Course details

Name: ENGL - 326

Title: EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE

Section: 01

Semester: Spring - 2018

Credits: 3

Description:
“Love your neighbor as yourself”—it’s a nice idea, especially when we get to think of ourselves as better people when we choose to do so. But if we were required to love our neighbors as ourselves in order simply to survive, we might find that “love” to be a lot more difficult, or at least, complicated. Now imagine that an entire nation gets founded on that experience of deep ambivalence. This upper-division survey of early American literature is a bit of a gamble: it examines the notion that many social problems of contemporary American life (xenophobia, institutionalized racism, the lack of a robust social safety net) have been shaped by a historical ambivalence towards neighborliness first experienced by the Europeans who settled in the American continent. The historical period we will focus on, the century prior to the founding of the United States, tends to be remembered as a time of earnest social ideals—meek New England pilgrims, for example, sharing a Thanksgiving feast with generous indigenous hosts. Yet the texts we will read reveal how the vulnerability and dependence of these settlers produced great anxieties, both among fellow European settlers, and between the settlers and their new American neighbors. By the end of the course, we will learn how hostile and antagonistic colonial settlement was—and continues to be. Along the way, we will develop our skills of close reading—that is, not only of reading a text for what it means, but also better understanding how it makes that meaning through its specific use of language. Through several informal writing exercises, and three short exams, we will practice treating texts as evidence, and practice also building claims supported by that evidence. By the conclusion of the course, students will be able to demonstrate their mastery of close reading in a final essay that will analyze the specific relevance of these themes for our twenty-first century lives.

Last updated on 2017-10-30 By Schwartz Ana (schwartzan)

Schedule: Monday,Wednesday From 1:00 pm To 2:15 pm

Graduation requirements:

  • ()
  • ()
  • Any Literature (1e)
  • Genre Study (Poetry)
  • Pre-1900 American (TE 1c)
  • Other American (TE 1d)
  • Pre-1700 (1a)
  • Pre-1800 (1b)
  • Pre-1900 (1c)
  • Ethnic Studies (3b)

Teaching Faculty: Schwartz Ana (schwartzan)

Is course canceled: No