HL2038 Introduction to American Literature
Lecture: Wednesday 3:30-5:30, HSS Auditorium
Tutorial 1: Fri
Tutorial 2: Fri
Tutorial 3: Fri
Tutorial 4: Fri
Tutorial 5: Fri
Tutorial 6: Fri
9:30-10:20
10:30-11:20
11:30-12:20
1:30-2:20
2:30-4:20
3:30-4:20
TR90
TR90
TR90
TR97
TR97
TR97
Professor: Dr. Andrew Yerkes
Office: HSS-03-58
Consultation hours:
Tues, Wed., 11-1; Fri. 12-2 or by
appointment.
Email: acyerkes@ntu.edu.sg
Phone: 6790 6746
Tutorial Instructors:
Rebecca Lim, Susan Wong Yoke Chee
In this course we will read and interpret classic works of American literature from the Colonial
and Revolutionary eras, the American Renaissance, through 19th-century realism and
Romanticism, 20th-century modernism, postmodernism, and our contemporary, yet unnamed,
age. Reading poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, and an autobiography, we will think
critically about the different ways that American identity has been formulated both within the
texts we examine as well as in the interpretive strategies that construct national literary history.
We will also examine the literary history of American ideology, a cluster of concepts that
comprise Americans’ self-understanding of themselves as a nation. We will read the literature in
order both to understand American ideology and to appreciate the aesthetic strangeness and
brilliance of these works.
Core texts:
Paul Negri, editor. Great American Short Stories
Walt Whitman Song of Myself
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson
Eugene O’Neill Three Great Plays
Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior
Course Anthology (available for download on EdveNTUre)
Course Assessment
Engagement
Research Paper
Final Exam
10%
40%
50%
100%
Attendance: Tardiness or poor attendance will negatively affect your engagement grade. Two
missed tutorials is allowed. Each additional absence will subtract one point from your
engagement grade.
The research paper is due as a printed-out hard copy in class on the due date. If extreme
circumstances require an extension on a deadline, you must request one from your tutorial
instructor ahead of time, but it will only be approved with a strong reason. Excessive workload
and poor planning are not acceptable excuses. It is your responsibility to plan your semester to
meet deadlines. Late work submitted without an approved extension will be penalized one halfgrade for every day late, i.e. a paper turned in one day late that received an A would be penalized
to a A-, an A- would be a B+, etc.
Plagiarism disclaimer: Plagiarism means using the words or ideas of another writer either
word-for-word or by paraphrase without acknowledging the author using scholarly citation. It is
unethical. Plagiarizing any assignment for this class will result in a failing grade at the very least.
Week
1
Topics
Colonial-era
Literature
No tutorials meet during the first week.
14 Aug
2
21 Aug
3
Revolutionary-era
Literature
American
Renaissance
28 Aug
4
Transcendentalism 1
4 Sept
5
Transcendentalism 2
11 Sept
6
19th-Century Poetry
18 Sept
7
Readings
John Smith: excerpt from The Generall Historie of Virginia, NewEngland, and the Summer Isles (Course Anthology);
Anne Bradstreet: “Prologue”; “The Flesh and the Spirit”; “Here
Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House”
(Course Anthology)
19th-Century
American Novel
Benjamin Franklin Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Parts 1-2
(Course Anthology); Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur “What is an
American?” (Course Anthology)
Great American Short Stories:
Nathaniel Hawthorne “Young Goodman Brown”;
Edgar Allen Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart”;
Herman Melville “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self-Reliance”; “The Poet”; “History”
(Course Anthology)
Henry David Thoreau Walden: “Economy,” “Where I Lived, and
What I Lived For,” “Reading” “Sounds” “Solitude” “Visitors”
“Conclusion” (Course Anthology)
Walt Whitman Song of Myself
Emily Dickinson selected poems (Course Anthology)
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson
25 Sept
Recess
8
Modern Fiction
9 Oct
9
Modern Drama
16 Oct
10
Harlem Renaissance
Handout of poetry and prose
Asian-American
Ethnicity and the
Identity Plot
Post-Humanism and
the Ongoing
Relevance of
American Literature
Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior
23 Oct
11
30 Oct
12
6 Nov
Great American Short Stories:
Willa Cather “Paul’s Case”; Sherwood Anderson “The Egg”;
Ernest Hemingway “The Killers”
Eugene O’Neill Three Great Plays:
The Emperor Jones; The Hairy Ape
Joyce Carol Oates “EDickinsonRepliLuxe” (Course Anthology)
Research Paper due in tutorial
Final Exam TBA