ENGL 512: Historical Perspectives in Literature
Spring 2003
Section 1: Fenton 174, W 4:30-7 pm
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/
HISTORICAL RE-VISIONS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE:
The American Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance
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 you will be graded, what reading, research, oral and written 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. Please get in the habit of checking back to these pages to keep track of changes to the syllabus, advice on papers and research projects, and 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 the development of important movements or concepts in literature. In this section of ENGL 512, we will focus on the concept of "renaissance" that has been used to define two major periods in American literature: the American Renaissance of the middle third of the nineteenth century and the Harlem (or "New Negro") Renaissance of the first third of the twentieth century. We will study major authors, works, and movements from these periods and works written in later periods that are set during these periods in order to trace an ongoing dialogue about their meaning and significance in American literature and culture.
Texts. There are nine books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to your grade in this course:
Attendance/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, you are expected to contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by e-mail. Barring emergencies each absence after the second will lower your final course grade by a full grade (e.g., with three absences, an A would become an B; with five, it would become a D).
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 graduate seminar, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in discussions, activities, and in-class writing. As there is no final examination in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation in class and on the course listserv (see below) as a different but equally important method of assessing your effort and learning in the course.
Reading Responses (10%): Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using the course listserv (engl51201@listserv.fredonia.edu), as well as a troubleshooting guide, are available on the course web site at http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl512/listserv.htm and will be discussed in class. 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: no later than 11 pm Tuesday of every week you choose to do a reading response, you must post to the course listserv at least one sustained observation and two well-developed and carefully-chosen questions that you believe would spark discussion for the next day's class meeting. For advice on crafting reading responses, go to http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl512/rr.htm.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the number of on-time sets of observations and discussion questions you post to the course listserv: 9 or more sets of questions=A; 8=B+; 7=B; 6=C+; 5=C; 4=D; 3 or less=E. The quality of your observations and discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above); the more carefully-considered your questions are, the more likely they are to provide a seed for an in-class presentation or critical/comparative essay, as well.
In-Class Group Presentation (25%): Your group's class presentation must draw on library and/or internet research, present an argument about the relation between the revisionist work we will be discussing the day of the presentation and specific works from the earlier period it is in dialogue with (for roughly 20 minutes), and raise questions for an ensuing discussion that your group will lead (for roughly 30 minutes). Please consult with me well in advance of your presentation. For further information and suggestions on the group presentation, go to http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl512/gp.htm.
Critical Essay (25%). Your seven-to-ten-page critical essay is an opportunity to analyze what is at stake in a historical "re-vision" by either Mark Twain, Rita Dove, or August Wilson. For further information and suggestions on the critical essay, go to http://www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/engl512/ce.htm.
Schedule of Assignments I will be regularly updating the schedule of assignments on the syllabus here. Please remember that your readinmg responses are due by 11 pm the Tuesday before each class, and that texts listed under Recommended Reading are optional/recommended for everyone but the people giving a presentation that week, for whom they are strongly suggested by not required. [Key: NAAL: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. B [6th ed.]; VHR: Voices from the Harlem Renaissance.]
