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Professor Clare Colquitt
Fall 2015: Engl 250A Literature of the United States
Class time and location: TTh 11:00-12:15 in E 300
Office location, AL 415, and hours: T 5:00-6:00 p.m. and W 5:30-6:30 p.m. and at
other times by appointment. If you are unable to meet me during my office hours, I
will, given adequate notice, be happy to schedule an appointment with you in my office
at another time that fits both your schedule and mine.
Office phone and email: (619) 594-6219; colquitt@mail.sdsu.edu
I check my email and voice mail regularly during the work week and do my best to
respond to messages promptly. Please leave messages that are clear, brief, and courteous.
Should you be unable to reach me through my campus email address or office phone, you
may leave a message for me via the main department office (AL 226) during work hours,
M-F 8-4:30: (619) 594-5307. (This last number is the same number to use when you wish to schedule
an appointment with Professor Serrato, the department’s undergraduate advisor.)
Course description and prerequisites for Engl 250A-250B from the 2015-2016
General Catalog: “Prerequisites: A grade of C (2.0) or better in English 100, Africana
Studies 120 or American Indian Studies 120 or Chicana and Chicano Studies 111B or
Linguistics 100 or Rhetoric and Writing Studies 100 or 101.
United States literature from colonial period to present. Semester I: from
beginning to Civil War. Semester II: Civil War to present. Recommended for English
majors” (230).
Engl 250A is “one of four Foundations courses that you will take in the area of
Humanities and Fine Arts. Upon completing this area of Foundations, you will be able to:
1) analyze written, visual, or performed texts in the humanities and fine arts with
sensitivity to their diverse cultural contexts and historical moments; 2) describe various
aesthetic and other value systems and the ways they are communicated across time and
cultures; 3) argue from multiple perspectives about issues in the humanities that have
personal and global relevance; 4) demonstrate the ability to approach complex problems
and ask complex questions drawing upon knowledge of the humanities.”
MIRANDA
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
(The Tempest 5.1.183-86)
My own course description: Encounters between new worlds and old, accounts of
beauteous visions and nightmarish realities, will be central to our wide-ranging
exploration of early American literature to the Civil War era. Our readings will move
chronologically and begin pre-Contact, with Native American origin stories, before we
turn to accounts, some wondrous, many not, of Anglo-European exploration and conquest
and of Native American resistance to these incursions. As we journey into the eighteenth
century, we will encounter resistance of another kind from Jefferson, Franklin, and others
that would give rise, through war, to a new nation and to calls for a distinctly American
identity. So, too, did men and women of letters in the early nineteenth century aspire to a
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distinctly American literature, one that would “chaunt our own times and social
circumstance,” as Emerson writes in his 1844 essay “The Poet.”
As if responding to Emerson’s call for a new literature that “dazzles the
imagination” (“The Poet” 579), literature in the United States so flourished by mid
nineteenth century that this period has long been known as the “American Renaissance.”
Hawthorne and Melville, Whitman and Dickinson, Thoreau and Douglass, and of course
Emerson himself participated in a renaissance that remains foundational for American
literary studies as a whole, addressing as it does major subjects, often in highly
innovative ways—among them, race and racial identity, slavery and abolition, gender and
marriage politics—that continue to inform our discourse and to influence writers to this
day.
Though our anthology makes clear that numerous nineteenth-century authors
beyond those just named were dazzled by what Emerson calls America’s “ample
geography” (“The Poet” 579), our readings in the latter part of the course will focus
primarily on the authors mentioned immediately above, all of them rightly regarded as
major authors. The genres we will encounter on our own journey of discovery will be
many, among them, Indian captivity narratives, slave narratives, histories, journals,
letters, autobiographies, speeches, and essays as well as poetry and short fiction.
Required text (available in Aztec Shops): Baym, Nina, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology
of American Literature. Shorter 8th ed. Vol. 1 New York: Norton, 2013. (Supplementary
materials may also be handed out in class or posted on Blackboard.) Bring this book to
class each day. (You will need it.) Remember: it is the SHORTER edition you are to buy/rent.
Also recommended is the most recent edition (2009) of the MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers, an essential reference source for anyone interested in literary study.
