Spring 2013 Course: “Thrill and Dread in the American Century”

The new semester at Marquette begins tomorrow, and I’ll be teaching the second half of the American literature survey sequence. The full syllabus is on my website here, but you can see the course theme and provisional schedule below…

ENGLISH 2520-101:
INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE 2
Thematic Title: Thrill and Dread in the American Century
MWF 10:00-10:50 AM

“To be modern,” Marshall Berman wrote, “is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.” This course traces the development of this tension between hope and disaster, between “thrill” and “dread,” in American literature since the Civil War. In this course we will examine and interrogate this explosive sense of what it means to be “modern” with respect to themes of history and futurity, identity and difference, politics, community, war, empire, and the environment. From the private lives of individuals and families to the very public relationships that exist in and between diverse communities to the nation’s assent to global superpower status in the context of a nuclear-powered Cold War, we will find America in the post-Civil-War period understands itself as a place where anything can happen—in good ways, and in bad.

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE
Any changes to this schedule will be announced in class as they become necessary.

Students should come to class prepared to discuss the listed texts or chapters.

Monday	January 14	Introduction to the Course
Wednesday	January 16	NA-C: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Friday	January 18	NA-C: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-paper”
Monday	January 21	MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY—NO CLASS
Tuesday	January 22	DROP/ADD ENDS
Wednesday	January 23	NA-C: Pauline Hopkins, “A Dash for Liberty” NA-C: James Weldon Johnson, “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”
Friday	January 25	NA-C: Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat”
Monday	January 28	NA-C: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” NA-C: “The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee”
Wednesday	January 30	NA-D: “Modernist Manifestos”: F.T. Marinetti, Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes
Friday	February 1	NA-D: Carl Sandburg, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, poems
Monday	February 4	NA-D: Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, poems
Wednesday	February 6	NA-D: William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” FIRST PAPER WORKSHOP DAY
Friday	February 8	Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” [ARES]
Monday	February 11	Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” [ARES]
Wednesday	February 13	James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” [ARES]
Friday	February 15	Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” [D2L] Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, foreword and chapters 1-5
Monday	February 18	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, chapters 6-13 FIRST PAPER DUE
Wednesday	February 20	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, chapters 14-23
Friday	February 22	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, chapters 24-33
Monday	February 25	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, part 2, chapters 1-7
Wednesday	February 27	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, part 2, chapters 8-16
Friday	March 1	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, part 2, chapters 17-24
Monday	March 4	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, part 2, chapters 25-31
Wednesday	March 6	Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, part 2, chapters 31-36
Friday	March 8	NA-E: John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
Monday	March 11	SPRING BREAK—NO CLASS
Wednesday	March 13	SPRING BREAK—NO CLASS
Friday	March 15	SPRING BREAK—NO CLASS
Monday	March 18	NA-E: Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”; “Footnote to Howl”; “A Supermarket in California”; America” [D2L]
Wednesday	March 20	NA-E: Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, poems
Friday	March 22	CLASS CANCELLED / CONFERENCES
Monday	March 25	NA-E: Donald Barthelme, “The Balloon” SECOND PAPER WORKSHOP
Wednesday	March 27	NA-E: Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”
Friday	March 29	EASTER HOLIDAY—NO CLASS
Monday	April 1	Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” [ARES]
Wednesday	April 3	NA-E: Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
Friday	April 5	CLASS CANCELLED / MOVIE NIGHT! TBA
Monday	April 8	NA-E: Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, Yusef Komunyaka, poems SECOND PAPER DUE
Wednesday	April 10	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 1-5
Friday	April 12	CLASS CANCELLED / MOVIE NIGHT! TBA LAST DAY TO WITHDRAW
Monday	April 15	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 6-9
Wednesday	April 17	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 10-13
Friday	April 19	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 14-16
Monday	April 22	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 17-19
Wednesday	April 24	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 20-22
Friday	April 26	Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, chapters 23-25
Monday	April 29	NA-E: Junot Díaz, “Drown”
Wednesday	May 1	Wells Tower, “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” [ARES]
Friday	May 3	Joe Wenderoth, “Letters to Wendy’s” [D2L] FINAL PAPER WORKSHOP LAST DAY OF CLASS
Tuesday	May 7	FINAL PAPERS DUE BY DIGITAL DROPBOX BY 10 AM