Website:
https://sites.google.com/site/aadavydovmsu/us-lit
Marking
This course accounts for 50% of your final mark for American Cultural History.
The other 50% come from your mark for American History taught by Dr
Verbitskaya.
20% Essay 1 (submitted by 31th October)
20% Essay 2 (submitted by 20th December)
10% Responses
10% Presentation
40% Oral Exam
Essays
You will write two essays for the course. The required length is 700 to 1000 words.
You will be able to read essays by other students to prepare for the exam.
Please abstain from plagiarism in your essay. If I detect any, the essay will be
automatically marked 2. Plagiarism means that you copied parts of your essay from
another source without acknowledging it.
The essay should contain the following:
- The broad cultural context of the work
- The literary context of the work (e.g., other writers of the relevant movement)
- Brief overview of the author's works and biography
- One or two stylistic traits of the work (e.g., the use of slanted rhyme)
- An analysis of one or two characters
- An analysis of one or two themes
I will consider the following aspects of your essays when marking them:
- Analysis (60%) - how well you made sense of the work
- Structure (20%) - how coherently you organised your essay
- Language (20%) - your usage of English
Responses
You will need to provide very short (~100 words) responses to questions every
week using this page. Other students will be able to see your responses.
These responses will chiefly inquire into your personal opinions and will be
marked liberally.
Presentations
Each student will make a 10-minute presentation on an author from the list to the
right, introducing them to the class. While some creative adjustments are allowed,
students are expected to give a short biographical summary and briefly discuss a
work representative of the author.
Since we can not have more than one presentation per class, you can pair up with a
different student.
Oral Exam
You will be given two topics at random, one from list A and one from list B. You
will then speak on your topic for around 4 to 6 minutes, followed by several
questions from me. No additional materials are allowed at the exam.
You may follow this scheme for your answers, but you can devise your own, if you
think it encapsulates the work better:
- The broad cultural context of the work
- The literary context of the work (e.g., other writers of the relevant movement)
- Brief overview of the author's works and biography
- Brief overview of the plot (enough to show that you know it)
- One or two stylistic traits of the work (e.g., the use of slanted rhyme)
- An analysis of one or two characters
- An analysis of one or two themes
Reading List
1. Introduction
2. Religious and colonial writings
Jonathan Edwards - Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (until
"Application") [link]
Anne Bradstreet - In Memory of my Dear Grandchild... [link]
Anne Bradstreet - Verses upon the Burning of our House[link]
Anne Bradstreet - The Flesh and the Spirit [link]
3. Historical and political writings
Thomas Paine - Common Sense (CH. 2, 3) [link]
Ben Franklin - Poor Richard's Almanack (1-229) [link]
4. Early Romantics
Washington Irving - Rip van Winkle [link]
5. Gothic Romance
Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher [link]
Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart [link]
6. Mid-19th Century Romanticism
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Birthmark [link]
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown [link]
7. Mid-19th Century Romanticism
Herman Melville - Moby Dick (CH. 8, CH. 42, CH. 50, CH. 82) [link]
D. H. Lawrence - Herman Melville's Moby Dick [link]
8. Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance [link]
9. American Poetry
Walt Whitman - A Song of Myself (1-6) [link], I Sing the Body Electric [link]
Emily Dickinson - I Dwell in Possibility [link], Because I could not stop for
Death [link], Apparently with no Surprise [link]
10. American Realism
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn (Chapters 5-16) [link]
Mark Twain - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country [link]
Mark Twain - The Literary Offences of Fenimore Cooper [link]
11. American Naturalism
Jack London - To Build a Fire [link]
Jack London - Call of the Wild (Ch. 3) [link]
12. Regionalism
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily [link]
William Faukner - Dry September [link]
13. Modernism in the US
Ernest Hemingway - Killers [link], Indian Camp [link]
Ezra Pound - Lament of the Frontier-Guard [link], Canto XLV [link], A
Pact [link]
14. The Beat Generation
Jack Kerouac - On the Road (Part 1: 1-6) [link]
Allen Ginsberg - Howl [link]
15. African-American Literature
Langston Hughes - I, too, Sing America [link], The Negro Speaks of Rivers [link]
Richard Wright - Native Son (Book 1: Fear) [link]