Recommended in the seventh edition of the MLAH are a number of dictionaries,
including “Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language and,
especially for the history of a word’s meanings and usages, The Oxford English
Dictionary” (13). As students enrolled at SDSU, you are fortunate that the library
subscribes to a user-friendly online version of the OED, accessible through the library’s
home page. Looking a word up in the OED can open up possibilities of meaning in a line
from Shakespeare or Dickinson, and I encourage you to make use of this incomparable
resource and of other fine reference sources throughout the semester.
Course requirements
In-class work (midterm, final exam, and class participation) = 60% of your grade
20% = Midterm (short answer and/or essay), Thurs., Oct. 1
30% = Final examination (short answer and/or essay), Tues., Dec. 15,
10:30-12:30 p.m.
Important note regarding the final exam: The General Catalog stipulates, “No final
examination shall be given to individual students before the regular time. If you find it
impossible to take a final examination on the date scheduled you must make
arrangements with the instructor to have an incomplete grade reported and must take the
deferred final examination within the time allowed for making up incomplete grades”
(468).
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10% = Class participation. This portion of your grade will be based on the following:
the quality and consistency of your participation in both class discussion and in any inclass group work, and on your performance on unannounced quizzes and reading
responses. Note: Quizzes and responses may take place at any point during class:
beginning, middle, or end. Arriving on time only to take a quiz or complete a response is
unacceptable and will result in a grade of zero for that day. Crucial to your participation
grade--and to your success in this course--is regular attendance in class (See
attendance policy below). In a very real way, you cannot participate if you are not in
class. For those of you who are uncomfortable speaking out in class, your participation
grade will depend entirely on the quality of your group work and of your cumulative
quiz/reading response grade.
Please record the dates of our midterm and final exam in your calendar.
Out-of-class work = 40% of your grade
The remainder of your grade will be based on the quality of the literary journal you will
keep throughout the semester, beginning next week (Week 2). Your journal will be
comprised of 10 weekly reading responses to one or more of the works assigned in the
course calendar for any given week. I will collect your first entries on Thursday,
September 3. Unless otherwise announced in class or noted on the course calendar,
subsequent entries will be due every other week.
Your first entry, due one week from Thursday, is to be completed by the
beginning of our next class session and is to be 1-2 double-spaced typed pages in length,
formatted according to MLA style but without a works-cited list attached unless you
consult other sources (including online study guides or even Wikipedia entries) beyond
the primary source which is your focus. At the top of each entry, type your name, the
course number, the date, and the entry number of each response. Each entry should be a
minimum of 300 words long.
Regarding your prose style for your entries, the tone and diction for your literary
journal should strike a balance between high formality and informal text-speak. Your
writing should be lucid, pointed, and grammatical; your responses thoughtful, informed,
and well-supported with an appropriate number of textual citations followed by the
relevant page number(s) from the work that is your focus. In a word, use quotations. If
citing an ebook that lacks pagination, include in parentheses the chapter number or story
title so that I may locate the passage in my own book. As stated above, when citing
additional sources beyond our assigned reading, include relevant bibliographical
information immediately after your final paragraph. (No separate works-cited page is
required.)
In some weeks I will assign you a specific question or set of questions about our
reading to which you are to respond in a thoughtful, informed, and well-supported
manner. When specific topics are assigned, those topics will either be distributed in class
or emailed to the class via Blackboard. In weeks in which no specific questions are
assigned, you may write analytically on a topic of your own choosing that focuses on an
important and specific aspect of a reading assignment that in some manner intrigues or
impresses you, or, conversely, stumps or disturbs you. In some entries you may reach
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specific conclusions about the reading; at other times, you may raise more questions than
you can answer.
As the above suggests, the majority of your journal entries will be exploratory and
interpretative in nature. However, I also encourage you to display on occasion your own
literary abilities, for instance, by choosing to compose a poem (or rewrite the ending of a
story) in imitation of a writer on our syllabus (e.g., Bradstreet, Dickinson, Harper, or
Whitman). See the second journal assignment for an example of one possible creative
response. Please note: as many as four of your ten entries may be creative in nature.
For students with disabilities: For those of you who need accommodations to
successfully complete my class, please read carefully the following statement which all
SDSU faculty are to include in their syllabi. If this statement applies to you, let me know
early in the semester, preferably this week, how I am to accommodate your needs:
If you are a student with a disability and believe you will need accommodations for this
class, it is your responsibility to contact Student Disability Services at (619) 594-6473.
