ENG1304: Introduction to American Literature
Autumn 2011 Lecture Schedule
14.15-15 Mondays, Sophus Bugges hus, auditorium 1
Lecturer: Rebecca Scherr, Associate Professor
Office hours: Tuesdays 10-12
Office phone: 22 85 69 44
Email: [email protected]
Course content: This course provides a general introduction to American literature, where the main focus is on the
nineteenth and the twentieth century. Attention will be paid to the ways in which literary texts speak to the reader,
and the syllabus texts will be studied in terms of developments in literary history and the history of ideas. Wherever
relevant, the teaching will draw on the wider historical, social and cultural contexts from which the texts spring.
Required texts: Available at Akademika
Baym, et. al.: The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter 7th ed.)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Toni Morrison: Sula
David Henry Hwang: M. Butterfly
Lecture Schedule: This schedule is for the lecture forum; texts will be discussed in greater depth in your group
sessions, and you will be provided with a separate schedule for groups. The course consists of 12 one-hour lectures
and 8 two-hour group sessions.
Week
34
35
Date
22/8
29/8
36
5/9
37
12/9
38
19/9
39
26/9
40
41
42
3/10
10/10
17/10
43
24/10
44
31/10
45
7/11
46
14/11
47
48
21/11
5/12
Texts covered in lecture
Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (Part II)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Walt Whitman, Live Oak, with Moss
Emily Dickinson, poems no. 241, 258
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Robert Frost, “Birches”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Apostrophe to Man”
Marianne Moore, “Poetry”
Reading week – no lecture
Reading week – no lecture
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” + “The Young Housewife”
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
*Drafts of obligatory essays due*
William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (in anthology)
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
*Drafts handed back by group teachers*
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room”
*Obligatory essays due*
Toni Morrison, Sula
Louise Erdrich, “Fleur”
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
4-hour final written exam - Time and place to be announced