Prof. Kirsten Silva Gruesz
Office: Humanities 1, 636
email: ksgruesz@ ucsc.edu
Office hours: Thu 11-12:30, F 10:30-12
and by appointment
Office phone: 459-2225
LTEL 110F
Spring 2010
MWF 2-3:10
Oakes 105
Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
We live in a cultural moment obsessed with mining and recycling “classic” works—from Huck
Finn’s story as told by Jim’s wife, to Jane Austen with vampires, to seemingly endless riffs on the
Western. Rather than approach nineteenth-century U.S. fiction as a set of dusty artifacts under
glass, this class will ask: what are we looking for in the national past? And what do we mean when
we label a work of art “original”? Beginning with Geraldine Brooks’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning
March—a Civil War novel that freely borrows characters from the wildly popular Little Women
(1866)—and continuing with two films, we’ll take adaptation seriously as a conceptual frame that
lets us think about what texts are, how they travel, how they can be used and re-used.
We’ll pay special attention to genres that emerged or flourished during this period and whose
contours are still recognizable today: speculative fiction, sensationalism, thinly veiled
autobiography, detective and historical fiction, the domestic novel of courtship and manners,
utopian and dystopian narratives. The syllabus emphasizes less-widely-read works by masters of the
short story (Poe, Hawthorne) and the novel (Melville, Wharton, Twain), as well as nearly-forgotten
authors—women and non-English-speakers in particular—whose works have recently returned to
critical attention (Wilson, von Reizenstein, Chacón).
Required Texts (available at Bay Tree Bookstore):
Geraldine Brooks, March (Penguin)
*Harriet Wilson, Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, ed. P.G. Foreman (Penguin)
*Herman Melville, Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, ed. R. Levine (Penguin)
Herman Melville, Bartleby & Benito Cereno (Dover Thrift Edition)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales (Oxford)
Edgar Allan Poe, Great Short Works: Poems Tales Criticism, ed. G.R. Thompson (Harper Perennial)
*Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, ed. E. Ammons (Norton Critical Edition)
*Mark Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (University of California Press/Mark Twain Project)
*It is very important that you get this specific edition, either because there are additional assigned
readings in it or because the alternate editions are very different (Twain). The Poe and Hawthorne
readings in the syllabus are available through other sources, as is “Bartleby,” though you will have
to work harder to track down the assigned pieces if you don’t get these editions.
PDF files of other readings will be available on the course webpage:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~ksgruesz/ltel110f [this URL is case-sensitive; if you have trouble, check that
you are typing in lower-case letters and that you have spelled my difficult surname correctly]
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Course Policies:
Attendance.
You are expected to attend each lecture and discussion section meeting. Beginning the second
week of class, a set of attendance sheets (one for each section) will be passed around on a clipboard
at lecture; please make sure you sign in every day. If you must miss a class due to illness or
absolutely necessary travel, please inform your TA by email as soon as possible. We will not pass
judgment on the validity of your reasons for missing class, but missing any more than three class
meetings (of lecture and section combined) will lower your final grade by one full grade. Missing 5
or more meetings is grounds for failing the class. Any pleas for an exception to this policy due to
extraordinary circumstances must be made to me in office hours; I may consult with your college
academic advisor if warranted.
Principles of community re: electronic devices.
Please leave all your electronic devices off during the class period. Although it can be difficult
(some would argue unnatural) to maintain the same attentive state for 70 minutes while sitting
still, please make your best effort. Texting, checking email, websurfing, and listening to music
during lecture are not only disrespectful, but distracting to others. For this reason I ask that you
not use your laptop to take notes during lecture unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e., for students
with certain learning disabilities). Please do not make me act as policeman patrolling for these
distracting uses. In return, I will do my best to create a collaborative and engaging learning
community in the classroom, and will treat your time and attention respectfully—as gifts you are
offering to me and to this group.
Doing the reading.
Please come to lecture having read the materials indicated on the syllabus for that day, including
any supplementary reading. Also come prepared with a few blank sheets of paper. Periodically
during the quarter, we will stop to compose a 5-minute “reading riff” in response to a specific
passage from the assigned reading that will be projected on the document camera. These will be
difficult to write if you have not done the reading, and will be factored into the “participation and
general intellectual engagement” portion of your grade (see below). After being handed in to your
TA, these very brief in-class writing assignments will be the basis of the next segment of the lecture,
and/or a segment of a discussion section.
Discussion sections and the role of TAs.
Everyone in the course must also sign up for an allied discussion section. The sections for this
course are scheduled for the following times. All sections meet in Cowell 113. If you need to
request a change of sections, please do so as soon as possible. Sections will be meeting as scheduled
beginning the week of April 5; there are no sections the first week.
1A:
1B:
1C:
1D:
Tues 4:00PM - 5:10PM
Mon 5:00PM - 6:10PM
Thurs 6:00PM - 7:10PM
Thurs 7:30PM - 8:40PM
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The TAs for this course are Calvin McMillin, Melissa Poulsen, and Brenda Sanfilippo; I will be
taking one section myself. Your teaching assistant is an experienced and trained instructor whose
role is to help you develop further as a confident public speaker and as a strong, convincing writer.
Please treat him or her with respect and get to know him or her during office hours. S/he will be
reading and grading your work, in conversation with myself and the other TAs, as well as
preparing your narrative evaluations for the course. Your TA may also give additional
requirements for group work or discussion-leading prior to section. If you have any concerns that
you feel you cannot share with your TA, please see me as soon as possible.