To avoid any delay in the receipt of your accommodations, you should contact Student
Disability Services as soon as possible. Please note that accommodations are not
retroactive, and that accommodations based upon disability cannot be provided until you
have presented your instructor with an accommodation letter from Student Disability
Services. Your cooperation is appreciated.
Attendance: I expect you to be present, on time, and prepared for each class meeting. If
circumstances require you to miss a class, remember that you are still responsible for
material covered and for any study questions announced or distributed in class. Contact
me, a classmate, or consult emails sent to our class via Blackboard to find out what you
have missed.
A caution: Repeatedly coming late to class or frequent absences will not only lower your
participation grade but damage your standing in the course. If early in the semester you
find that you are unable to meet the requirements of this class, the most basic of which is
to attend, you should drop. This semester’s add/drop (schedule adjustment) deadline
is Sept. 4. As the General Catalog notes, this is also the last day you can “change
[your] grading basis” (3).
Classroom guidelines:
1) Arrive on time and sign roll.
2) Come prepared with your anthology, paper and pen, and questions about our reading.
If you use a laptop or tablet for taking notes, I ask that you sit at or near the front of the
classroom. No surfing or work done for other courses allowed during our class.
3) Turn off and put away unnecessary electronic devices, especially smart phones. Above
all, no texting allowed during class!
4) Be alert and engaged from the first minute of the class to the last.
5) Last but not least, have fun!
All of the guidelines above may be summarized as follows: treat your peers and me with
respect. If you are unaware of the consequences of what the General Catalog terms
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“inappropriate conduct by students,” consult the section titled “Student Conduct” in the
current catalog (477-78). First on the list of “grounds upon which student discipline can
be based” is “cheating, plagiarism, or other forms of academic dishonesty that are
intended to gain unfair academic advantage” (475).
Scholastic honesty: Your work should be your own. The General Catalog includes a
detailed section titled “Cheating and Plagiarism” (477) you are responsible for reading.
There the university defines cheating “as the act of obtaining or attempting to obtain
credit for academic work by the use of dishonest, deceptive, or fraudulent means.”
Among the examples of cheating cited in this catalog section are the following: “using
notes, cheat sheets, or other devices considered inappropriate under the prescribed testing
condition.”
A major form of cheating is plagiarism, defined “as the act of incorporating ideas,
words, or specific substance of another, whether purchased, borrowed, or otherwise
obtained, and submitting same to the university as one’s own work to fulfill academic
requirements without giving credit to the appropriate source” (477).
The university takes acts of plagiarism seriously, as do I. Whenever you are in
doubt regarding how to cite a source, consult me and also the MLA Handbook for Writers
of Research Papers (especially chapter 2 on “Plagiarism and Academic Integrity”). That
reference source sets forth the best practices of literary scholarship.
Also, please understand that SDSU faculty are required to report students who
cheat or commit plagiarism to the Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities for
appropriate disciplinary action. Acts of cheating or plagiarism will have severe
consequences in my class—from failure on an individual assignment to an “F” in the
course. Students who commit plagiarism or cheat in multiple courses endanger their
standing in this university. Again, refer to the section on “Cheating and Plagiarism” from
the General Catalog, which stipulates that students found guilty of academic dishonesty
may be expelled, suspended, or placed on academic probation (477).
Grading: In evaluating the quality of your out-of-class and in-class writing, I follow the
“Definition of Grades for Undergraduate Students” detailed in the General Catalog:
“Grade of A, (outstanding achievement; available only for the highest accomplishment),
4 points; B (praiseworthy performance; definitely above average), 3 points; C (average:
awarded for satisfactory performance; the most common undergraduate grade) 2 points;
D (minimally passing; less than the typical undergraduate achievement), 1 point; F
(failing), 0 points.” Other grades such as Cr (credit) and NC (no credit) are defined in this
same section, as are the decimal values for plus and minus grades. This section further
explains, “Faculty members use all grades from A through F to distinguish among levels
of academic accomplishment. The grade for average undergraduate achievement is C”
(466 emphasis mine). Make certain that you understand what it means to receive a “WU”
for an unauthorized withdrawal, a grade that is “equivalent to an ‘F’” (466).
Late journal entries: unacceptable.
