ENGL 332: American Romanticism
Spring 2001
Classes: TTh 2-3:20, Fenton 179
Office: Fenton 240; M 1-4, T 3:30-4:30, W 10-12, 1-4, Th 3:30-4:30, and by appointment
Contact Info: bruce.simon@fredonia.edu; 673-3859
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon
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 your work will be assessed, what 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, among other things. Please get in the habit of checking back to these pages to keep track of changes to the syllabus and advice on assignments, 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.
Course Description/Goals
In this course, we will examine major literary works, genres, and movements in the United States between the War of 1812 and the Civil War for the ways in which they represent, respond to, and shape intellectual and political transformations in American society during the period, including developments in ideologies of nationalism and "manifest destiny," intensifying sectional conflicts over slavery and industrialization, and the mobilization of abolition, women's rights, labor, and reform movements. In the course of doing this, we will pay careful attention to multiple traditions of writing within the antebellum U.S., intertextual relations among literary works of the period (as well as, to a lesser extent, between works from 1812-1865 and those from other periods and traditions), and to the ethical and political ramifications of literary form.
You may choose to take this course for honors credit as part of the new Honors Program in the English Department. If you are interested in doing this, please come to my office hours during the first two weeks of classes for more information. This course satisfies Part IIIA of the General College Program. As such, it is designed to give students the opportunity to develop a critical or analytical approach to this period of American literature; to develop their ability to read and respond to a variety of primary sources with understanding and to integrate knowledge from different sources, their awareness of historical contexts for antebellum American literature, their understanding of contemporary U.S. society (as refined through attention to the contemporary implications or ramifications of antebellum American literature and history), and their understanding of values and/or assumptions we bring to the study of this period of American literature; and to develop the curiosity to explore antebellum American literature and history further.
Texts. There are four books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
There are many works on reserve at the circulation desk at Reed Library; click here or on the links at the top (and bottom) of this (and every) page for details. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the reserves system at Fredonia, to browse through works on reserve that appear interesting, and to use the reserves and the library when preparing for class and working on assignments.
Course Requirements/Expectations
Your grade in the course will be determined through the following assessments (see the schedule of assignments, below, for due dates, and the course web site for more details and further explanations):
Attendance/Preparation/Participation (10%). 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, please contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email; if you fail to do this or notify me within a day of your absence the reasons for it, it will be counted as an unexcused absence (see below). 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 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. 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 and your preparation for/participation in class and on the course listserv (described below), along with a more holistic assessment of the level of your engagement and effort. As there are no exams in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your performance in the course. Due to the importance of our class conversations, more than two unexcused absences will hurt your preparation/participation grade and, barring emergencies, each absence (whether excused or not) after the fourth will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade (e.g., with five absences an A- will become a B+; with seven, it will become a B-, and so on).
Course Listserv (20%). To participate in the course listserv (i.e., to send to and receive messages from the rest of the class by email), you must first join it. To do this, send an email message to "listserv@listserv.fredonia.edu" with the subject line blank and the command "subscribe en33201 Your Name" in the body. Almost immediately after you send this message, you should receive a reply from the machine that handles subscriptions to the listserv--be sure to follow the directions on this message; you are not subscribed to the course list until you do so and receive a confirmation message (save this message; it has important instructions for using the listserv). Once you are subscribed to the list, you can then send a message to the entire class by composing a normal email message, but rather than addressing it to an individual, addressing it instead to "en33201@listserv.fredonia.edu"--the machine will then send that message to everyone subscribed to the list. Receiving messages, then, is as simple as checking your email. Call me or stop by my office if you need help at any step of this process; also, you will probably find the troubleshooting guide from last semester's EN 209 web site useful for handling most technical difficulties.
