Be sure to read all items before class on the day they’re listed. All works appear in the Norton Anthology, except those that are listed as appearing on the class website. Be sure to read all author headnotes in the Norton Anthology as well.
| Th Jan 9 | Course Introduction | ||
| Pre-Colonial and Colonial Literature | |||
| Tu Jan 14 | Christopher Columbus •“The First Voyage: The West Indies” (Class Website) •“The Second Voyage: The Cannibals” (Class Website) • “The Third Voyage: The Terrestrial Paradise” (Class Website) Handsome Lake •”How America Was Discovered” (Class Website) |
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| Th Jan 16 | William Bradford •”Of Plymouth Plantation,” (Norton) John Winthrop • Excerpt from “A Model of Christian Charity,” (Class Website) |
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| Tu Jan 21 | Anne Bradstreet • “The Prologue” • “The Author to Her Book” • “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” • “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment” • “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild, Elizabeth Bradstreet” • “Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House“ |
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| Literature of the New Republic | |||
| Th Jan 23 | Jonathan Edwards • Excerpt from “Personal Narrative” (class website) • Excerpt from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (class website) |
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| Tu Jan 28 | Benjamin Franklin •From “The Autobiography” (204-218, 239-240, 254-264) Thomas Paine •From “Common Sense” • From “The Crisis,” no. 1 (pp. 313-314) |
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| Th Jan 30 | Phillis Wheatley •”On Being Brought from Africa to America” •”To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth” Olaudah Equiano •From “The Interesting Narrative…” Chapters I and II (pp. 338-351) |
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| Tu Feb 4 | Exam 1 | ||
| American Romanticism | |||
| Th Feb 6 | Ralph Waldo Emerson • “Self-Reliance” |
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| Tu Feb 11 | Henry David Thoreau • “Resistance to Civil Government” |
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| Th Feb 13 | Edgar Allan Poe • “The Fall of the House of Usher” • “The Raven” |
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| Tu Feb 18 | Nathaniel Hawthorne • “Young Goodman Brown” Herman Melville • “Bartleby the Scrivener” |
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| Th Feb 20 | Frederick Douglass • “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” (Chapters 1-2; Chapters 6-7; Chapters 9-10, through p. 1015) Harriet Jacobs • From “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Chapters I, VII, X, XIV, XXI, and XLI) |
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| Tu Feb 25 | Walt Whitman • Selections from “Song of Myself,” stanzas 1-24; 49-52 |
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| Th Feb 27 | Paper 1 due–OAKS Assignment Folder by midnight
Emily Dickinson |
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| Local Color; Realism | |||
| Tu Mar 4 | Spring Break | ||
| Th Mar 6 | Spring Break | ||
| Tu Mar 11 | Rebecca Harding Davis • “Life in the Iron Mills” |
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| Th Mar 13 | Mark Twain • “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” • “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (Class Website) |
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| Tu Mar 18 | Sui Sin Far • “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” Zitkala-Sa • “Impressions of an Indian Childlhood” |
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| Th Mar 20 Exam 2 | |||
| Turn-of-the Century; Early Modernism | |||
| Tu Mar 25 | Charlotte Perkins Gilman • “The Yellow Wallpaper” |
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| Tu Mar 27 | Stephen Crane • “The Open Boat |
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| Tu Apr 1 | Robert Frost • “Mending Wall” • “The Road Not Taken” • “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” • “Desert Places” • “Design” • “Home Burial” (Class Website) |
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| Modern Literature | |||
| Tu Apr 3 | Ernest Hemingway • “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (Class Website) • “Soldier’s Home” |
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| Tu Apr 8 | Katherine Anne Porter • “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (Class Website) |
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| Th Apr 10 | Modern Poets • William Carlos Williams—“The Young Housewife,” “The Red Wheelbarrow” • e.e. cummings—“I sing of Olaf, glad and big” • Langston Hughes—“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “I, Too” • Countee Cullen—“Yet Do I Marvel,” “Heritage” |
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| Post-World War II Literature | |||
| Tu Apr 15 | Ralph Ellison • “The Battle Royal” Gwendolyn Brooks • “Kitchenette Building” • “The Mother” |
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| Th Apr 17 | Paper 2 due–OAKS Assignment Folder by midnight
Allen Ginsberg and the Beats |
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| Tu Apr 22 | Tim O’Brien • “How to Tell a True War Story” (class website) Louise Erdrich • “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” (class website) • “Dear John Wayne” (class website) |
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| Tu Apr 29 | Final Exam, 8-10 a.m. | ||