ENGL 512: Historical Perspectives in Literature, Spring 2003
W 1/29/03 Welcome; Introductions; Set-up
W 2/5
Required Reading: Hershel Parker, "American Literature, 1820-1865" and timeline (NAAL 957-977); Nathan Irvin Huggins, Introduction (VHR 3-11); 1837: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" (NAAL 1103-1106, 1135-1147); 1925: Alain Locke, "The New Negro" (VHR 47-56)
Recommended Reading: particularly the introductions and tables of contents of F.O. Matthiessen, The American Renaissance; Donald Pease, Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context; David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance; Timothy Powell, Ruthless Democracy: A Multicultural Interpretation of the American Renaissance; Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue; Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s; George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White (all these works should be consulted throughout the semester)
W 2/12
Required Reading: 1885: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1-170 [Ch.1-23]); 1841: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (NAAL 1160-1176); 1849: Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" (NAAL 1788-1807); 1853: Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (NAAL 2287-2292, 2330-2355)
Recommended Reading: particularly the introductions and discussions of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Twain in R.W.B. Lewis, The American Adam; Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel; Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden; Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
W 2/19
Required Reading: 1885: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (171-296 [Ch.24-"Chapter the Last"]); 1845, 1855: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life and from My Bondage and My Freedom (NAAL 2029-2108);
Recommended Reading: James Leonard, et al., eds., Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn; Forrest G. Robinson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain; William Andrews, To Tell a Free Story; Robert S. Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity
Presentation Group I: Christine Beichner and Kay Walters
W 2/26
Required Reading: 1986: Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah; 1916: James Weldon Johnson, "Brothers" (VHR 352-353); 1919-1921: Claude McKay, "If We Must Die," "The Lynching," and "America" (VHR 353-355); 1922, 1927: Langston Hughes, "Danse Africaine," "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Song for a Dark Girl," and "Mother to Son" (VHR 153, 155, 358-359); 1925, 1927: Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel," "Incident," and "From the Dark Tower" (VHR 315, 359-360); 1926: Helene Johnson, "A Southern Road" (VHR 360-361) and Arna Bontemps, "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" (VHR 355)
Recommended Reading: Farah J. Griffin, "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Reading Black, Reading Feminist
Presentation Group II: Lori Raybold and Kelly Sargent
Campus Event: W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, Part I, 6:30 pm, Location TBA [Part II to be shown on 2/28 before closing ceremonies for Black History Month at 4 pm in S-104 Williams Center]
W 3/5
Required Reading: 1981: August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; 1920: W.A. Domingo, "Africa for the Africans" (VHR 25-27) and W.E.B. Du Bois, "Race Pride" (VHR 42); 1921: A. Philip Randolph, "Garveyism" (VHR 27-35); 1923: Marcus Garvey, "Africa for the Africans" and "The Future as I See It" (VHR 35-41); 1929: George Schuyler, "Our Greatest Gift to America" (VHR 361-365); 1932: Langston Hughes, "Always the Same" (VHR 418-419)
Recommended Reading: Houston Baker, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature; Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race; Hazel Carby, Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America; Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism; Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture; William Maxwell, New Negro, Old Left: African American Writing and Communism between the Wars
Presentation Group III: Pam Westman and Emily Workman
W 3/12
Required Reading: 1995: Samuel Delany, Atlantis: Model 1924; 1918: Claude McKay, "Harlem Shadows" (VHR 84); W.E.B. Du Bois, "On Being Black" (VHR 211-215); 1923: Jean Toomer, "Song of the Son" (VHR 221-222); 1925: Countee Cullen, "Heritage" (VHR 142-145); 1930: James Weldon Johnson, from Black Manhattan (VHR 56-72); 1931: Helene Johnson, "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem" and "Poem" (VHR 182-183) and Gwendolyn Bennett, "To a Dark Girl" (VHR 191); ); 1932: Wallace Thurman, from Infants of the Spring (VHR 316-323); 1935: Nancy Cunard, "Harlem Reviewed" (VHR 122-132); 1940: Langston Hughes, from The Big Sea (VHR 90-98, 370-381); 1959: Langston Hughes, "Afro-American Fragment" (VHR 146-147)
Recommended Reading: Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s; George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White
Guest Appearance: Saundra Liggins, English Department, SUNY Fredonia
