Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: English

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Distribution Group: Distribution Group I

Credit Hours: 3

Description: AMERICAN LITERATURE 1860-1910 ***** DISTRIBUTION COURSE GROUP 1 ***** A survey of the range of American literature during the period, beginning with detailed attention to Whitman and Dickinson and ending with major modernists such as Hemingway or Eliot, and important writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Hughes, Cullen, and Larsen. This course will use each literary text as a staging ground to explore particular theoretical or political questions (Whitman's dialectical handling of the paradox of democratic individualism, say) as well as more general problems of cultural interpretation. Not surprisingly, the course will make use of supplementary readings in critical theory toward this end (Shoshana Felman's conjuring of psychoanalysis and feminism in her reading of James' "The Turn of the Screw," for example). Some facility and/or familiarity with literary theory is therefore recommended but not required. Requirements will be a take-home mid-term and final examination, and probably a 10-12 page paper as well. Diligent attendance and preparation will be expected.