EL 206 | American Literature After 1865

(Spring 2020)

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General Am Lit Links

American Literature After 1865 picks up just after the Civil War and continues on through the 20th century, so we go from the era of locomotives and industrial revolution to the era of Internet and cell phones (loosely speaking). By the time we’re through, you ought to have a pretty good working sense of the chronology of American literature since Lincoln. We’ll look particularly at American Realism and Regionalism, Naturalism, Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and Postmodernism, with attention to minority and immigrant voices along the way. We’ll sample poems, essays, folk tales, short stories, and various other kinds of prose, and as we do so we’ll think about why these authors wrote in the ways they did during the times when they did it. We’ll also consider strategies for interpreting these different kinds of literary expression. The reading load won’t knock you flat, but you should expect to read at a steady clip of 20-30 anthology pages per class session, typically (some days less, some days more). You are heartily encouraged to take time to re-read, especially on lighter-reading days. The best and most satisfying reading is often re-reading.

Assignments/Scores to Anticipate

Three Exams, Each Including Essay Portions
Pop Quizzes
Naffisa Thompson-Spires Reading Attendance + Quick Response (4/30)
Three Critical Reading Responses + One Revision (~2 pages each)
Reflection on Critical Responses (2-5 pages)
Author Research Brief (2-4 pages)
Daily Questions and Comments Journal
A Course Participation Score

You Should Always Have the Readings in Front of You in Class

at the bottom of this web page

---- The Schedule ----

Week 1 (Jan. 31)

- Due NEXT Wednesday: Sign up for research subject (on wiki) before Wednesday's class.

Notice that "due" items for the week are listed under each week heading.

Remember to get started on your Questions and Comments Journal.

AM = American Murmurations (the ebook anthology).

Day 1: No Class Yet
Day 2: Holy smokes. Still no class. The world is topsy turvy.
Day 3: Course Introduction
** All readings until about Week 5 (and some after) are available in the AM anthology. The schedule will note when you should switch over to the Heath.
** Remember to begin your Questions and Comments Journal! **
** Look! I put it in red, twice! With excessive exclamation points! Don't forget! Ever! The Q&C journal is most useful to those students who formulate their questions and comments before class, as the assignment requires.**

Week 2 (Feb. 3, 5, and 7)

- Due Monday: Self intro on course wiki (link above) before class.

Day 1: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens): "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and excerpts (in AM) from Huck Finn ("Notice," "Explanatory," and Chapters 1-2, 31) + watch "Wikis in Plain English" (online) <-- If the AM isn't available yet, you can get a jump on your Mark Twain reading here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53
*** Starting at 9 PM on Tuesday Night, you may choose your research brief authors at the wiki. ***
Day 2: Joel Chandler Harris: "Free Joe and the Rest of the World" (in AM) and selections from Uncle Remus ("Tar Baby" and "How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for...") + Additional Short Folk Tales (all in AM, though some of this is in the Heath, too): "EDITOR'S NOTE from 'Animal Tales from North Carolina,'" “When Brer Deer and Brer Terrapin Runned a Race,” "Why the Spider Never Got in the Ark," "How Brer Rabbit Practise Medicine," "Brer Rabbit Born to Luck," “Malitis,” “The Flying Africans” <-- Note that a couple of these folk tales are available only via the AM anthology; doing it this way gave me the chance to give you some cool stuff that goes beyond the Heath.
Note: Where/if you find the transcribed dialects in these pieces hard to understand, try reading aloud. It can help clear things up.
Remember to choose your research brief author before today's class meeting.
Day 3: William Dean Howells: “Editha” + excerpt from "The Editor’s Study” (highlighted paragraphs of Criticism and Fiction in AM; or the full excerpt printed in Heath Vol. C; not available in the Concise Heath). (If the highlights don't show up in your ebook for any reason, read section 2, paragraphs 2-3, beginning with "If this should happen to be true...")
Keep up with your questions and comments journal!
Daisy Miller is long! Plan accordingly for next week's reading!

Week 3 (Feb. 10, 12, and 14)

- Due Friday at 5:00: Critical Response 1

Optional/Recommended: This week would be a good time to meet with some classmates and workshop your first critical responses. Or to take a draft of your first critical response to the Composition Commons for a consultation.