Conferences: Please feel free to see me in my office whenever you have a question about
an assignment or exam, about (my comments on) your reading responses or entries in
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your literary journal, or about your overall standing in this course. If you find yourself
struggling with our reading or with your journal entries, do your best to see me early in
the term rather than at the end of the semester, when it may be too late for you to
improve.
Course calendar
Beginnings to 1700
Week 1
25 Aug: Introduction to the course
27 Aug: From our anthology, read second paragraph from Editorial Procedures (xxiiixxiv), Beginnings to 1700 (3-19), The Iroquois Creation Story (20-23), and Christopher
Columbus, From “Letter to Luis de Santangel” (24-26). See below for questions to
consider while reading the Iroquois origin narrative. Questions to consider regarding the
1493 letter from Columbus: What features does Columbus emphasize about Espanola in
this “first printed description of America” (24)? (As we read later accounts of the new
world composed by other explorers and colonists, including John Smith, consider
whether similar qualities are noted.) Handout distributed in class of Yuchi origin stories.
First journal entry assigned, due in Week 2, on Thurs., 3 Sep.
From the following questions or subjects, select a focus for your first entry. One approach
is to focus on the Native American tales alone, exploring the ways in the Yuchi and
Iroquois tales diverge and converge. What is the dominant worldview that emerges from
each tale? Are these tales more alike than not in terms of the worldview each conveys?
Another approach is to examine one or both of these Native American origins tales with
respect to another creation story you know well. Because the early Spanish and English
explorers were shaped by Judaeo-Christian traditions, an entry relating the creation story
told in the first three chapters in Genesis to the Yuchi or Iroquois tale would be a natural
and highly relevant focus. However, you needn’t limit yourself to the Judaeo-Christian
religious context but could explore instead how either or both of the Native creation
stories relate to an origin story from another tradition with which you are familiar.
Whatever your approach, be creative and choose a subject that you find compelling. Last
but not least: remember to use quotations to support your key points.
Week 2
1 Sep: Columbus, From “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella” (26-28) and excerpts from
The Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (28-35).
Second journal entry assigned, due in Week 3, on Thurs., 10 Sep: Write an entry that
relates to one or more of the following questions or topics. In Columbus’s 1503 letter to
Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus describes a fallen world. What are the factors that
contributed to this loss and to Columbus’s more personal ruin? In both his 1493 and his
1503 letters, consider the rhetorical stance. Whom is Columbus addressing? How does
his awareness of his audience shape his argument, his tone? (Quote specific passages
from his letters to illustrate.) What is his aim in each letter? How would you describe his
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dominant appeal to his reader(s)? Emotional? Rational? How would you characterize the
man behind each letter?
Cabeza de Vaca documents the way of life of several Native peoples inhabiting
what is now Texas. How does he describe these peoples? (Thinking ahead, you might
also contrast his descriptions with the imagery Smith uses to describe Native peoples.)
What stands out in Cabeza de Vaca’s descriptions? How do these observations relate to
Cabeza de Vaca’s description of his first post-captivity “confrontation” with Spanish
Christians? Consider analyzing the pivotal passage conveying the Indians’ conviction that
Cabeza de Vaca could not belong to the same race as these other Spaniards: “We had
come from the sunrise, they from the sunset; we healed the sick, they killed the sound; we
came naked and barefoot, they clothed, horsed, and lanced; we coveted nothing but gave
whatever we were given, while they robbed whomever they found and bestowed nothing
on anyone” (35). By the end of this excerpt, with whom do Cabeza de Vaca’s sympathies
lie?
You might also frame your entry around a comparative approach that brings
together Columbus’s and Cabeza de Vaca’s narratives and highlights similarities or
differences you find striking.
Finally, you might choose to respond to our reading creatively by writing a short
first-person account (no more than two pages) of your own experience encountering a
“brave new world.” Regarding the form of your “Relation,” you might consider adopting
some of the features of Columbus’s or Cabeza de Vaca’s writings. For instance, you
might frame your account as a petition to your “patron.” If you are imitating the style of
Cabeza de Vaca, you might divide your account into sections with different subheadings,
focusing as he does in near ethnographic fashion on different aspects of the new world
you yourself encountered.
3 Sep: John Smith, “The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer
Isles,” “A Description of New England” (57-72). First journal entries due.
