SUNY Fredonia
Division of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 200/AMST 202: Introduction to American Studies
Fall 2003
Section 1: Fenton 154, TTh 9:30-10:50
Office: Fenton 240; MWF 10-12, 2:30-3:30, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
About the Course Web Site
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, how to join and use the course listserv, what reading and writing assignments are due and when, what books are on reserve for your use in Reed Library, and how to use the world-wide web for research. Please take the time over the weekend after the first week of classes to read this page carefully and to familiarize yourself with the other pages for this course. Please get in the habit of checking back to this web site to keep track of changes to the tentative schedule listed in your syllabus and to find advice on papers, as well as 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. I hope you enjoy taking this course as much as I enjoy teaching it!
I. Course Description
An introduction to the interdisciplinary study of American cultures, their historical development and contemporary status. Focusing on literary and cultural representations of specific aspects of the American experience, the course will examine the constructed nature of American self-perceptions and U.S. history. The course contextualizes U.S. cultures within the Americas and the global arena. Particular course emphasis is selected by the instructor.
"Migration and Mobility in American Culture"
This section of ENGL 200/AMST 202 examines the meaning, significance, and stakes of migration to, in, and from the Americas. Migrations to be examined include those related to the Puritan errand and early European colonization of the Americas, the slave trade and slavery, manifest destiny and westward expansion, immigration and the great migration, the great depression and the cold war, and tourism and globalization. The causes, processes, and legacies of these migrations will be analyzed and related to issues of spatial and social mobility in the United States. This section is part of "The American Experience," an experimental sequence of courses for first-year Liberal Arts majors, and should be taken alongside HIST 106 United States History II and POLI 120 American Politics.
II. Rationale
In ENGL 200, as in most courses offered by the English Department, students from a range of majors, minors, and concentrations interact, and the goals of the professional programs are integrated with specific course and general education goals. Achieving these goals (described in Section IV below) will require us to foster academic skills and intellectual habits of reading closely and carefully, thinking critically and creatively, listening actively and attentively, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and analytically--skills and habits useful to everyone, but of particular importance to future teachers.
III. Textbooks. The textbooks adopted for this course are:
IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes
The course has been approved for Part IIB of the GCP and Part VIIIB of the CCC. As such, it provides an introduction to two disciplines: on the one hand, you will gain a firm footing in the practice of literary and cultural criticism, and on the other, you will become familiar with humanistic and interdisciplinary inquiry in the discipline of American Studies. Students will gain familiarity with a broad sweep of American history and politics, consider the ways in which a range of cultural forms respond to and help shape American identities, research the relevance of migrations or social mobility in the contemporary United States, and hone their critical thinking, discussion, and writing skills. Specifically, this course is designed to enable students to:
V. Instructional Methods and Activities
The methods used in the classroom will include lecture, in-class writing, guided discovery, open discussion, cooperative group work, and other discussion-oriented activities.
VI. Evaluation and Grade Assignment
Attendance/Preparation/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 must contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email (see section VIII for more on attendance policies in this course). Even 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!), along with your peers' responses to it posted to the course listserv (see below), by the time we begin to discuss it in class. This is a discussion rather than a lecture course, after all; 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 and activities. Since it's difficult to make good contributions to discussions about a literary work if you haven't read it carefully or thought about it extensively, how well you budget your time outside of class will to a large degree determine how well you do in this class in general and how well you do on this portion of your course grade in particular.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on a combination of your attendance, the quality of your participation in class and on the class listserv (described below), and your preparation, effort, and improvement over the course of the semester. As there is no final exam in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your overall performance in the course. Due to the importance of attendance and participation, more than two unexcused absences will hurt your preparation/participation grade and each non-emergency absence after the fourth will lower your final course grade by a full grade (e.g., with five absences a B+ will become a C+; with seven, it will become an E). Please see Section VIIIB, below, for definitions of excused and emergency absences.
Reading Responses (20%). Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using your section's listserv (engl20001@listserv.fredonia.edu) are given below (see Section VIII), will be discussed in class, and are available on the course web site, along with a troubleshooting guide, at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl200f03/listserv.htm. 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: over the course of the semester, you must post a number of weekly reading responses to the course listserv and come to each class having read and thought about your peers' responses. Only one response per week will count toward your total. Hence, each week you may post a reading response (including at least one sustained observation and one substantive question) that you believe would spark discussion either by 10 pm Monday for Tuesday's class or by 10 pm Wednesday for Thursday's class. Advice on generating reading responses can be found elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl200f03/rr.htm.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the number of on-time, passing reading responses you post to the course listserv. Since there are fifteen weeks when reading responses are due in the semester, and since you are allowed seven missed weeks without penalty, 8 or more reading responses=A; 7=B+; 6=B; 5=C+; 4=C, 3=D; 2 or less=E. The quality of your reading responses will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above).