Day 1: Henry James: Daisy Miller (Parts I and II) + Review "Realism" Handout (Available @Bb)
Note that some versions of Daisy Miller divide the story into two, instead of four, parts. If that's the case for the version you have, please note that you're reading up to this: "Mrs. Costello sniffed a little at her smelling bottom. 'And that,' she exclaimed, 'is the young person you wanted me to know!'"
Day 2: Daisy Miller (Parts III and IV)
Day 3: Charles Waddell Chesnutt: "The Goophered Grapevine"

Week 4 (Feb. 17 and 19, w/Friday Off)

Day 2 Bonus
(Not Required Reading) Scans of the original printings of Crane's two poetry collections, here and here.
Day 1: Hamlin Garland: “Up the Coulé” (A Little Long! Plan ahead!)
Day 2: Stephen Crane: “The Open Boat,” “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (in the AM), and selected poems (in the AM: "God lay...," "Do not weep...," "A man said...," "There was a man...") + Review "Naturalism" Handout (Available @Bb)
Day 3: No Class (Faculty Development Day)
Keep up with your questions and comments journal! (This is the last time I'll put in the Q&C journal note, but don't forget to keep up!)

Week 5 (Feb. 24, 26, and 28)

- Exam 1 is NEXT Monday!

Optional/Recommended: This would be a good week to meet with some of your classmates and study together for the exam.

Day 1: Jack London: “South of the Slot” + Frank Norris: (at Bb) "Fantaisie Printaniere" (There's an online version of this that omits pages; don't use it!) (BONUS: “To Build a Fire," online, or in AM. "To Build a Fire" is not required, but it's a brutal, hypothermic classic of Naturalism. Worth reading, if you've never encountered it before.)
Day 2: Mary Wilkins Freeman: “A New England Nun” + Sarah Orne Jewett: “A White Heron”
Day 3: Kate Chopin: “Désirée’s Baby” + Alice Dunbar-Nelson: "Sister Josepha" and (online only) "The Praline Woman" (The Dunbar-Nelson is not yet in the AM. Find them here, if you need an e-version.)

Week 6 (Mar. 2, 4, and 6)

- Monday: Exam 1

Optional/Recommended: This would be a good week to meet with some of your classmates and workshop your critical responses. (And don't forget the Comp Commons.)

Day 1: EXAM 1
Day 2: Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery Chapter 3 + Langston Hughes: “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (prose) and "The Weary Blues" (poem)
Day 3: Jean Toomer: “Blood Burning Moon” + W.E.B. Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk Chapter 1 + Zora Neale Hurston: "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"
*** There will be only eight big mainstage WU plays during your four years at Whitworth, and one of them, Naphtali Fields's La Algajira, will run this weekend and next. From the Theatre folks: "The Theatre Department is excited to announce the world premiere of Whitworth’s first bilingual play, La Algajira, opening on March 6, 2020 in Cowles Auditorium. The play uses magical realism to tell the story of a Central American village perched on the edge of a volcano. Environmental and social conditions are pushing villagers to find a better life elsewhere. Meanwhile, the volcano keeps tremoring and gang violence threatens two sisters, Gabi and Delmi. La Algajira asks us to consider what home means and how far we would travel to find it." Go see the play! (Details) (Not required, except for the sake of your immortal soul.) (If you go and send me a picture of yourself at the start of the play and the end, showing the stage in each pic, you get five bonus quiz points.) ***

Week 7 (Mar. 9, 11, and 13)

- Due Friday at 5:00: Questions and Comments Journal, Part 1

- Due Friday at 5:00: Critical Response 2

Optional/Recommended: If you didn't do it last week, then this would be a good week to meet with some of your classmates and workshop your critical responses. (And don't forget the Comp Commons.)

Day 1: Zora Neale Hurston: "The Gilded Six Bits" + Zitkala Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin): from "The School Days of an Indian Girl" (read parts 1, 2, 3, 6, 7)
Day 2: Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton): (@Bb) "A Half Caste" + Sui Sin Far (in the AM or @Bb) (Edith Maude Eaton): "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian" and "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" (NOT "In the Land of the Free," which is in some Heath Vol. C and Concise editions, but the actual story "Mrs. Spring Fragrance," which you can read in our e-anthology/AM.)
Day 3: Edith Wharton: “The Other Two” + “Roman Fever”"
The Other Two" is in AM, but "Roman Fever," which is still under copyright, is available only in Heath Vol. D or the Concise Heath. (The longer Heath has several selections from Wharton, including "The Other Two.")