F 3/14 - F 3/21 Spring Break: No Class
W 3/26
Required Reading: 1936: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (3-106 [Ch. 1-4]); 1844: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet" (NAAL 1177-1191), 1855, 1856: Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, "Leaves of Grass [Song of Myself]," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson" (NAAL 2127-2200); 1862, 1864, 1868: Emily Dickinson, #435, #448, #632, #952, #1129 (NAAL 2499-2503, 2515, 2516, 2522, 2528, 2532)
Recommended Reading: Russ Castronovo, Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom
Presentation Group IV: Sonja Bacho and James Kayorie
Assignment: CRITICAL ESSAY due in class
W 4/2
Required Reading: 1936: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (107-234 [Ch. 5-7]); 1852: Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" (NAAL 2108-2127); 1855: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" (NAAL 2371-2427)
Recommended Reading: Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature
Presentation 'Group' V: Jessica Brassard-Moore
W 4/9
Required Reading: 1936: William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (235-309 [Ch. 8-Genealogy]); 1854: Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" (NAAL 1982-1992); 1854, 1860: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Last of the Anti-Slavery Lectures" and "Fate" (NAAL 1207-1235); 1858, 1863, 1865: Abraham Lincoln, "A House Divided," "Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg," and "Second Inaugural Address" (NAAL 1608-1617)
Recommended Reading: Eduardo Cadava, Emerson and the Climates of History, Eric Sundquist, A House Divided, Barbara Ladd, Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner, Philip Weinstein, What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison
Presentation Group VI: Kate Child and Ryan Clendenin
W 4/16
Required Reading: 1972: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (3-116 [Ch. 1-30]); 1922: James Weldon Johnson, Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (VHR 281-304); 1925: Arthur Schomburg, "The Negro Digs Up His Past" (VHR 217-221) and Alain Locke, "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts" (VHR 137-142); 1935: Zora Neale Hurston, "Characteristics of Negro Expression" and "Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals" (VHR 224-236, 344-347)
Recommended Reading: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey; Gayl Jones, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature
Presentation Group VII: Dan Malerk and Jenn Williams
W 4/23
Required Reading: 1972: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (117-218 [Ch. 31-Epilogue]); 1926: George Schuyler, "The Negro-Art Hokum" (VHR 309-312) and Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (VHR 305-309); 1927: Eric Walrond, "City Love" (VHR 84-90), and Rudolph Fisher, "The Caucasian Storms Harlem" (VHR 74-82) and "Blades of Steel" (VHR 110-121); 1928: "Harlem Directory" (VHR 46-47)
Recommended Reading: James DeJongh, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination; Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism, Barbara Browning, Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture
Presentation Group VIII: Michael Lovaglio and Susan McGee
Guest Lecture: Shannon McRae, English Department, SUNY Fredonia
W 4/30
Required Reading: 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (1-165 [Part One]); 1850: John Greenleaf Whittier, "Ichabod!" (NAAL 1486-1488); 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Uncle Tom's Cabin (NAAL 1670-1746); 1859: Lydia Maria Child, "Mrs. Child's Reply" (NAAL 1094-1103); 1861: Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (NAAL 1757-1779)
Recommended Reading: Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives; Ashraf H.A. Rushdy, Neo-Slave Narratives; Elizabeth Beaulieu, Black Women Writers and the Neo-Slave Narrative; Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America; Dwight McBride, Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony
Presentation Group IX: Teresa Blount, Jewel Mowry, and Amanda Oddo
Guest Appearance: Jeannette Jones, History Department, SUNY Fredonia
W 5/7
Required Reading: 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved (166-275 [Part Two and Three]); 1835, 1843: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Birth-Mark" (NAAL 1247-1250, 1263-72, 1289-1300); 1863: Emily Dickinson, #670 [to be handed out]
Recommended Reading: D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature; Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville; Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, eds., Ideology and Classic American Literature; Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark; Henry Wonham, ed., Criticism and the Color Line
Presentation 'Group' X: Linda Berek
F 5/16
Assignment: FINAL PROJECT due no later than 5 pm
Created: 2/12/03 2:11 pm
Last modified: 4/28/03 3:49 pm
See also the web sites for my current sections of American Romanticism and Harlem Renaissance, undergraduate courses which relate directly to this one.