Critical Essays (40%). You are required to write two 4-to-6-page critical essays, each worth 20% of your final course grade. For detailed information and advice on the critical essay, go to http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl200f03/ce.htm.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the coherence and validity of the paper's arguments, the effectiveness of the paper's structure in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of the paper's prose (including grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
Final Project (25%). I will provide detailed information and advice on the 7-to-10-page final project elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl200f03/fp.htm.
B. Grading. All work during the semester will be graded on a letter basis (A=outstanding, B=good, C=average, D=bad, E=awful) and converted into a number for purposes of calculating final grades. I use the following conversion system (the number in parentheses is the "typical" or "normal" conversion, but any number in the range may be assigned to a given letter grade):
A+=97-100 (98); A=93-96.99 (95); A-=90-92.99 (91); B+=87-89.99 (88); B=83-86.99 (85); B-=80-82.99 (81); C+=77-79.99 (78); C=73-76.99 (75); C-=70-72.99 (71); D+=67-69.99 (68); D=63-66.99 (65); D-=60-62.99 (61); E=0-59.99 (55)
Your final grade is determined by converting the weighted numerical average of the above assignments into a letter grade, according to the above scale.
C. Portfolio. English and Secondary English Education majors should be aware of the English department's guidelines for ongoing portfolio submissions.
VII. Bibliography. Some of the following works may be found on reserve at the circulation desk in Reed Library (click here for the reserves list):
A. Contemporary References
B. Classic References
C. Key Journals
VIII. Course Schedule and Policies
A. Tentative Course Schedule. The following course schedule is subject to revision--please refer here regularly for updates to this schedule, notes on the texts, and suggestions for further reading. Please recall that you need to submit 8 reading responses to earn an A for that segment of your final grade (see Section VI). (Key: BB=Beyond Borders; LRE=Literature, Race, and Ethnicity.)
T 8/26 Introductions; Film: Independence Day (1996)
Th 8/28 Film: Independence Day, concluded
T 9/2 Randall Bass and Joy Young, "Introduction" [BB 1-11]; Joseph Skerrett, "Introduction" and "The Concept of This Book" [LRE 1-10]; Alan Thomas and Ben Crow, "Maps, Projections, and Ethnocentricity" [BB 464-480]
Th 9/4 Benedict Anderson, "The Concept of Nation: A Definition" [BB 481-484]; Stuart Hall, "Ethnicity: Identity and Difference" [BB 228-240]; David Sibley, "Feelings about Difference" [BB 180-195]; Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone" [BB 249-262]
T 9/9 Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence" [LRE 15-18]; Hector St. John de Crèvecouer, "What Is an American?" [LRE 24-36]; Benjamin Franklin, "Advice to Such as Would Remove to America" [LRE 38-43]; The Immigration Act of 1790 [LRE 36-37]; Stephen Sondheim, "America" [LRE 162-165]; Lewis Lapham, "Who and What Is an American?" [BB 558-568]; Robert Hopkins, "Can the United States Assimilate the Wave of New Immigrants?" [LRE 498-502]
Th 9/11 José Martí, "Our America" [LRE 490-495]; Ishmael Reed, "America: The Multinational Society" [LRE 502-506]; Ronald Takaki, "A Different Mirror" [BB 568-577]; Diana Chang, "Saying Yes" [LRE 397]; Pat Mora, "Immigrants" [LRE 161]; Tato Laviera, "AmeRícan" [LRE 514-516]; Karima Kamal, "An Egyptian Girl in America" [BB 532-538]
Early Americas: Manifest Destinies in the New World
Week 4: Errands
M 9/15 CRITICAL ESSAY I due no later than 5 pm
T 9/16 Roger Williams, "A Key into the Language of America" [BB 275-291]; Myra Jehlen, "Papers of Empire" [BB 453-464]; Richard White, "The Middle Ground" [BB 262-275]; Robert Berkhofer, "The White Man's Indian" [BB 219-227]; Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 3-27
Th 9/18 Red Jacket, "1805 Oration" [LRE 53-54]; Indian Removal Act of 1837 [LRE 50-52]; John Calhoun, from Speech [LRE 134-143]; The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [LRE 133-134]; María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, from The Squatter and the Don [LRE 144-157]; "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" [LRE 157-160]; Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 28-65
Week 5: Frontiers
T 9/23 Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia [LRE 19-24]; Slave Auction Notice [LRE 43]; Frances E.W. Harper, "The Slave Auction" [LRE 44-45]; Frederick Douglass, from Independence Day Speech [LRE 46-48]; James McPherson, "Anti-Negro Mob Violence in the North, 1862-63" [LRE 67-71]; Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation [LRE 49-50]; Robert Hayden, "Runagate, Runagate" [LRE 193-195]
