EN 336: Modern American Literature
Fall 1998
Section 1: Thompson E120, TTh 12:30-1:50
Office: Fenton 240; W 10-12, 1-5, F 2-3, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon
AMERICAN MODERNISMS
Course Description/Goals
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), Gertrude Stein claimed that America is "now the oldest country in the world because by the methods of the civil war and the commercial conceptions that followed it America created the twentieth century, and since all the other countries are now either living or commencing to be living a twentieth century of life, America having begun the creation of the twentieth century in the sixties of the nineteenth century is now the oldest country in the world." In this course, we will consider one possible implication of Stein's claim: perhaps American literature, too, became "modern" in the nineteenth century, and its "modernism" can be found in the experimentalism of various writers' and literary movements' responses to social and economic conditions and issues between the Civil War and World War II. Perhaps, that is, it would be best to speak of American modernisms in the plural.
To test this idea, we'll read poetry and prose by a wide range of writers publishing between the Spanish-American War and World War II, including Du Bois, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Toomer, Stevens, Faulkner, Hemingway, Williams, Hughes, Hurston, and Wright. We'll consider the ways in which certain nineteenth-century texts and writers anticipate and/or influence later writers and movements, from high modernism to the Harlem Renaissance to proletarian fiction. Throughout the semester, as well, we'll closely examine the three key terms of the course--"modern," "American," and "literature"--to uncover some of the connotations and assumptions surrounding and permeating them.
Texts. There are eight books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to my evaluation of you in this course.
Reading Responses (20%). We will have a course listserv, modlist@ait.fredonia.edu. This listserv will be your space; I will keep my own input to a bare minimum (hence, announcements and handouts will be available on this web page rather than being posted to the listserv).
Although you may use the listserv in any number of ways, you must use it in the following way: by 5 pm every Monday during the semester, you must post to the listserv a brief "reading response," in which you offer a paragraph or more of reflections on the readings for Tuesday's class and raise 3-5 questions that you would like to see discussed in class or on the listserv. You are then responsible for examining everyone else's reading responses and, by 5 pm Wednesday, posting to the listserv a brief "student response," in which you respond to a classmate's question or observation, preferably by relating it to one of the readings for Thursday.
Reading responses are graded pass/fail; if you have read the material, you are very unlikely to fail a reading response. Your grade will be determined by how many on-time, passing responses you post to the course listserv. Since there are thirteen Mondays and Wednesdays when responses are due in the semester, and since you are allowed two free weeks without penalty, 11 or more reading responses=A; 10=B+; 9=B; 8=C+; 7=C, 6=D; 5 or less=F (for 10% of your base grade). Student responses (worth 10% of your base grade) will be graded in precisely the same way.
Critical Response Essays (20%). You must turn in two one-to-three-page critical response essays (each worth 10% of your base grade). With my permission, you may substitute a creative response paper for one of the critical response papers.
Oral Project (15%). The class will be organized into several groups, each of which will be responsible for leading class and moderating the listserv once during the semester.
Mid-Term Exam/Final Essay (45%). I will provide detailed information on both the mid-term exam (worth 20% of your base grade) and the seven-to-ten-page final essay (worth 25% of your base grade) later in the semester. We will also arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your final paper that will take place either just before or just after Thanksgiving break.
Attendance/Preparation/Participation. Regular attendance is crucial to your happiness and success in this course. If there is absolutely no way for you to avoid missing a class, please contact me ahead of time, for unexcused absences will hurt your final grade. As a rule, more than four absences (whether excused or unexcused) will lead to a course grade of F.
Just as important as showing up on time, of course, is coming to class prepared and focused. I will expect you to have 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. After all, this is a discussion rather than a lecture course, and you can't discuss a work well if you haven't read it carefully.
Hence, although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in small or large group discussions. Because discussion is so important to this course, strong class participation will definitely raise your base grade, sometimes significantly; the same goes for exceptional contributions to the course listserv.
Schedule of Assignments
T, 8/25: Introduction: Modern American Literature?
Th, 8/27: "Modern Period: 1910-1945," in the Heath Anthology of American Literature (HA 884-914)
Part I: Modern?
