AL 201.02: Survey of American Literature, Fall 2014
Instructor: Naz Bulamur
E-mail: [email protected]
Office: TB 524
Office Hours (please make an appointment): Tuesday &Thursday 11:00-13:00 @ New Hall
Faculty Lounge (second floor)
In our discussions of American literature from the colonial period to the present, we will consider
questions such as: How does the nation come to being through literature? How do
Transcendentalists imagine a writing that is specifically American? How do constructions of
American identity change in time? What have some of the best American writers cared about?
That is, what was important to them and why? How do writers experiment with fiction, and at the
same time, question the ideals of heroism, equality, and democracy? How do minority writers
(African-American, Mexican-American, and Indian-American etc.) challenge the hegemony of
white-male-heterosexual American identity? Variety of texts will show us complexity and
plurality of the multiethnic American society.
Course packet is available at the library copy center. Check the schedule regularly and do the
readings before coming to class. Please be prepared to discuss your various thoughts and
questions about the readings. You may be called on at any time! The quality of discussions will
depend on what each of you can contribute, how well you make the discussions “work” as
collective attempts to interpret the texts. I will evaluate your performance in the course partly
according to how active a role you play in the class discussions.
Grading System:
Participation
Quizzes/in-class writing
Midterm
Final Exam
15 %
10 % (No make-up exams for the quizzes)
35 %
40 % (To be admitted to the final exam, you must attend 75 % of
all classes.)
Schedule of Readings: Please note that class content and course policies are subject to
modification. I might take out some texts and/or assign a few additional ones. I will notify you of
any changes in class.
Week 1
NO CLASS
Week 2
Sept. 30 T
Oct. 2 R
Oct. 3 F
Puritanism: William Bradford, “The Mayflower Compact”
Anne Bradstreet
Holiday
Week 3
Oct. 7 T
Oct. 9 R
Oct. 10 F
Holiday
Mary Rowlandson, “The captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson”
Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson
Week 4
Oct. 14 T
Oct. 16 R
Jean de Crevecoeur, “What is an American?”
Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle”
Oct. 17 F
Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”
Week 5
Oct. 21 T
Oct. 23 R
Oct. 24 F
Emerson
Henry David Thoreau, from Walden
Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass
Week 6
Oct. 28 T
Oct. 30 R
Oct. 31 F
Holiday
Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”
Week 7
Nov. 4 T
Nov. 6 R
Nov. 7 F
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Slave narratives: Frederick Douglass
Realism and Regionalism: Kate Chopin, “A Pair of Silk Stockings”
Week 8
Nov. 11 T
Nov. 13 R
Nov. 14 F
Americans in Europe: Henry James, Daisy Miller
James
MIDTERM (TBA)
James
Week 9
Nov. 18 T
Nov. 20 R
Nov. 21 F
Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad
Modernism: Gertrude Stein
T. S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”
Week 10
Nov. 25 T
Nov. 27 R
Nov. 28 F
Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room”
John Steinbeck, “The Chrysanthemums”
Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”
Week 11
Dec. 2 T
Dec. 4 R
Dec. 5 F
William Faulkner, “Dry September”
Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”
Week 12
Dec. 9 T
Dec. 11 R
Dec. 12 F
Postmodernism and Tim O’Brien, from The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien
Donald Barthelme
Week 13
Dec. 16 T
Dec. 18 R
Dec. 19 F
Multicultural America: Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
Morrison and Gloria Anzaldua
Anzaldua
Week 14
Dec. 23 T
Sherman Alexie