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 ways:
Group Project (20%). The group project entails forming a group, choosing a date and topic related to the readings for that date, formulating a research plan, dividing your labor when putting it into action, synthesizing your efforts, either running thirty to forty minutes of a class (during the first half of the semester) in which in which you present what you've learned and/or draw on what you've learned in crafting activities or discussion topics OR creating an analytical, group-authored web site (before you leave for spring break), and writing a report on, reflection on, and assessment of your group's work in the project no later than one week after completing it. Each student will be graded individually, although a significant part of his or her grade will include how successful the group's teaching was and how well the group worked together. For specifics, click here.
Critical Essay (20%). Click here for detailed information on the six-to-eight-page critical essay--including a list of required options (you will not have the option of formulating your own topic or mode of writing for this paper).
Research Project (30%). Click here for detailed information on this project, which will most likely take the form of a nine-to-twelve(-plus)-page research paper. I will include a list of suggested options (you will have the option of formulating your own topic for this project, as well as experimenting with other ways of using your research than to inform an analytical essay, such as developing a lesson plan). Whether you choose an existing option or develop your own topic, you must turn in a proposal for your research topic by April 2 (see schedule of assignments, below); it is highly recommended that you turn in the proposal well before this time. We will arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your research project topic after I return my comments to your proposal to you; I will be available during office hours and over email as questions arise in the researching and writing of this paper.
Schedule of Assignments
Note: It's expected that you will read the introductory essay for each author assigned for a given day and refer back to the editorial apparatus in the Heath Anthology as necessary for basic context and understanding of what you're reading. It's also expected that you'll make use of the links page to prepare for class discussion. If you have factual, biographical, or historical questions, it's your responsibility to use the resources available to you to try to answer them on your own. In discussion, we'll largely be focusing on interpretive, comparative, evaluative issues.
American? Romanticism?
Th 1/18 Introductions
M 1/22 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 1/23 Andrew Wiget, "Colonial Period: To 1700" [HA 1-20]; Carla Mulford, "Eighteenth Century" [HA 503-526]; Paul Lauter, "Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865" [HA 1275-1308], "Explorations of an 'American' Self" [HA 1561-1562], "Issues and Visions in Pre-Civil War America" [HA 1865-1866], "The Flowering of Narrative" [HA 2188-2190], and "The Emergence of American Poetic Voices" [HA 2648-2650]; why do we study literature in school? why do we so often organize that study by national tradition and historical periods? what are the major continuities and contrasts between these three early periods of American literature the editors of the Heath Anthology have identified?
W 1/24 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M); 2/5 group meets with me at 2 pm
Th 1/25 reread Paul Lauter, "Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865" [HA 1275-1308], "Explorations of an 'American' Self" [HA 1561-1562], "Issues and Visions in Pre-Civil War America" [HA 1865-1866], "The Flowering of Narrative" [HA 2188-2190], and "The Emergence of American Poetic Voices" [HA 2648-2650]; read excerpt on "Romantic Period (in American literature)" from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms [handed out]; explore the timeline of American literature and other American Studies sites on the links page of the course web site; bring to class a syllabus on this period of American literature from another college or university and a paragraph on why you found it interesting or important (when searching for syllabi on the world-wide web, I recommend using sites from the links page and/or using google.com as your search engine and phrases from The Bedford Glossary entry as your search parameters); how do the emphases of the editors of the Heath Anthology compare with these other attempts to identify periods and patterns in American literature? how do this course's organization, emphasis, and goals compare to those of the course you selected?
F 1/26 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
Declarations of Independence
M 1/29 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 1/30 read tables of contents from other American literature anthologies and "Periods of American Literature" from M.H. Abrams's A Glossary of Literary Terms [handed out] and consider patterns in and tensions over which works, writers, genres, and movements are considered to be "central" to the field; 1776: Thomas Jefferson, "Declaration of Independence" [HA 919-923]; 1776: letters of John and Abigail Adams [HA 905-909]; 1837: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" [HA 1609-1621]; 1848: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Declaration of Sentiments" [HA 2035-2037]; 1849: Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" [HA 2093-2107]; 1885: William Lloyd Garrison, from The Story of His Life [HA 1913-1914]; what significance and consequences can we attribute to the various rewritings of and responses to the Declaration of Independence? how and to what ends do the mid-nineteenth-century writers draw on the rhetoric and work with the assumptions of the Declaration?
W 1/31 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 2/1 examine syllabi of similar courses [to be handed out] and consider how often the works we're reading for this week appear on them; reread 1837: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" [HA 1609-1621]; 1844: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet" [HA 1646-1661]; 1850: Herman Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" [HA 2570-2582]; 1855: Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass [HA 2729-2743]; 1862, 1868: Emily Dickinson, #435, #632, #657, #1129 [HA 2880-2881, 2894, 2896, 2910]; how and to what ends does this group of writers draw on the rhetoric and work with the assumptions of the Declaration of Independence? what are the key similarities and differences among these varying conceptions of the role of art and the artist? what kinds of claims for writers and for literature are being made in these works? how do they relate to the readings from last class?
F 2/2 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 2/5 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; 2/20 group meets with me at 3 pm
T 2/6 1841: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" [HA 1622-1638]; 1855: Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" [HA 2743-2794]; how do Emerson and Whitman go about defining an "American self"? what similarities and differences do you see in these classic statements of--and wrestlings with--American identity and individualism? GROUP PRESENTATION by Andrea Diello, Amber Hahn, Karen Hallowell, Mike Lovaglio, and Carol Morreale
W 2/7 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 2/8 1853: Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" [HA 2402-2427]; 1862-63, 1879: Emily Dickinson, #338, #670, #1461 [HA 2877, 2897-2898, 2913-2914]; in what ways might Melville and Dickinson be responding to their contemporaries in these works? how do they enact and explore the consequences of rebellion, individualism, and liberty?
F 2/9 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 2/12 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 2/13 1833: William Apess, "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man" [HA 1868-1872]; 1852: Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" [HA 1818-1837]; 1854: John Wannuaucon Quinney, "Quinney's Speech" [HA 1875-1878]; what questions are these African American and Native American authors posing to popular antebellum accounts of the American Revolution? what similarities and differences do you see in these varying treatments of the consequences of revolution?
W 2/14 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 2/15 1837: Angelina Grimkˇ Weld, "Letter XII: Human Rights Not Founded on Sex" [HA 1955-1956]; 1838: Sarah Moore Grimkˇ: "Letter VIII: The Condition of Women in the United States" [HA 2024-2028]; 1843: Lydia Maria Child, "Letter #50: Women's Rights" [HA 1926-1929]; 1844: Margaret Fuller, from Woman in the Nineteenth Century [HA 1714-1735]; 1863: Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl" [HA 2382-2390]; 1867: Sojourner Truth, "Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association" [HA 2051-2052]; 1881: Frances Gage, "Reminiscences of Sojourner Truth" and "Speech at New York City Convention" [HA 2048-2051]; what similarities and differences do you see in these varying treatments of the "state of the union" and of women's rights? what roles do differences of race, class, and generation play in these essays, speeches, and letters? how do the considerations of race and gender by these female writers compare to those of the male writers we read for last class? GROUP PRESENTATION by Jackie Johnson, Daniel Laurie, Michael Mitchell, and Selena Vaughn
F 2/16 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 2/19 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 2/20 Ross Murfin, "Introduction: The Biographical and Historical Background," in The Scarlet Letter, 1-19; 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Preface to the Second Edition" and "The Custom-House," in The Scarlet Letter, 21-53
W 2/21 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 2/22 "La Llorona, Malinche, Guadalupe" [HA 1328-1332]; 1845: Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life [HA 1762-1765]; 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 53-88; GROUP PRESENTATION by Elissa Armstrong, Jessi Scirto, and Alicia Woodruff
F 2/23 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 2/26 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 2/27 1827: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, from Hope Leslie [HA 1427-1439]; 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 88-150
W 2/28 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 3/1 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 150-201; 1862: Emily Dickinson, #640 [HA 2894-2895]; GROUP PRESENTATION by Renee Anderson, Devon Dahulich, Amy Gorman, Philip Henry, Kelly Norcross, and Liz Stark
F 3/2 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
Questions of Revolution
M 3/5 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 3/6 1835: John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Hunters of Men" [HA 1935-1936]; 1842: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Warning" [HA 2702]; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, vii-80; 1853: Frances E.W. Harper, "Eliza Harris" [handed out; also in our edition of UTC, pp. 488-489]; CRITICAL ESSAY due at beginning of class
W 3/7 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 3/8 1838: John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Farewell" [HA 1936-1938]; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 81-123; 1857: Frances E.W. Harper, "The Slave Mother" [HA 2055-2056]; GROUP PRESENTATION by Brad Look, Cathy Rodgers, and Jake Terranova
F 3/9 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 3/12 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 3/13 1829: David Walker, Appeal [HA 1901-1910]; 1843: Henry Highland Garnet, "An Address to the Slaves of the United States" [HA 1959-1965]; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 123-223; GROUP PRESENTATION by Jay Byrns, Brandi Damico, Tracy Kuzma, and Gretchen Lemon
W 3/14 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 3/15 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 223-276; 1853: Williams Wells Brown, from Clotel [HA 2588-2597]; GROUP PRESENTATION by Kellie Allen, Casey Cannon, Renee Harpster, and Melissa Lehr
F 3/16 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; GROUP-AUTHORED WEB SITES must be completed before you leave for spring break
M 3/19-F 3/23 NO CLASSES: Spring Break [finish Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin]
M 3/26 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 3/27 1843: Lydia Maria Child, "Slavery's Pleasant Homes: A Faithful Sketch" [HA 1929-1932]; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 276-354; reread 1853: Williams Wells Brown, from Clotel [HA 2588-2597]
W 3/28 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 3/29 1836: Angelina Grimkˇ Weld, from Appeal to the Christian Women of the South [HA 1946-1953]; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 354-388; 1863, 1864: Abraham Lincoln, "Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery" and "Second Inaugural Address" [HA 2022-2024]
F 3/30 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 4/2 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; PROPOSAL FOR RESEARCH PROJECT due no later than 5 pm
T 4/3 1855: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" [HA 2454-2511]
W 4/4 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 4/5 1855: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" [HA 2454-2511]
F 4/6 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; "re-visions" on CRITICAL ESSAY due by 5 pm
M 4/9 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 4/10 1853: Frederick Douglass, "The Heroic Slave," in Three Classic African-American Novels [three xerox copies of Douglass's novella, as well as the collection it comes from itself, will be available to you on reserve for my ENGL 240 class; it is expected that you will make a copy of "The Heroic Slave" and bring it to class]; 1861: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, from Nat Turner's Insurrection [HA 1979-1988]; 1863: Wendell Phillips, from Toussaint L'Ouverture [HA 1967-1976]
W 4/11 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 4/12 1861: Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl [HA 1839-1863]
F 4/13 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 4/16 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 4/17 Floyd Miller, "Introduction," in Blake; or the Huts of America, xi-xxix; 1861-1862: Martin Delany, Blake; or the Huts of America, 3-44
W 4/18 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 4/19 1861-1862: Martin Delany, Blake; or the Huts of America, 44-98
F 4/20 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 4/23 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 4/24 1861-1862: Martin Delany, Blake; or the Huts of America, 98-159
W 4/25 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm (if not done M)
Th 4/26 1861-1862: Martin Delany, Blake; or the Huts of America, 160-237
F 4/27 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 4/30 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 5/1 1861-1862: Martin Delany, Blake; or the Huts of America, 237-313
Th 5/3 wrap up course
F 5/4 REFLECTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 5/7-Th 5/10 individual conferences on research project
W 5/9 1:30-3:30 pm (Fenton 179): peer review and editing session on rough drafts of research project
Th 5/10 RESEARCH PROJECT due by 5 pm in my office
EN 332: American Romanticism, Spring 2001
Created: 1/19/01 2:55 pm
Last modified: 5/3/01 1:44 pm