EN 510: Major Writers
Spring 1999
Section 1: Thompson E-114, M 4:30-7:00 pm
Office: Fenton 240; T 10-12, 1-3, W 2-4, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon
HAWTHORNE AND MORRISON
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
This course is conceived of as an introduction to the study of race and American literature through the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Toni Morrison. We will approach their works and relations between them through such issues as sources, influences, and transformations; race, gender, region, and nation; history in literature and literature in history; and the making and remaking of literary canons.
Texts. There are seven books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World (Fawcett) and Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (Ballantine) are also available for purchase; although we will probably not have time to discuss them in class, their responses to Hawthorne, his works, and New England are worth comparing to Morrison's (perhaps in a seminar paper).
Finally, there is an extensive array of books and essays on reserve in Reed Library for your use; click on the link at the top (and bottom) of this (and every) page for details.
Course Requirements/Expectations
Attendance/Participation (10%): This is going to be largely a discussion course, so everything depends on your preparation, your observations, and your questions. I will do mini-lectures periodically, of course, but the main goal of the course is for each of you to make connections between the texts we'll be reading, so that we share our insights into how the texts relate both in and out of class.
Response Papers/Discussion Questions (20%): By each Sunday afternoon before class, each of you must post to the course listserv a one-page response to the readings for the week and 3-5 questions that you want to see us discuss in class. Click here for instructions on how to join and post to our listserv, en51001@ait.fredonia.edu, and for more on my expectations for your observations and questions in these weekly response papers.
Research Projects/Oral Presentation (40%): Each of you will do two small research projects in the course of the semester, one of which will be to put together an annotated bibliography of print and web resources relevant to a question or issue you want to pursue (worth 25% of your final course grade), and one of which will lead into an in-class oral presentation (worth 15% of your final course grade). Either or both of these research projects may be used as preliminary studies for your final seminar paper.
Seminar Paper (30%): For your seminar paper, you must develop and propose a topic of your own before you leave for spring break, complete a draft one week before the end of classes, exchange it with a classmate and prepare suggestions for revision, and turn in your final draft (15-25 pages) on the last day of classes.
Schedule of Assignments
Race and American Literature, Part I
M, 1/25 Introduction: Why Hawthorne and Morrison? What is "race and American literature"? What do we mean by "race"? By "American literature"? What are our expectations for the course?
M, 2/1 Read: Michael Omi and Howard Winant, "On the Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race" (handed out); Toni Morrison, "Unspeakable Things Unspoken" (on reserve--xerox; also in Criticism and the Color Line in abridged form), and Playing in the Dark; the introduction to Henry Wonham, ed., Criticism and the Color Line (on reserve); the introduction to Michael Moon and Cathy davidson, eds., Subjects and Citizens (on reserve--xerox); and the preface to Dana Nelson, The Word in Black and White (on reserve--xerox). Assignment: find and bring to class one essay from the collection Criticism and the Color Line whose approach to analyzing race and American literature you like best. We will compare Morrison's arguments and approaches to the essays you bring to class, and continue the discussion begun last week on the field of race and American literature and the goals of the course.
Racial Politics and Aesthetics
M, 2/8 Read: Toni Morrison, introductions to Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power (on reserve) and Birth of a Nation'hood (on reserve--xerox), interviews with Robert Stepto, Thomas LeClair, Nellie McKay, and Christina Davis in Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (on reserve), and with Gloria Naylor in Conversations with Toni Morrison (on reserve--xerox). Be prepared to identify and compare Morrison's signature moves when she is doing literary criticism (last week's readings) and cultural criticism (this week's readings).
F, 2/12 and S, 2/13 Envisioning Paradise: A Conference on Toni Morrison's Art and Imagination, Princeton University (attendance optional)
M, 2/15 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Roger Malvin's Burial" and "Rappaccini's Daughter"; Eric Cheyfitz, "The Irresistibleness of Great Literature" (on reserve--xerox); David Levin, "Modern Misjudgements of Racial Imperialism" (on reserve--xerox); Michael Colacurcio, from The Province of Piety, 107-130 (on reserve--xerox); Manfred Mackenzie, "Hawthorne's Roger Malvin's Burial" (on reserve--xerox). Consider: What does it mean to "read race in 'Roger Malvin's Burial' and 'Rappaccini's Daughter'"? How do the approaches of Hawthornists that we're reading this week compare to Morrison's, Nelson's, or Wonham's approaches from the previous weeks?