Week 8 (Mar. 16, 18, and 20)

Day 1: MODERNISM PRIMER: Pound: "A Retrospect," "In a Station of the Metro"; H.D.: "Oread"; Eliot: "Preludes"; Sandburg: "Chicago," "Fog" + Review Modernism Handout (Available on Bb)
The links above go to the Poetry Foundation, which is one of the great sites online for learning about poets.

Day 2: Sherwood Anderson: “Hands” (AM or Vol. D or Concise Heath); Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"; Gertrude Stein: from The Making of Americans

Day 3: Ernest Hemingway: “The Killers” (@Bb); E. E. Cummings: “Buffalo Bill’s,” “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls,” “next to of course god America i” (online)
** Next Week is SPRING BREAK. Don't come to class, okay? **

Week 9 (Mar. 30; Apr. 1 and 3)

- NEXT FRIDAY: Notice that Exam 2 will be next week on Wednesday!

Optional/Recommended: Exam prep with classmates.

Day 1: William Carlos Williams: “The Young Housewife," “Portrait of a Lady,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” "The Great Figure" (online), “This is Just to Say” (online); Wallace Stevens: “The Snow Man,” "Anecdote of the Jar," “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” (online)
Day 2: Edgar Lee Masters: “Petit, the Poet,” “Seth Compton,” “Lucinda Matlock”; Robert Frost: “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Day 3: T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”Read this 2-3 times.

Week 10 (Apr. 6 and 8)

- WEDNESDAY: Exam 2

Day 1: William Faulkner: "Barn Burning"
Give yourself time to read this one!
Day 2: Exam 2
Day 3: NO CLASS / Easter Break

Week 11 (Apr. 15 and 17)

- Due Friday at 5:00: Critical Response 3

Day 1: NO CLASS / Easter Break
Day 2: Eudora Welty: "Petrified Man" (@Bb) + “The Wide Net”
Day 3: Flannery O’Connor: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” + Possible TBA Text

Week 12 (Apr. 20, 22, and 24)

- Due Friday at 5:00: REVISIONS of Response 1 OR 2

Optional/Recommended: Reading response workshopping with peers? Or meet with peers to discuss the upcoming reflective essay?

Day 1: Alice Walker: “Laurel" (in the Heath), “Everyday Use” (@Bb) + Advice: Begin Drafting and Reading for Your Upcoming Reflective Essay
Day 2: James Baldwin: “Sonny’s Blues”
Day 3: Let's Talk About Writing

Week 13 (April 27 and 29; May 1)

- Due Friday: Any Additional Critical Response Revisions (See Guidelines/Assignment)

- Also Friday: Response to Naffisa Thompson-Spires reading. (See Day 3, below.)

Day 1: Beats: Allen Ginsberg: “A Supermarket in California,” “Howl,” “America”; Jack Kerouac: “The Vanishing American Hobo”
Thursday @6
Rob. Teaching Theater
Naffisa Thompson-Spires Reading. REQUIRED.
Day 2: John Barth: “Lost in the Funhouse” (@Bb)
THURSDAY NIGHT: You're required to attend the Nafissa Thompson-Spires reading and to respond to it on the wiki.
Day 3: Joyce Carol Oates: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”
Due Friday at 5:00: Three sentence personal note (or thoughtful haiku) about the Thompson-Spires reading. (@Wiki.)

Week 14 (May 4, 6, and 8)

- Due Monday @class time: Questions and Comments, Part 2

- Due Friday at 5:00: Critical Response Reflective "Meditation" Essay

Day 3 Bonus
"Oral Tradition" (Clip for Smoke Signals, Dir. Alexie)

Jim Hendrix playing
"The Star Spangled Banner"

Day 1: Edwidge Danticat: "New York Day Women," "Children of the Sea" (@Bb)
Day 2: John Okada: from No-No Boy (@Bb); Junot Diaz: "Fiesta, 1980"
Day 3: Sherman Alexie: “Because My Father . . .” (@Bb) + Sandra Cisneros: "Mericans" and "Tepeyec"

Week 15 (May 11 + Exam)

Day 1: Jess Walter: "Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington." Also available: Walter's "Addendum" to the original "Statistical Abstract" piece.

EXAM 2: Tuesday, May 12, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM