SUNY Fredonia
Division of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 332: American Romanticism
Spring 2003
Section 1: Fenton 166, MWF 11-11:50
Office: Fenton 240; MTW 1-4, F 10-11, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
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

Study of romanticism in terms of influence, development, and characteristics within the context of American culture, including textual examples ranging from indigenous native sources to those of Europe and the East. This section is ENGL 332 is designed to introduce students to the analysis of major literary works, genres, and movements in the United States between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. We will focus on the ways in which literature represents, responds to, and shapes 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., ethical and political ramifications of literary form, and intertextual relations among literary works of the period and, to a lesser extent, between works from 1812-1865 and those from other periods and traditions.

ENGL 332 is a period course for students in the English and Secondary English Education majors and an elective in American Studies; for non-majors who entered Fredonia before Fall 2001, it satisfies Part IIIA of the General College Program (GCP) and Part 12 of the College Core Curriculum (CCC). 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.

II. Rationale

In ENGL 332, 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 CCC 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.

Texts. There are four books in the bookstore for you to purchase:

• Nina Baym, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. B (6th ed. )
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• Barry O'Connell, ed., On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin [Norton Critical Edition]

IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes

Courses in Part IIIA of the GCP and Part 12 of the CCC are designed to promote interdisciplinary approaches and to foster critical thinking and critical literacy. Hence, students in ENGL 332 will read, analyze, and compare a wide range of writings from and about the antebellum period; consider relations between literary, cultural, political, and historical events, topics, and issues in the period; and make connections between this period and other periods of American literature and history. To achieve these goals, students will

• read, think about, and generate observations and questions about the assigned readings;
• share and discuss their observations and questions on their section's listserv and in the classroom;
• write a critical essay to sharpen their skills in literary analysis;
• prepare and present a group project to develop their research and presentation skills;
• research and write a final project that integrates what they have learned in the course.

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

A. Methods

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. 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 for and interpretations of 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/participation in class and on the class listserv (described below). 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 overall performance and improvement 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 one grade (e.g., with five absences a B+ will become a C+; with six, it will become a D+).

Reading Responses (15%). Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using the course listserv (engl33201@listserv.fredonia.edu) are given below (see Section VIII) and will be discussed in class; they are reproduced on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl332s03/listserv.htm, along with a troubleshooting guide. 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: you must come to each class having read and thought about your peers' reading responses, and, over the course of the semester, post a certain number of your own reading responses to the course listserv (no more than one response per week will receive full credit). Hence, no later than 8 pm Sunday or Tuesday or Thursday of weeks you choose to write a reading response, you must post to the course listserv a response to one or more assigned readings (including both observations and questions) that you believe would spark discussion for the coming Monday's or Wednesday's or Friday's class meeting. Advice on generating reading responses can be found on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl332s03/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 fourteen weeks when reading responses are due in the semester, and since you are allowed six 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 Essay (20%). I provide detailed information on the 4-to-6-page critical essay on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl332s03/ce.htm.

In-Class Group Presentation (25%). I provide detailed information on the 15-to-20-minute group presentation on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl332s03/gp.htm.

Final Project (30%). I will provide detailed information on the final project on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl332s03/fp.htm. Possibilities include a research-based critical essay, a research-based pedagogical essay, a creative writing project with author's note, or an analytical web site. We will arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your final project topic after spring break.

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. The following works and others may be found on reserve at the circulation desk in Reed Library (click here for the reserves list):

A. Contemporary References

• William Andrews, To Tell a Free Story
• Sacvan Bercovitch, The Rites of Assent
• Russ Castronovo, Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom
• Cathy Davidson and Michael Moon, eds., Subjects and Citizens
• Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives (2nd ed.)
• Sam Haynes and Christopher Morris, eds., Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism
• Helen Jaskoski, ed., Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays
• Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism
• Robert S. Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity
• Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra
• Lucy Maddox, Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs
• Dana Nelson, The Word in Black and White
• Timothy Powell , Ruthless Democracy: A Multicultural Interpretation of the American Renaissance
• Lora Romero, Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United States
• John Carlos Rowe, At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature
• --, ed., Postnationalist American Studies
• Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature
• Cheryl Walker, Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms
• Henry Wonham, ed., Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies

