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Module 1: Walt Whitman's Life and Work

WEEK ONE

Tuesday 8/20–Whitman with Us

  • Class Activities:
    • Course Introduction
    • Why Whitman / Our Whitman
    • Whitman Everywhere: A Sampling
    • What we might write about: starting our final project on day one.
    • Whitman’s Future: “To You” (WW 175), “To The States” (WW 172) and “Poets to Come” (WW 175)

Thursday 8/22: Singing the Self from ‘a simple separate person’ to the ‘the word En-Masse’

  • Class Activities:
  • Readings Due: 
    • How to Read a Poem
    • Whitman Biography, Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price, “Family Origins” through “The First Edition of Leaves of Grass
    • “Preface” to Leaves of Grass (WW 5-26)
    • “Song of Myself,” original 1855 edition, (WW 27-88)
    • “There Was a Child Went Forth” (138-139)
    • “Who Learns my Lessons Complete” (140-141)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 1 due Sunday 8/25 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class.

WEEK TWO

Tuesday 8/27: Poems of Crisis and Connection

  • In Class: 
  • Readings Due:
    • Whitman Biography, Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price, “The 1856 Leaves” – “1860 Leaves“
    • “I Sing the Body Electric” (250-257)
    • “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (307-313)
    • “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” (394)
    • “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (388 – 394)
    • “Poem of the Proposition of Nakedness” (1856 Leaves)

Thursday 8/29: Songs of the Body, Love of Women, Love of Men

  • Readings Due:

From the “Children of Adam” cluster

    • “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers” (248-249)
    • “I Sing the Body Electric” (250-257)
    • “Facing West from California’s Shores” (266-267)
    • “As Adam Early in the Morning” (267)
    • “A Woman Waits for Me”  (258-260)
    • “Spontaneous Me” (260-262)

From the “Calamus” cluster

    • “Here the Frailest Leaves of Me” (283)
    • “In Paths Untrodden” (268)
    • “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand” (270-271)
    • “When I Heard at the Close of Day” (276-277)
    • “City of Orgies” (277)
    • “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” (279-280)
    • “To a Stranger” (280)
    • “I Hear it was Charged against Me” (281)
    • “We Two Boys Together Clinging” (282)
    • “That Shadow My Likeness” (286)
    • “Among the Multitude” (286)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 2 due Sunday 9/1 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class.

WEEK THREE–War, Elegy, and Healing a Nation

Tuesday 9/3

  • Readings Due:
    • Whitman Biography: “The Beginning of the Civil War” – “Peter Doyle”
    • “The Civil War” from Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia
    • “A Hand-Mirror” (408)
    • “I Sit and Look Out” (411)
    • “To the States” (415)
    • “Eighteen Sixty-One” (418-419)
    • “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (419-420)
    • “The Wound-Dresser” (442-445)
    • “Year That Trembled and reel’d Beneath Me” (442)
    •  “Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice” (449)
    • “The Artilleryman’s Vision” (450-451)
    • Excerpts from Specimen Days ” (745-753)

Thursday 9/5

  • Readings Due: 
    • “Reconciliation” (453)
    • “As I lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado” (454)
    • “Turn O Libertad” (457)
    • “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (459-467)
    • Excerpts from Memoranda (“A Million Dead, too, summed up–The Unknown” (link to page 1, page 2, page 3)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 3 due Sunday 9/8 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class.

WEEK FOUR–Whitman’s Spiritual Ascent

Tuesday 9/10

  • Readings Due:
    • Whitman Biography: “The Good Gray Poet” – “Democratic Vistas”
    • “Preface, 1976” (1005 – 1014)
    • Selections rom Democratic Vistas (929-940)
    • “Passage to India” (531-539)
    • The City Dead-House (494-495)
    • “This Compost” (495-96)

Thursday 9/12

  • Readings Due: 
    • “So Long” (609 – 612)
    • “To a Locomotive in Winter” (583)
    • “Prayer of Columbus” (540 – 541)
    • “Now Finale to the Shore” (608)
    • “Thou Mother with They Equal Brood” (568 – 573)
    • “Warble for Lilac-Time” (505-506)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 4 due Sunday 9/15 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class

WEEK FIVE–Late Whitman

Tuesday 9/17

  • Readings Due:
    • Whitman Biography: Whitman’s Stroke” – “Life Stories”
    • “A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads” (656-672)
    • “To Those Who’ve Fail’d” (613)
    • “A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine” (614)
    • “A Font of Type” (614)
    • “As I Sit Writing Here” (614)
    • “Queries to My Seventieth Year” (615)
    • “Out of May’s Shows Selected” (617)
    • “Halcyon Days” (617)
    • “To Get the Final Lilt of Songs” (624)
    • “Continuities” (626)
    • “Going Somewhere” (627)
    • “Thanks in Old Age” (629)
    • “Twilight” (633)
    • “You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me” (633)
    • “Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone” (633)
    • “The Dismantled Ship” (634)
    • “After the Supper and Talk” (636)
  • Assignment Due: 

Thursday 9/19

  • Readings Due: 
    • Whitman Biography: 328 Mickle Street” – “Talking Back”
    • “Preface Note to 2d. Annex” (637-38)
    • “Good-Bye my Fancy” (639)
    • “My 71st Year” (640)
    • “A Pallid Wreath” (641)
    • “To the Sun-set Breeze” (644)
    • “Mirages” (652)
    • “The Unexpress’d” (653)
    • “Yonnondio” (626)
    • “Good-Bye my Fancy!” (654)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 5 due Sunday 9/22 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class