Th 9/25 Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" [LRE 168-178]; Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" [BB 484-489]; Patricia Nelson Limerick, "Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century" [BB 489-503]; Jane Tompkins, "At the Buffalo Bill Museum-June 1988" [BB 504-521]; Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny 66-111
T 9/30 Lorna Dee Cervantes, "Poema Para Los Californios Muertos" {LRE 255-256]; Paula Gunn Allen, "Where I Come From Is Like This" [LRE 278-283]; Sherman Alexie, "A Drug Called Tradition" [LRE 441-446]; Jack Jackson, "Comanche Moon" [BB 521-532]; Luis Valdez, Los Vendidos [LRE 256-264]; Hanay Geiogamah, Foghorn [LRE 352-370]; Diane Burns, "Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question" [LRE 277-278]
Th 10/2 W.E.B. Du Bois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" [LRE 205-210]; Minstrelsy Music Cover [LRE 381]; Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy" [LRE 382]; Countee Cullen, "Incident" [LRE 232-233]; Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" [BB 318-333]; Paule Marshall, "To Da-Duh, In Memoriam" [LRE 333-340]; Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival" [BB 745-747]
Modern Americas: Immigration, Industrialization, and International Conflict T 10/7 Fall Break: No Class.
Th 10/9 Reading Day: No Class. The following readings will be compared with the readings for T 10/14: "No Irish Need Apply" [LRE 73]; Jacob Riis, "The Mixed Crowd" [LRE 86-90]; Abraham Cahan, "A Ghetto Wedding" [LRE 90-100]; Henry James, from The American Scene [LRE 100-111]; Constantine Panunzio, from The Soul of an Immigrant [LRE 111-115]; Monica Krawczyk, "For Dimes and Quarters" [LRE 317-324]
CRITICAL ESSAY II due no later than 5 pm
T 10/14 Songs from Gold Mountain [LRE 74-75]; Maxine Hong Kingston, "The Laws" [LRE 75-80]; Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), "In the Land of the Free" [LRE 80-86]; David Henry Hwang, The Dance and the Railroad [LRE 210-232]
Th 10/16 Film: Grapes of Wrath
T 10/21 Film: Grapes of Wrath, concluded; Jacob Riis, "How the Other Half Lives" [BB 162-166]; Lloyd Van Brunt, "Whites without Money" [LRE 296-298]; Peter Marin, "Helping and Hating the Homeless" [BB 167-179]
Th 10/23 William Faulkner, "Dry September" [LRE 466-474]; Alice Childress, from Like One of the Family [LRE 267-271]; Robert Blauner, "Talking Past Each Other: Black and White Languages of Race" [BB 302-315]; John Hartigan, "The Baseball Game" [BB 210-219]
T 10/28 Adrienne Rich, from "Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity" [LRE 325-333]; Art Spiegelman, from MAUS: A Survivor's Tale [BB 424-428]; Andrea Lowenstein, "Confronting Stereotypes: MAUS in Crown Heights" [BB 428-445]; Anna Deavere Smith, from Fires in the Mirror [BB 22-35]
Th 10/30 Executive Order 9066 [LRE 237-238]; Hisaye Yamamoto, "The Legend of Miss Sasagawara" [LRE 238-248]; James and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, from Farewell to Manzanar [LRE 248-252]; Garrett Hongo, "Something Whispered in the Shakuhachi" [LRE 252-255]
T 11/4 Michael Herr, Dispatches 3-166
Th 11/6 Michael Herr, Dispatches 167-260; Tim O'Brien, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" [BB 333-350]
T 11/11 Thomas Pynchon, Vineland 3-217
Th 11/13 Thomas Pynchon, Vineland 218-385
Postmodern Americas: New World Orders T 11/18 Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
Th 11/20 Eva Hoffman, from Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language [LRE 115-127]; Nicholasa Mohr, "The English Lesson" [LRE 298-308]; Lawson Fusao Inada, "Kicking the Habit" [LRE 308-311]; Gina Valdés, "English con Salsa" [LRE 312-313]; Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue" [BB 60-66]; Wen Shu Lee, "One Whiteness Veils Three Uglinesses" [BB 675-687]
F 11/21 PROPOSAL for FINAL PROJECT due no later than 5 pm
Week X: R'n'R
M 11/24-F 11/28 NO CLASSES: Thanksgiving Break
M 12/1 CRITICAL ESSAY III due no later than 5 pm
T 12/2 William Greider, "One World: Ready or Not" [BB 642-656]; Benjamin Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld" [BB 656-671]
Th 12/4 Guillermo Gómez-Peña, "The '90s Culture of Xenophobia: Beyond the Tortilla Curtain" [BB 687-694]; Arjun Appadurai, from "The Heart of Whiteness" [LRE 516-527]
T 12/9 Gloria Anzaldúa, "La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness" [BB 708-722]; Benjamin Alire Sáenz, "In the Borderlands of Chicano Identity, There Are Only Fragments" [BB 722-737]; Luis Alberto Urrea, "Across the Wire" [BB 350-363]; Thomas King, "Borders" [BB 37-47]
