SUNY Fredonia
Division of Arts and Humanities
ENGL 334: Realism and Naturalism in American Literature
Fall 2004
Section 1: Thompson E-120, MW 3-4:20
Office: Fenton 240; MW 12-2:30, TTh 3:30-6, 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 any time (see above for my coordinates) if you have ideas about how to improve these pages or the course as a whole.

I. Course Description

Study of realism and naturalism in terms of influence, development, and characteristics within the context of American culture. This section of ENGL 334 examines the stakes of realist and naturalist writers' contributions to the development of the literature of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, regional literatures, and the literature of expansion, imperialism, migration, and immigration. In it, we focus on the ways in which literature represents, responds to, and shapes intellectual and political transformations in American society during the period between 1865 and 1914. In the course of doing this, we will pay careful attention to multiple traditions of writing within the postbellum U.S., ethical and political ramifications of literary form and literary movements, and intertextual relations among literary works of the period and, to a lesser extent, between works from the period and those from other periods, movements, and traditions.

ENGL 334 is a period course for students in the English and English Adolescence Education majors and an elective in American Studies.

II. Rationale

In ENGL 334, 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. The textbooks adopted for this course are:

• Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (Bedford)
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening (Norton)
• Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (Norton)
• Paul Lauter, et al., eds., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 (4th ed. )
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton)

IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes

Students in ENGL 334 will read, analyze, and compare a wide range of writings from and about the postbellum 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. More specifically, ENGL 334 is designed to give students the opportunity to develop a critical or analytical approach to the postbellum 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 postbellum American literature, their understanding of contemporary U.S. society (as refined through attention to the contemporary implications or ramifications of postbellum 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 postbellum American literature and history further. 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 third will lower your final course grade by one grade (e.g., with four absences a B+ will become a C+; with five, it will become a D+).

Reading Responses (15%). Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using the course listserv (ENGL33401@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/engl334f04/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 (keeping in mind that no more than one response per week will receive full credit). Hence, no later than 9 pm Sunday or Tuesday 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 class meeting. Advice on generating reading responses can be found on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl334f04/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 Essay (20%). I provide detailed information on the 4-to-6-page critical essay elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl334f04/ce.htm.

Group Pedagogical Project (25%). I provide detailed information on the 50-to-75-minute group pedagogical project elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl334f04/gpp.htm.

Final Project (30%). I provide detailed information on the final project elsewhere on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl334f04/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 Thanksgiving 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 English Adolescence 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

• Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917
• Cathy Boeckmann, A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892-1912
• Donna Campbell, Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915
• Raul Fernández, ed., José Martí's 'Our America': From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies
• Judith Fetterly and Marjorie Pryse, Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture
• Stephanie Foote, Regional Fictions: Culture and Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
• Sandra Gunning, Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912
• Grace Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940
• Sherrie Inness and Diana Boyer, eds., Breaking Boundaries: New Perspectives on Women's Regional Writing
• Gavin Jones, Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America
• Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of American Culture
• Samira Kawash, Dislocating the Color Line
• Michael Kowalewski, ed., Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West
• Eric Link, The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century
• Tom Lutz, Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value
• Kate McCullough, Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women's Fiction, 1885-1914
• Mary Papke, ed., Twisted from the Ordinary: American Literary Naturalism
• Thomas Peyser, Utopia and Cosmopolis: Globalization in the Era of American Literary Realism
• Donald Pizer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism
• John Carlos Rowe, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism
• Christopher Smith, ed., American Realism
• Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature
• Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture
• Brook Thomas, American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract
• Henry Wonham, Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism
• --, ed., Criticism and the Color Line

B. Classic References

• Elizabeth Ammons, Conflicting Stories
• Michael Davitt Bell, The Problem of American Realism
• Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood
• Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction
• Thomas Ferraro, Ethnic Passages
• Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel
• Philip Fisher, Hard Facts
• Eric Foner, Reconstruction
• Farah Jasmine Griffin, Who Set You Flowin'? The African-American Migration Narrative
• June Howard, Form and History in American Literary Naturalism
• Amy Kaplan, The Social Construction of American Realism
• Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism
• Marcus Klein, Foreigners
• Paul Lauter, Canons and Contexts
• James Leonard, et al., eds., Satire or Evasion?
• Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long
• Eric Lott, Love and Theft
• Walter Benn Michaels, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism
• Lee Clark Mitchell, Determined Fictions
• Donald Pizer, Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth Century American Literature
• Arnold Rampersad and Deborah McDowell, eds., Slavery and the Literary Imagination
• Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment
• Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations
• --, ed., American Realism: New Essays
• Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America
• Priscilla Wald, Constituting Americans
• Kenneth Warren, Black and White Strangers
• Larzer Ziff, The American 1890s

C. Key Journals

• American Literary History
• American Literature
• American Quarterly
• Arizona Quarterly
• 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. (Key: HAAL=The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 [4th ed.].)

