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American Literature
Thursdays, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM, CST
September 8, 2011-May 24, 2012
Registration
This
course will be a lively tour of our country's exciting and diverse
literary history. Reading fiction, memoirs, essays, and poetry, we'll
enter the worlds of Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, and many other
writers. We'll study movements and trends such as Puritanism,
Transcendentalism, Realism, and Modernism. This course gives students a
crucial foundation in their American literary heritage and prepares them
for the reading, writing, and critical thinking colleges require.
Weekly Homework
The
work for this class consists of:
- reading assignments
- weekly written responses to readings
- one historical/biographical report and a class presentation on it
- five formal literary papers.
The reading load will be roughly 100-200 pages per week when we are reading prose (usually closer to 100 pages), fewer when we are reading poetry. For most readings, there will be a list of study questions to help students think about the text. Students will write weekly reading responses in answer to selected study questions or other writing prompts.
When it is time to write a paper or work on the report and presentation, students should plan on a lot of extra time. The tutor will post the paper topics several weeks before the papers are due, giving students plenty of time to work on them early. If students would like comments on their papers before they turn in final versions for grades, they are welcome to send the tutor their papers at least one week before the deadline.
Book List
Students may use any editions of the following books.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
Readings for students to download from the course website will include work by William Bradford, Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, and Jhumpa Lahiri.