Class Syllabus

Week #1
September 6 Introduction
Week #2
September 11 Bartolome de las Casas, "The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies," (selections) - Early Native American narratives - John Smith, "The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles," (excerpts) William Bradford "On Plymouth Plantation"(selections)
September 13

Thomas Jefferson, "Unanimous Declaration of Independence of the 13 Colonies," (original and final versions) - Native American resposes to U.S. revolution and statehood, Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography (selections)

 

Week #3
September 18 - Petition to the Massachusetts Bay Government for Black Emancipation Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" - Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (Chapters I,VII)
September 20 Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno,"
Week #4
September 25 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, ("Song of Myself")
September 27 Walt Whitman (cont.) + "When Lilacs Last in the Dooyrd Bloom'd- Abe Lincoln "A House Divided"(selection) "Gettysburg Address" Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Nature" (selection) "Self-Reliance"
Week #5
October 2 Mark Twain, Huckleberry Fin
October 4 Mark Twain, Huckleberry Fin
Week #6
October 9 Henry James, "Daisy Miller" (Second Paper Due)
October 11 Kate Chopin, Selected Stories Plessy vs. Fergeson (selection) Nella Larsen, Passing
Week #7
October 16 Nella Larsen, Passing
October 18 Midterm
Week #8
October 23

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Ocotber 25 F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Week #9
October 30 Alain Locke,"The New Negro" (handout) Claude McKay, "Africa", "The Harlem Dancer", "The Lynching", "America", "If We Must Die" Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", "Mother to Son", "I, Too", "Mulatto", Montage of a Dream Deferred (selections) Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel", "Incident", "Heritage"
November 1 T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland - William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (selections) Hart Crane, The Bridge (selections)
Week #10
November 6 No Class - Election Day
November 8 William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
Week#11
November 13 William Faulkner Intruder in the Dust
November 15 Richard Wright, "The Man Who Lived Underground"
Week#12
November 20 Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans
November 22 Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Week #13
November 27 Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
November 29 Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Week #14
December 4 Annie Proulx, "The Half Skinned Steer" Jamaica Kincaid, "Alien Soil" Rick Bass, "Landscape of Possibility"
December 6 David Wong Louie,"Displacement" Paule Marshall, "To Da-Duh" Americo Paredes, "Hammon and the Beans"
Week #15
December 11 Final Discussion