W 8/25 Introductions and Overview

Literature of Reconstruction

M 9/6 Labor Day: No Class
W 9/8 1895, 1901: Booker T. Washington, "The Atlanta Exposition Address" (in Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition 274-278) and Ch. I, III, VI, XIII, and XIV from Up from Slavery (HAAL 918-942)

M 9/13 1897, 1903: W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Conservation of Races" (in Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition 288-298) and Ch. I, III, and XIV from The Souls of Black Folk (HAAL 945-965)
W 9/15 1896: Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Mr. Cornelius Johnson, Office-Seeker" and "We Wear the Mask" (HAAL 164-170, 174); 1899: Charles Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine" and "Po' Sandy" (HAAL 127-142); 1896, 1900: William Dean Howells, "Paul Laurence Dunbar" and "Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt's Stories" (HAAL 263-267)

M 9/20 1885: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Notice-Ch. 15 (1-95)
W 9/22 1885: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ch. 16-26 (96-191) ; GROUP PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT: Jeremy Jao, Josh Machanoff, Katie Manchester

M 9/27 1885: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ch. 27-Chapter the Last (192-296)
W 9/29 Post-Reconstruction Politics. Nancy Bentley and Sandra Gunning, "Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background" (in Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition 3-26); 1901: Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, Ch. I-IX (44-102)

M 10/4 1901: Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, Ch. X-XXIX (102-200)
W 10/6 1901: Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, Ch. XXIX-XXXVII (200-246); Nancy Bentley and Sandra Gunning, "Caste, Race, and Gender after Reconstruction," "Law and Lawlessness," "The Wilmington Riot," and "Segregation as Culture" (in Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition 249-255, 331-337, 398-405, 422-429)
F 10/8 CRITICAL ESSAY #1 due by 5 pm

Literature of Region

M 10/18 The New West. 1898: Stephen Crane, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (HAAL 520-527); 1904: Alexander Lawrence Posey, "Fus Fixico's Letter Number 44" (HAAL 213-214); 1907: John Milton Oskison, "The Problem of Old Harjo" (HAAL 216-221)
W 10/20 Midwestern Trifles. 1917: Susan Glaspell, Trifles (HAAL 1110-1119); 1919: Sherwood Anderson, "Hands" (HAAL 1142-1145); GROUP PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT: Joie Charbonneau, Abby Gray, Amanda Swartele

M 10/25 New England Personae. 1890: Marietta Holley, from Samantha Among the Brethren (HAAL 575-578); 1891: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "The Revolt of 'Mother'" (HAAL 757-767)
W 10/27 1860: Harriet Prescott Spofford, "Circumstance" (HAAL 696-704); 1900: Sarah Orne Jewett, "The Foreigner" (HAAL 730-746); 1914: Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" (HAAL 1129-1130) ; GROUP PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT: Steve Galbo, Stephanie Milks, Erika Raymond

Literature of Migration

M 11/8 The Great Migration. 1892: Ida B. Wells, from Southern Horrors (in Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition 364-377); 1895: Frances E.W. Harper, "The Martyr of Alabama" (HAAL 582-584); 1903: Pauline Hopkins, "As the Lord Lives, He Is One of Our Mother's Children" (HAAL 787-792); 1912: James Weldon Johnson, from Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (HAAL 971-986) ; GROUP PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT: Kathy Ellis, Jen Potratz, LaToya Wynn
W 11/10 Immigrant America. Elaine Hedges and Sandra Zagarell, "The Making of 'Americans'" (HAAL 823-824); 1883: Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (HAAL 27); 1894: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Unguarded Gates" (HAAL 29); 1895: Finley Peter Dunne, "The Wanderers" (HAAL 628-629); 1898: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Goddess of Liberty, Answer" (HAAL 808-809)

M 11/15 Charles Molesworth, "Issues and Visions in Modern America" (HAAL 1713-1714); 1891: José Martí, "Our America" (HAAL 879-886); 1916: Randolph Bourne, "Trans-National America" (HAAL 1716-1727); 1925: Gertrude Stein, from The Making of Americans (HAAL 1228-1230)
W 11/17 1909: Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far), "In the Land of the Free" (HAAL 842-848); 1910-1940: "Carved on the Walls: Poetry by Early Chinese Immigrants" (HAAL 1955-1963); 1912: Mary Antin, from The Promised Land (HAAL 871-877); 1923: Anzia Yezierska, "America and I" (HAAL 1729-1735); GROUP PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT: Cody Morrow, Kristin Orlando, Katherine Wyrobek

M 11/22 - F 11/26 Thanksgiving Break: No Classes

M 11/29 The International Story. 1882: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Ch. I-XXVII
W 12/1 1882: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Ch. XXVIII-XLIII

M 12/6 1882: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Ch. XLIV-LV
W 12/8 1880: Constance Fenimore Woolson, "Miss Grief" (HAAL 706-721); 1899: Edith Wharton, "Souls Belated" (HAAL 1013-1031)

see the news page for office hours during exam week
F 12/17 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 third 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 ENGL33401 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 ENGL33401@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 334: Realism and Naturalism in American Literature, Fall 2004
Created: 8/25/04 5:06 pm
Last modified: 12/8/04 11:27 am