Module 2: Talking Back to Whitman

WEEK SIX–Black Responses to Whitman

note, WWMS = Walt Whitman: Measure of his Song, 200th Birthday Edition

Tuesday 9/24

  • Readings Due:
    • “Talking Back to Whitman: An Introduction,” Ed Folsom (WWMS 1-62)
    • “For My People,” Margaret Walker
    • “The Ceaseless Rings of Walt Whitman,” Langston Hughes (WWMS 173-176)
    • “Old Walt,” Langston Hughes (WWMS 178)
    • “A Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes
    • “I, Too,” Langston Hughes
    • “Reading Walt Whitman,” Calvin Forbes (WWMS 288)
    • Calvin Hernton, “Crossing Brooklyn Bridge at 4 O’Clock in the Morning, August 4th, 1979” (WWMS 366)
    • June Jordan, “”For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us” (WWMS 399-408)
    • Yusef Komunyakaa, “Kosmos” (WWMS 455-457)
    • Every Atom # 48: Nikki Giovani

Thursday 9/26

WEEK SEVEN–Women’s Responses to Whitman

Tuesday 10/1

  • Readings Due:
    • Ed Folsom, revisit the section of his introduction to WWMS on women’s responses to Whitman (49-53)
    • Diane Wakoski, “For Whitman” (WWMS 300)
    • Patricia Goedicke, “For Walt Whitman” (WWMS 367)
    • Sharon Olds, “Nurse Whitman” (WWMS 413)
    • Gillian Conoly, “Walt Whitman in the Car Lot, Repo or Used” (WWMS 430)
    • Monique Ferrell, “Sushi in Brooklyn: A Dedication to Walt Whitman (WWMS 469)
    • Daphne Gottlieb, “Whitman’s Sampler: Killing the Father of Free Verse” (WWMS 473)
    • Adrienne Rich, “Dedications” and “Inscriptions: One: Comrade“
    • Rosanna Warren, “A Kosmos” (WWMS 481)
    • Marie Howe, “Singularity” (WWMS 500-501)
    • Erica Jong, “Testament (or, Homage to Walt Whitman)” and “Be Careful Darkness“
    • Anne Waldman, “On Walt Whitman’s Birthday“
    • Juliana Spahr, “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache“

Thursday 10/3

  • Readings Due:
    • Juliana Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (required text for class)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 7 due Sunday 10/6 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class

WEEK EIGHT–Native American Responses to Whitman

Tuesday 10/8

Thursday 10/10

  • Readings Due: 
    • Simon Ortiz, From Sand Creek (required book)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 8 due Tuesday 10/15 by 8pm. Comments must be posted prior to next Tuesday’s class

WEEK NINE–Queer Responses to Whitman

Tuesday 10/15

  • Fall Break–No Class

Thursday 10/17

WEEK TEN–Latinx and Spanish Speaking Responses to Whitman

Tuesday 10/22

  • Readings Due
    • “A Spanish-Speaking Whitman” (WWMS 26-32)
    • Ruben Dario, “Walt Whitman” (WWMS 84)
    • Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, “Walt Whitman” (WWMS 145)
    • Federico Garcia Lorca, “Ode to Walt Whitman” (WWMS 146 – 150)
    • Pedro Mir, from “Countersong to Walt Whitman: Song of Ourselves” (WWMS 189 – 192)
    • Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Walt Whitman” (WWMS 213 – 217)
    • Pablo Neruda, “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age” (WWMS 219-221)
    • Jorge Luis Borges, “Camden, 1892” (WWMS 222)
    • Jorge Luis Borges, “Note on Walt Whitman (WWMS 223-228)

Thursday 10/24

WEEK ELEVEN–Beyond Poetry: Whitman and the Novel

Tuesday 10/29

  • Readings Due: 
    • Ben Lerner, 10:04 (1 -158)

Thursday 10/31

  • Readings Due: 
    • Ben Lerner, 10:04 (158-240)

WEEK TWELVE–Beyond Literature: Whitman in Contemporary Culture

Tuesday 11/5

  • Class Activities:
  • Readings Due: 
    • Ben Lerner, 10:04 (158-240)
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Blog post 11 due at the start of class (delayed deadline due to re-scheduling)

Thursday 11/7

Module 3: Final Project

WEEK THIRTEEN–Library Workshop and Proposals

Tuesday 11/12

  • Class Activities:
    • Final Project Pitches Due to the blog prior to class. Please include the following in your pitch:
      • A  description of your topic or idea introduced to the reader in a dynamic and concise way. Make sure you identify your anticipated audience as clearly as possible.
      • A description of the research conversation (including primary and secondary sources) that will provide the crucial material for the project. Include reference to research already conduced. Also mention if there is a particular “genre” that you are engaging (e.g. chapbook, anthology, podcast, research paper, etc.)
      • A description of what tools you might use (or, have used, as you adapt this for the final reflective blog post).  This might involve timeline software, film production software, webpage design programs, or podcasting software.
      • A statement of the project’s purpose and significance. What knowledge or experience does it make available? What exigence drives the project? So what? Finally, why does this matter to you?

       

Thursday 11/14

  • Class Activities:
    • Building a research base: bring laptops to class

WEEK FOURTEEN–Peer Review and Individual Conferences

Tuesday 11/19

  • Activities:
    • In place of class, please attend one-on-one consultations

Thursday 11/21

  • Class Activities:
    • Peer Review
  • Assignments Due:
    • Please bring complete draft of final project

WEEK FIFTEEN–Final Presentations

Tuesday 11/26

  • Class Activities:
    • Final Presentations
  • Assignment Due: 
    • Final Presentations due on last day of class

 

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