Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Literature 3-65 [on reserve] (reread Miller and Bercovitch)
T 9/18/01
Literature: Toni Morrison, Paradise (Ruby to Divine, 1-182)
Criticism: Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters vii-16, 256-261 [on reserve]
T 9/25/01
Literature: Toni Morrison, Paradise (Patricia to Save-Marie, 183-318); Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World (Part One, 1-91)
Criticism: Toni Morrison, "Home" (in Wahneema Lubiano, ed., The House That Race Built 3-12 [on reserve]); Farah Jasmine Griffin, Who Set You Flowin'? The African-American Migration Narrative 2-12 [on reserve]; Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America 1-17, 340-369 [on reserve]
Presentation: Michael Lovaglio
T 10/2/01
Literature: Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World (Parts Two through Four, 92-286)
Criticism: Bharati Mukherjee, "Two Ways to Belong to America," in Randall Bass, ed., Border Texts: Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writers 116-119 [on reserve]; Amy Kaplan, "'Left Alone with America': The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture," in Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism 3-21 [on reserve]; Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt, "On the Borders between U.S. Studies and Postcolonial Studies," in Singh and Schmidt, eds., Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature 3-69 [on reserve]
Presentations: Adrienne McCormick, English Department and director, Women's Studies Program, SUNY Fredonia; Russ Leo
The Frontier and La Frontera: Manifest Destinies and Migration
T 10/9/01
Literature: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (Preface to Ch. XXII, 3-250)
Criticism: Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Randall Bass, ed., Border Texts: Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writers 476-480 [on reserve]
Presentation: Chris Hatch
T 10/16/01
Literature: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (Ch. XXIII to XLI, 251-456)
Criticism: Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 3-24, 466-516 [on reserve]
Presentation: Brian Ranney
T 10/23/01
Literature: Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (all)
Criticism: Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Making of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism 1-6, 189-228 [on reserve]; Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West 17-32, 181-258 [on reserve]
Presentation: Angela Raimondo
T 10/30/01
Literature: Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (Parts One and Two, 1-346)
Criticism: Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas 21-36, 147-168 [on reserve]
Presentation: Jeannette Jones, History Department, SUNY Fredonia; Nic Roselli
T 11/6/01
Literature: Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (Parts Three and Four, 347-565)
Criticism: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, The New World Border i-47, 165-167 [on reserve]
Presentation: Elizabeth Dwyer, English Department and coordinator, Latino Studies Program, SUNY Fredonia; Kate Child
T 11/13/01
Literature: Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (Parts Five and Six, 566-763)
Criticism: Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas 169-195 [on reserve]; Guillermo Gómez-Peña, The New World Border 193-236 [on reserve]
Presentation: Claudia Sadowski-Smith, English Department and co-director, American Studies Program, SUNY Fredonia
Assignment: CREATIVE/CRITICAL FAMILY MIGRATION NARRATIVE due before you leave for Thanksgiving Break
M 11/19/01 - F 11/23/01 Thanksgiving Break: No Class
America Is in the Heart: Promised Lands and Immigration Memoirs
T 11/27/01
Literature: Mary Antin, The Promised Land (all); J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (Letter III); 1790 Immigration Act; Benjamin Franklin, "Advice to Such as Would Remove to America" (handouts from Joseph Skerrett, ed., Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities 24-43)
Criticism: Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People 3-6, 94-116, 227-258 [on reserve]
Presentations: Ellen Litwicki, History Department, SUNY Fredonia; Jackie Johnson; Sonja Bacho
T 12/4/01
Literature: Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart (all)
Criticism: Randolph Bourne, "Trans-National America," in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 (3rd ed.) 1730-1743 [to be handed out]; Thomas Ferraro, Ethnic Passages: Literary Immigrants in Twentieth-Century America 1-17, 191-195 [on reserve]
Presentations: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, English Department, SUNY Fredonia; James Kayorie; Robin Morrison
Assignment: PROPOSAL for Critical/Comparative Essay due in class
T 12/11/01
Literature: Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (all)
Criticism: Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics 1-36, 60-83 [on reserve]
Presentation: Kuniko Kitamura
T 12/18/01
Assignment: CRITICAL/COMPARATIVE ESSAY due, for link to web version of final project by Brian Ranney, click here
ENGL 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Fall 2001
Created: 9/4/01 9:04 pm
Last modified: 2/11/02 3:28 pm
See also the web site for my sections of Novels and Tales, which treats migration narratives in world literature.