Assignments. There will be four written assignments: a 4-5-page argumentative paper; either an
adaptation study or a parody (4-5 pages); a 2-3-page “information assessment” offering a critical
review of available interpretations of a work, author, genre or trope; and a 6-7-page final research
paper on an open topic to be discussed with your TA. Due dates are noted on the day-to-day
syllabus that follows. More detailed prompts for each assignment will be handed out in class and
posted on the website prior to the due date.
Grading system.
Your final grade will be calculated on the following basis:
• Participation and general intellectual engagement (including in-class reading riffs and any
assigned section work): 25%
• Paper 1: 20%
• Paper 2: 20%
• Information assessment: 10%
• Final paper: 25%
Statement on academic integrity. “Any assignment submitted by you and that bears your name is
presumed to be your own original work that has not been previously submitted for credit in
another course unless you obtain prior written approval to do so from our instructor.” Further
information on proper citation of sources and the definition of plagiarism can be found on the
course website.
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS, READINGS AND DUE DATES
M 3/29
Introduction to class
W 3/31
Revisionist history
Brooks, March to p. 56
F 4/2
Filmic and other adaptations
Alcott, Little Women chaps. 1 and 4 (PDF on website)
In-class screening: Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994)
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M 4/5
Legacies of Transcendentalism
Brooks, March to p. 167
Thoreau, “The Ponds” (PDF)
Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane, “On the Community at Fruitlands” (PDF)
W 4/7
Abolitionism and Conscience: The Shadow of John Brown
Brooks, March to p. 205
Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (PDF)
F 4/9
Sentimentalism, Domesticity, and the Happy Ending
Brooks, March to end (p. 273)
Alcott, Little Women chaps. 15 and 22 (PDF)
Elizabeth Peabody, “Conversations with Margaret Fuller” (PDF)
M 4/12
African-Americans and Life Writing
Wilson, Our Nig, entire novel (pp. 5-80)—do not read Introduction first!
W 4/14
The Tears of Reform
P. Gabrielle Foreman, “Introduction” to Our Nig; also see Appendix and other
materials in this edition
Harriet Beecher Stowe, excerpts from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (PDF)
Linda Hutcheon, “In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production”
(PDF)
F 4/16
No lecture today. Post and read contributions to section blogs on this assignment:
find a contemporary adaptation, allusion, meme, or trope referencing one of our
topics so far on the internet
M 4/19
Originality, Copying, and the Anxieties of Influence
Hawthorne, “Wakefield”
Poe, “William Wilson”
Poe, “Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales”
W 4/21
Sensationalism! The City!
Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”
Ludwig von Reizenstein, excerpts from The Mysteries of New Orleans (PDF)
F 4/23
Two Takes on Rationality: The Individual and the Crowd
Poe, “The Imp of the Perverse”
Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
First paper due in lecture
M 4/26
Tipping the Sacred Cows: A Revolutionary Adventure
Melville, Israel Potter, pp. 1-70 (don’t read Introduction for now)
Benjamin Franklin, selections from Poor Richard’s Almanac (PDF)
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W 4/28
Indenture, Servitude, Slavery
Melville, Israel Potter, pp. 71-129
Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (PDF)
F 4/30
Across the Pond: Melville as (Post?) Colonial
Melville, Israel Potter to end (p. 192)
Robert Levine, “Introduction” to Israel Potter
M 5/3
Against Reform: Satirizing the Nineteenth Century
Poe, “Some Words with a Mummy”
Hawthorne, “Earth’s Holocaust”
W 5/5
Cryptic Writing: The Origins of the Detective Story
Poe, “The Purloined Letter” (notes to be handed out in class)
F 5/7
Dead Writing
Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
M 5/10
Science Fiction / Gender Fiction
Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
and “The Birth-Mark”
W 5/12
Fables of Fidelity, from Louisiana to New Mexico
Eusebio Chacón, Calm After the Storm (PDF)
Kate Chopin, “La Belle Zoraïde” (PDF)
Sollors and Shell, Introduction to Multilingual America
Second paper (adaptation study or parody) due in lecture
F 5/14
Fables of Flirtation and the Female Flâneur
Wharton, The House of Mirth through Book I, Chapter VII (p. 68)
M 5/17
Conspicuous Capitalists
The House of Mirth through Book II, Chapter II (p. 162)
Thorstein Veblen, “Conspicuous Leisure and Conspicuous Consumption” (pp.
264-271 in Norton ed.; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Women and Economics” (pp.
288-293 in Norton)
W 5/19
Women, Jews, and Immigrants
The House of Mirth through Book II, Chapter VII (p. 203)
John Higham, “Ideological Anti-Semitism in the Gilded Age,” pp. 296-303 in
Norton ed.
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F 5/21
Adapting Wharton
In-class screening: The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
Information assessment due in lecture
M 5/24
Fixing the Future
Wrap-up discussion on The House of Mirth
Gilman, excerpts from Herland (PDF)
W 5/26
Alternate Reality
Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger through chap. 8 (p. 48)
F 5/28
Recognizing the Uncanny Present
Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger through chap. 18 (p. 98)
Poe, “Mellonta Tauta” (PDF)
Description of final paper due in sections this week
M 5/31
Campus holiday; no lecture or Monday section
W 6/2
Replicants and the “Real Thing”
Twain, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger through end (p. 187)
F 6/4
Wrap-up discussion; course evaluations
Final papers due Monday, June 7 (time/place determined by TA)