Recommended reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Old News," "The Procession of Life," "The Pygmies," "Main-Street," excerpts from Grandfather's Chair (on reserve--in the Centenary Edition, vol. 6), preface to The Marble Faun (on reserve--in the Library of America Novels volume), and excerpts from Life of Pierce (on reserve--xerox [as of next Monday morning], "Chiefly About War Matters" (on reserve--xerox [as of next Monday morning]), and selected letters (not on reserve, but see in particular Centenary Edition, vol 15, p. 664-665, CE 16: 431, 456; CE 18: 89-91, 115, 456-457--all in the PS1850s upstairs); Jean Fagan Yellin, "Hawthorne and the American National Sin" (on reserve--xerox); Anna Brickhouse, "Hawthorne in the Americas" (on reserve--xerox).
M, 2/22 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables and "Egotism; or, the Bosom-Serpent"; F.O. Matthiessen, on Gables in American Renaissance (on reserve). Presentation by Elizabeth Keyes.
Recommended reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Village Uncle," "The White Old Maid," "The Vision of a Fountain," "Fancy's Show Box," "The Prophetic Pictures," "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure," "The Celestial Rail-road," and "The Artist of the Beautiful."
M, 3/1 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon.
Recommended reading: Walter Benn Michaels, "Romance and Real Estate" (not on reserve; can be found in Michaels, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism or in The American Renaissance Reconsidered, eds. Michaels and Donald Pease); Brook Thomas, Cross-examinations of Law and Literature (not on reserve).
M, 3/8 Read: Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon.
Recommended reading: Wahneema Lubiano, "The Postmodernist Rag," in New Essays on Song of Solomon; and one other essay on Song of Solomon from any of the collections of critical essays or other books on Morrison on reserve.
M, 3/15 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (both the text and one of the units in the supporting documents in the Bedford edition). Presentations by Jason Swiatek and Jack Osborne.
Recommended reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The New Adam and Eve," "Earth's Holocaust," and "The Snow-Image"; Arlin Turner, "Hawthorne and Reform" (on reserve--xerox).
M, 3/22 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Toni Morrison, Paradise. Topics for seminar paper due before you leave for spring break (one-page proposal). Presentations by Samia Ouederni and Amy Spicer.
Recommended reading: Lauren Berlant, "Fantasies of Utopia in The Blithedale Romance" (on reserve--xerox); Manfred Mackenzie, "Colonization and Decolonization in The Blithedale Romance (on reserve--xerox); Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters (on reserve); Farah Griffin, Who Set You Flowin'? (on reserve).
M, 3/29, 4/5 NO CLASS--Spring Break
M, 4/12 Read: Toni Morrison, Paradise, The Nobel Lecture in America, and "Home" (on reserve--in The House That Race Built). Presentations by Amy Spicer (continued) and Sean Bermingham.
M, 4/19 Read: Toni Morrison, Beloved.
Recommended reading: Jan Stryz, "The Other Ghost in Beloved" (on reserve--xerox); Caroline Woidat, "Talking Back to Schooteacher" (on reserve--xerox); Charles Lewis, "The Ironic Romance of New Historicism" (on reserve--xerox); or one essay on Beloved from among the many collections of critical essays or other books on reserve.
M, 4/26 Read: Toni Morrison, Beloved; Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown." Presentation by Jennifer Nowicki.
Recommended reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark"; and essays on race and the romance (TBA).
M, 5/3 Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (both the text and one accompanying essay of your choice in the Bedford edition). First draft of seminar paper for exchange for peer review due in class. Comments on peer-reviewed seminar paper drafts due over email (cc copy to me) by Wednesday evening. Presentation by Kristin Muck.
Recommended reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, prefaces to his novels in the Library of America Novels edition (on reserve), "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Gray Champion," and "Endicott and the Red Cross"; Jonathan Arac "The Politics of The Scarlet Letter" (on reserve--in Ideology and Classic American Literature); Jay Grossman, "'A' is for Abolition?" (on reserve--xerox); Sacvan Bercovitch, The Office of The Scarlet Letter (on reserve); Lauren Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy (on reserve).
Race and American Literature, Part II
M, 5/10 Conclusion: on comparing Hawthorne and Morrison; assessing race and American literature as a field of study. Presentations by Tom Craig, Terrie Pakkala, and Jennifer Matusiak. Seminar paper and annotated bibliography due in class.
EN 510: Major Writers, Spring 1999
Created: 1/18/99, 4:46 pm
Last modified: 5/3/99, 2:18 pm