Th 12/11 Wendy Rose, "If I Am Too Brown or Too White for You" [LRE 484-486]; Jessica Hagedorn, "Homesick" [LRE 496-498]; David Mura, "Secrets and Anger" [LRE 478-486]; Trey Ellis, "Guess Who's Coming to Seder" [LRE 505-510]; John Leguizamo, "Crossover King" [LRE 510-513]
M 12/15 8:30 am (regular classroom): wrap up course
F 12/19 FINAL PROJECT due no later than 5 pm
B. Class Policies
1. Attendance. As stated in Section VI above, barring emergencies each absence after the fourth will lower your final course grade by a full grade. Be aware that absences due to emergencies are the only absences that will not be counted toward your total for the semester. Emergencies include but are not limited to death in the family, hospitalization or serious illness, and natural disasters; scheduled and unavoidable school-sponsored events (games, meets, performances, etc.) are also counted as emergencies for the purpose of this attendance policy. Besides emergencies, the only other absences that won't affect your participation/preparation grade are excused absences. Please notify the instructor over email, in advance if possible and, if not, as soon after the absence as possible, if you wish an absence to be considered as an emergency or excused absence; the decision will be made at the instructor's discretion.
2. Course Listserv. You are required to subscribe to your section's listserv and to read and think about your peers' observations and discussion questions before each class meeting. To subscribe to your section's listserv, compose an email message to listserv@listserv.fredonia.edu, leave the subject line blank, and write this exact command in the body of message: subscribe engl20001 Your Name. Please be sure to delete any signature or other text that may appear in the body of your message, as it will only confuse the very literal-minded machine that handles listserv subscriptions. Very soon after sending this message, you will receive an email from the machine that handles subscriptions asking you to confirm your subscription; please follow the instructions in this email carefully, as you are not subscribed to the listserv until you have done so. Soon after doing this, you will receive another email message from the machine that handles subscriptions informing you that you are indeed subscribed to your section's listserv and laying out basic information about the listserv. Save this message--it's very useful. Once you get this message, you will begin receiving messages from others who are subscribed to the listserv; you also will be authorized to send messages to them by composing a message to the machine that distributes messages to those who are subscribed to the listserv. To do so, simply send an email message to engl20001@listserv.fredonia.edu. It is highly recommended that you either save a copy of every message you send to the course listserv (many email programs automatically save all messages sent in a "sent mail" folder) or "cc:" yourself whenever you send a message to the listserv, as your listserv participation will be graded both quantitatively and qualitatively (see Section IV, above) and it is possible that technical or human error could result in your messages being lost in transit, accidentally deleted, misfiled, or miscounted. . Please familiarize yourself with the college's "Computer and Network Usage Policy" (College Catalog 2003-2005, pp.241-246) and check with your instructor first before posting something to your section's listserv that is not directly related to the course.
3. Late Assignments. Late reading responses and final projects will not be accepted or graded. Other assignments will be accepted and graded but will lose one-third of a grade per day late (e.g., a paper turned in two days past the due date that would have otherwise received an A- would be penalized two-thirds of a grade and thus receive a B). Only students who ask for an extension at least two days before the due date will be granted one; asking for an extension on the final project means that your final grade for the semester will be an incomplete (I), and that you must turn in your final project before the end of the following semester so that the I becomes a grade other than an E.
4. Plagiarism and Academic Honesty. To plagiarize is "to steal and pass off as one's own the ideas or words of another" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary). SUNY Fredonia strongly condemns plagiarism and takes severe action against those who plagiarize. Disciplinary action may extend to suspension from privileges or expulsion from college. Please familiarize yourself with the college's "Academic Integrity Policy" (College Catalog 2003-2005, pp. 237-239, see also p. 225) and check with your instructor if you have any questions about it.
ENGL 200: Introduction to American Studies, Fall 2003
Created: 8/26/03 9:07 am
Last modified: 11/4/03 8:52 pm