Unless the enrollments drop considerably, I’ll be starting a new graduate class in two weeks on American Regional and Local Color writing in the late 19th century (course website under development). Here’s the course description, in draft:
This course examines the literary history, generic conventions, and cultural concerns of regional and local color writing in the US at the end of the 19th century. By all accounts, the flexible regional/local color genre of fiction was dominant form in its time; thus, its study yields a greater understanding of American literary culture as a whole, shedding light on other, perhaps more widely studied genres in the period, realism and naturalism. Regional/local color writing addressed some of American culture’s salient areas of concern at the turn of the last century: gender, race, class, sexuality, immigration, capitalism, technology, urbanization, to name a few. The significance of the genre–in both reflecting and constructing American culture along these lines–is hard to overstate.
Here’s a tentative primary reading ist:
Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871), preface?
George Washington Cable, “Madame Dephine” (1874) “
”Tite Poulette” (1874)Constance Fenimore Woolson, selected stories, TBD
Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi (1875)
Charles Egbert Craddock [Mary Noailles Murfree], “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove” (1878)
—, “Over on the T’Other Mounting” (1881)Joel Chandler Harris, “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story” (1881)
—, “Free Joe and the Rest of the World” (1884)Thomas Nelson Page, “Marse Chan” (orig. 1887)
Charles Chesnutt, “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887)
— “Po’ Sandy” (1888)Sarah Orne Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)
—, “A White Heron” (1890)
—, “The Failure of David Berry: A Story” (1891)Grace King, “The Little Convent Girl” (1892)
Kate Chopin, “At the ‘Cadian Ball” (1894)
—, “The Storm” (c. 1894)Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “Sister Josepha” (1895)
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, “The Revolt of Mother” (1891)
—, “A New England Nun” (1891)Hamlin Garland, “Up the Coolly” (1891)
Jack London, “The White Silence” (1899)
—, “The Son of the Wolf” (1899)