American Literature to 1865
ENGL 203
Fall 2024
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 243 |
This lecture course charts a selective path through the English-language literatures of conflict in North America. Our optic will be double: one eye on history, the other on literary form, and we will experiment with ways of dialectically combining these two lines of vision. The scope of the course is wide, but we will proceed in the style of an anti-survey. Rather than unifying America through a gathering of textual parts, we will attempt to understand how literary forms supply an important index of historical evidence even as their pleasures and contradictions refuse the stabilities of the evidentiary. We will close the course with a late-20th-century speculative fiction that gives an alternative history of the continent after a successful anti-slavery revolution in 1859 (resulting in the formation of the socialist Black republic of Nova Africa), which will incite us to revisit the materials and the historical record we will have constituted during the semester. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AMST)(ENGL)(ENGL-Literature) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Mary Rowlandson, THE SOVEREIGNTY AND GOODNESS OF GOD, ed. Neil Salisbury, 2nd. Ed. (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2017). ISBN 978-1319048815.
Benjamin Franklin, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ed. Joyce Chaplin (Norton Critical Ed., 2012). ISBN 978-0393935615.
David Walker, APPEAL TO THE COLOURED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, ed. Peter Hinks (U Pennsylvania Press, 2000). ISBN 978-0271019949.
Frederick Douglass, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, ed. John David Smith (Penguin, 2003). ISBN 9780140439182.
Herman Melville, BILLY BUDD, BARTLEBY AND OTHER STORIES, ed. Peter Coviello (Penguin, 2016). ISBN 9780143107606.
Emily Dickinson, THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON (Back Bay, 1976). ISBN 9780316184137.
Terry Bisson, FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN (PM Press, 2009). ISBN 978-1-60486-087-0.
A course reader including additional poems, prose, and works by historians and literary critics.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two exams |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Class visit to Special Collections in Olin Library.
This course contributes to the fulfillment of ENGL major requirements: LH2; AL, elective. |
| Instructor(s): Garrett,Matthew Carl Times: .M.W.F. 09:50AM-10:40AM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 60 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 31 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 5 | JR non-major: 5 | SO: 20 | FR: 20 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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