B. Classic References

• Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, eds., deology and Classic American Literature
• Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance
• Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building
• Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
• D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
• Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville
• R.W.B. Lewis, The American Adam
• Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
• F.O. Matthiessen, The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
• Walter Benn Michaels and Donald Pease, eds., The American Renaissance Reconsidered
• Perry Miller, Nature's Nation
• Donald Pease, Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context
• David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance
• A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry Ward, eds., Redefining American Literary History
• Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land
• Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860
• William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain

C. Key Journals

• American Literary History
• American Literature
• American Quarterly
• PMLA
• Prospects

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). It's expected that you will read the introductory essay for each author assigned for a given day and refer back to the introduction and editorial apparatus in the Norton 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. (Key: NAAL=The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. B [6th ed.]; OOG, On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot; UTC=Uncle Tom's Cabin.)

F 1/24 Introductions

Declarations of Independence

M 1/27 Hershel Parker, "American Literature, 1820-1865" and timeline (NAAL 957-977); 1823: James Fenimore Cooper, from The Pioneers (NAAL 1013-1023); 1836: William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip (OOG 275-310)
W 1/29 1835: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" and "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (NAAL 1247-1250, 1263-80); 1839: Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, from A New Home--Who'll Follow? (NAAL 1085, 1090-1093)
F 1/31 NO CLASS

M 2/3 1819: Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" (NAAL 978-992); 1832: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (NAAL 1250-1263); 1834: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, "A Reminiscence of Federalism" (NAAL 1039-1040, 1051-1071)
W 2/5 1841: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (NAAL 1103-1106, 1160-1176); 1853: Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (NAAL 2287-2292, 2330-2355)
F 2/7 1855, 1856: Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass [Song of Myself]" and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (NAAL 2127-2131, 2146-2193)

M 2/10 1852: Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (NAAL 2029-2032, 2108-2127); 1854: Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" (NAAL 1788-1792, 1982-1992)
W 2/12 1843: Margaret Fuller, "The Great Lawsuit" (NAAL 1618-1654) and Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark" (NAAL 1289-1300)
F 2/14 1855: Herman Melville, "The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids" (NAAL 2355-2371); 1858: Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton), "Blackwell's Island Number III" (NAAL 1746-1747, 1755-1757)

M 2/17 1860, 1862: Emily Dickinson, #199, #1072 (NAAL 2499-2503, 2506, 2530); 1861: Rebecca Harding Davis, "Life in the Iron-Mills" (NAAL 2545-2573)
W 2/19 1837, 1844: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" and "The Poet" (NAAL 1135-1147, 1177-1191)
F 2/21 1850: Herman Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (NAAL 2292-2304); 1855-1856: Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (NAAL 2131-2145) and "Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson" (NAAL 2194-2200); 1862, 1864, 1868: Emily Dickinson, #435, #448, #632, #952, #1129 (NAAL 2515, 2516, 2522, 2528, 2532)

Manifest Destinies

M 2/24 Barry O'Connell, "Introduction" and chronology (OOG xiii-lxxxi); 1829-1830: The Cherokee Memorials (NAAL 1029-1039); 1833: William Apess, "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man" (NAAL 1078-1084); 1834: William Cullen Bryant, "The Prairies" (NAAL 1071-1072, 1075-1078); CRITICAL ESSAY due
W 2/26 1831: William Apess, A Son of the Forest (OOG 1-97)
F 2/28 1836: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (NAAL 1106-1134)

M 3/3 1854: Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Ch. 1-6 (NAAL 1807-1888)
W 3/5 1854: Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Ch. 7-12 (NAAL 1888-1931)
F 3/7 1854: Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Ch. 13-18 (NAAL 1931-1982); PRESENTATION GROUP I: Gabe Andrews, Dan Culhane, Anne Tahamont

M 3/10 1835: William Apess, Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe (OOG 163-249)
W 3/12 1835: William Apess, Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe (OOG 249-274); 1849: Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" (NAAL 1792-1807); PRESENTATION GROUP II: Ryan Geise, Brian Walters

F 3/14-F 3/21: NO CLASSES--Spring Break

M 3/24 1850: Bayard Taylor, from Eldorado (NAAL 2487-2499); 1855: Louise Amelia Smith Clappe, "California, in 1852" (NAAL 2275-2287)
W 3/26 1860: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Fate" (NAAL 1216-1235)
F 3/28 1860: Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores" (NAAL 2208); 1862: Henry David Thoreau, "Walking" (NAAL 1993-2016); PRESENTATION GROUP III: Kirsten Boland, Jessica Schuth, Angela Sciarrino

The Peculiar Institution

M 3/31 1845: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life (NAAL 2029-2059)
W 4/2 1845: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life (NAAL 2059-2097)
F 4/4 Hershel Parker, "Harriet Beecher Stowe" (NAAL 1670-1672); Elizabeth Ammons, preface (UTC vii-ix); 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, title page-Ch. VIII (UTC xi-67); 1835, 1838: John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Hunters of Men" and "The Farewell" [to be handed out]; 1853, 1857: Frances E.W. Harper, "Eliza Harris" (UTC 488-489) and "The Slave Mother" [to be handed out]; PRESENTATION GROUP IV: Jon Bach, Christine Battista, Kerry Cesar, Kristin Mathis

M 4/7 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ch. IX-XIII (UTC 67-123); 1835-1860: announcements of slave sales (UTC 392-395); 1850: John Greenleaf Whittier, "Ichabod!" (NAAL 1486-1488); 1853: Solomon Northup, "A Slave Auction Described by a Slave, 1841" (UTC 406-408)
W 4/9 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ch. XIV-XVII (UTC 123-176); 1842: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Warning" [to be handed out]; 1858: Abraham Lincoln, "A House Divided" (NAAL 1608-1615)
F 4/11 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ch. XVIII-XXVII (UTC 176-264); 1854: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Last of the Anti-Slavery Lectures" (NAAL 1207-1216); PRESENTATION GROUP V: Bethany Enright, Brett Gray, Andrea Ketterl, Michelle Parnett

M 4/14 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ch. XVIII-XLI (UTC 264-365); 1842: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Slave's Dream" (NAAL 1476-1477, 1480-1481); 1853: Harriet Beecher Stowe, from A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (UTC 415-426)
W 4/16 1852, 1854: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ch. XLII-XLV and "Appeal to the Women of the Free States" (UTC 365-388, 427-429); 1859: Lydia Maria Child, "Mrs. Child's Reply" (NAAL 1094-1103); 1863: Emily Dickinson, #670 [to be handed out]
F 4/18 1855: Frederick Douglass, from My Bondage and My Freedom (NAAL 2097-2108); PRESENTATION GROUP VI: Kristin Abraham, Jamie Kaiser, Erin Richards

M 4/21 NO CLASSES--Travel Day
W 4/23 1855: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" (NAAL 2371-2427)
F 4/25 1855: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" (NAAL 2371-2427); student opinion survey

M 4/28 1861: Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (NAAL 1757-1779); 1863, 1865: Abraham Lincoln, "Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg," and "Second Inaugural Address" (NAAL 1616-1617); PRESENTATION GROUP VII: Christine Butler, Katharine Felt, Courtney Philipps
W 4/30 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (1-85 [1-79 in some editions])
F 5/2 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (86-134 [80-127]); PRESENTATION GROUP VIII: Heather Carlson, Kristy Emmick, Lea Gebelein

M 5/5 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (135-165 [128-157])
W 5/7 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (166-235 [158-224])
F 5/9 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (236-275 [225-260]); PRESENTATION GROUP IX: Jen Crise, Stephanie Eberhard, Sarah Green, Megan Nickerson

W 5/14 8:30 am: wrap-up course; peer review session; course evaluations
F 5/16 FINAL RESEARCH 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 one grade (e.g., with five absences a B+ will become a C+; with six, it will become a D+). 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 major 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.

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 engl33201 [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 subscriptions. Very soon after sending this message, you should receive an email from the machine that handles listserv 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 should 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 engl33201@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 2001-2003, pp. 227-229), and remember this simple rule of thumb: check with me first before posting something to your section's listserv that is not directly related to the course. If you have any problems using the course listserv, click here for a troubleshooting guide.

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. See pages 216 and 226 of the College Catalog 2001-2003 for further information.

EN GL332: American Romanticism, Spring 2003
Created: 2/11/03 3:03 pm
Last modified: 5/15/03 7:50 am
Click here for the Spring 2001 version of this course.