M, 8/31: reading response 1 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 9/1: Jean Toomer, Cane
W, 9/2: student response 1 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 9/3: Cane, continued
M, 9/7: reading response 2 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 9/8: T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," and "The Dry Salvages" (HA 1399-1403, 1411-1432); Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Dream Variations," and "Harlem" (HA 1612-1613, 1618-1619)
W, 9/9: student response 2 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 9/10: Ezra Pound, "A Virginal," "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," and "The Cantos" (HA 1217-1218, 1221-1240); Countee Cullen, "Heritage" (HA 1646-1649)
M, 9/14: reading response 3 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 9/15: Pound, Cullen, Eliot, Hughes, revisited
W, 9/16: student response 3 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 9/17: Gertrude Stein, "The Good Anna," from Three Lives; optional: Finley Peter Dunne, "The Wanderers" (HA 772-773)
M, 9/21: reading response 4 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 9/22: Gertrude Stein, "Melanctha," in Three Lives
W, 9/23: student response 4 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 9/24: Gertrude Stein, "Melanctha," concluded; Charles Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine" (HA 350-358); Paul Laurence Dunbar, "When Malindy Sings" (HA 390-391); James Weldon Johnson, from the preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (to be handed out); Langston Hughes, "Big Meeting" (HA 1621-1629); Sterling Brown, "When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home" and "Ma Rainey" (HA 1657-1660, 1663-1664); Zora Neale Hurston, "The Gilded Six-Bits" (HA 1680-1688)
T, 9/29: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Book I
October Break
M, 10/5: reading response 5 due to listserv by 5 pm; include 5 questions you'd like to see on the mid-term exam
T, 10/6: first critical response essay due at beginning of class; The Sun Also Rises, Book II
W, 10/7: student response 5 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 10/8: The Sun Also Rises, Book III
M, 10/12: reading response 6 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 10/13: Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"; Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" (HA 389-390); Countee Cullen, "From the Dark Tower" and "Yet Do I Marvel" (HA 1644, 1645); Arna Bontemps, "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" (HA 1654); Claude McKay, "If We Must Die" (HA 1689); advice on mid-term exam
W, 10/14: student response 6 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 10/15: Mid-Term Exam (in-class)
Part II: American?
M, 10/19: reading response 7 due to listserv by 5 pm.
T, 10/20: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Ch. I-IX
W, 10/21: student response 7 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 10/22: The Souls of Black Folk, Ch. IX-XIV; George Schuyler, "Our Greatest Gift to America" (HA 1714-1718); Langston Hughes, "I, Too" (HA 1618); Claude McKay, "America" (HA 1691)
M, 10/26: reading response 8 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 10/27: George Schuyler, "Our Greatest Gift to America" (HA 1714-1718), continued; Jose Marti, "Our America" (HA 746-753); Randolph Bourne, "Trans-National America" (HA 1732-1743)
W, 10/28: student response 8 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 10/29: Edith Maud Eaton (Sui-Sin Far), "In the Land of the Free" (HA 843-850); Mary Antin, from The Promised Land (HA 875-881); Anzia Yezierska, "America and I" (HA 1745-1752); Younghill Kang, from East Goes West (HA 1995-2001); Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "I Am Waiting" (HA 2434-2437); Allen Ginsberg, "America" (HA 2452-2454); excerpts from Whitman and Kerouac to be handed out in class
M, 11/2: reading response 9 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 11/3: Richard Wright, Native Son, 7-122; Langston Hughes, "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria" and "Air Raid over Harlem" (HA 1366-1371)
W, 11/4: student response 9 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 11/5: Native Son, 122-255
M, 11/9: reading response 10 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 11/10: Native Son, 255-387
W, 11/11: student response 10 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 11/12: Native Son, 387-502
Part III: Literature?
M, 11/16: reading response 11 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 11/17: Native Son, wrap-up; Alain Locke, "The New Negro" (HA 1584-1592); Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (HA 1629-1632); George Schuyler, "The Negro-Art Hokum" (HA 1719-1721); W.E.B. Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art" (to be handed out); Richard Wright, "How Bigger Was Born" (in your edition of Native Son)
W, 11/18: student response 11 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 11/19: all poems in the Heath Anthology by H.D., Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams (see the announcement from Group IV in the listserv for the poet you should read most closely)
Thanksgiving Break
M, 11/30: reading response 12 due to listserv by 5 pm; second critical response essay due at 5 pm at Fenton 240
T, 12/1: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, 3-141 (in Vintage paperback ed.), 3-155 (in Vintage International ed.)
W, 12/2: student response 12 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 12/3: As I Lay Dying, 142-242 (VP ed.); 156-261 (VI ed.)
M, 12/7: reading response 13 due to listserv by 5 pm
T, 12/8: As I Lay Dying, concluded; Ezra Pound, "Salutation the Second," "A Retrospect" (HA 1217-1218, 1220-1221); T.S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (HA 1405-1410); Marianne Moore, "Poetry" (HA 1502-1503); Wallace Stevens, "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman," "Of Modern Poetry" (HA 1541-1542); course evaluations in class
W, 12/9: student response 13 due to listserv by 5 pm
Th, 12/10: wrap up course
F, 12/18: Final Paper due
EN 336: Modern American Literature, Fall 1998
Last modified: 12/15/98, 4:46 pm