Week 3
7 Sep: Labor Day holiday!
Note: unless I announce otherwise in class or via Blackboard, beginning this week
and in future weeks, you are responsible for selecting your own focus for your
weekly journal entry. Remember that each entry should demonstrate serious and
focused engagement with our reading for that week. Keep in mind that at least six of
your ten entries are to be analytical. In other words, no more than four of your
entries may be in the form of your own creative writing.
For those of you struggling for a topic for your third entry, due on Thurs.,17 Sep.,
here are a couple of ideas. It would be acceptable to me for this third entry that you look
“backward,” if you prefer, to our reading last Thursday by John Smith. Some of the
questions above pertaining to Columbus and Cabeza de Vaca are relevant to Smith’s
writing as well and might be a good starting point for an exploration of some particular
aspect or even a specific scene from Smith’s prose. You could also, if you wish, take a
creative approach to Smith’s “history,” for instance, by reimagining and retelling the
Smith-Pocahontas story from her perspective (or that of her father). Or for those of you
who enjoy doing research in film, you might want to watch the Disney version of
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Pocahontas and then write an essay documenting how (and perhaps also why) the film
diverges (or not) from Smith’s narrative.
8 Sep: Roger Williams, “A Key into the Language of America” (102-07) and William
Bradford, excerpt from Of Plymouth Plantation (Book I: 72-81).
10 Sep: Bradford, excerpt from Of Plymouth Plantation (Book II: 81-90) and Mary
Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
(126-43). Second journal entries due.
Week 4
15 Sep: Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue” and “The Author to Her Book” (110-12, 119).
17 Sep: Bradstreet, read all poems from “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
through “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666”
(120-23) as well as her letter “To My Dear Children” (123-26). Third journal entries
due.
Week 5
22 Sep: Edward Taylor, poetry from Preparatory Meditations (143-46) and “Upon
Wedlock and Death of Children” (146-47).
24 Sep: Review for midterm, which will cover our reading through the poems by
Edward Taylor. Read also introduction to American Literature, 1700-1820 (157-69).
Fourth journal entries due.
American Literature, 1700-1820
The Great Spirit has made us all, but HE has made a great difference between his
white and his red children. He has given us different complexions and different
customs. To you HE has given the arts. To these HE has not opened our eyes. We
know these things to be true. Since HE has made so great a difference between us
in other things, why may we not conclude that he has given us a different
religion according to our understanding?
Red Jacket, “Speech to the U.S. Senate” (231)
Week 6 No journal entry due during the week of our midterm.
29 Sep: Native Americans: Contact and Conflict (221-22); Pontiac, “Speech at Detroit”
(222-24); Thomas Jefferson, “Chief Logan’s Speech,” from Notes on the State of Virginia
(227-29); Red Jacket, “Speech to the U.S. Senate” (229-31); and Benjamin Franklin,
Biography (234-36) and “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” (244-47).
1 Oct: Midterm exam.
Week 7
6 Oct: Jefferson, from The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (337-44); Franklin, The
Autobiography, Part One (248-92).
8 Oct: Franklin, The Autobiography, Part Two (293-308). Fifth journal entries due.
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Week 8
13 Oct: Phillis Wheatley, selected poems (401-11). Concentrate on “On Being Brought
from Africa to America” and “To His Excellency General Washington.” In addition, read
“Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature” (761-62) and Jefferson, from
Notes on the State of Virginia (762-65). Begin reading introduction and timeline to
American Literature 1820-1865 (445-66).
American Literature, 1820-1865
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes
biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and
nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an
original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and
philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and
not the history of theirs?
Emerson, Nature (508)
15 Oct: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Biography (505-08) and “The American Scholar” (53649), and Walt Whitman, Biography (1005-09) and “When I Heard the Learn’d
Astronomer” (1078). Finish introduction and timeline for this section. Sixth journal
entries due.
Week 9
20 Oct: Emerson, “The Poet” (565-81).
22 Oct: Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (839-58); Petalesharo,
“Speech of the Pawnee Chief” and “Speech of the Pawnee Loup Chief” (588-91); and
Emerson, “Letter to Martin Van Buren” (600-03). Seventh journal entries due.
Week 10
27 Oct: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, Written by Himself (through ch. 8: 934-68).
29 Oct: Douglass, Narrative (through conclusion: 968-1002) and “What to the Slave Is
the Fourth of July?” (1002-05). Eighth journal entries due.
Week 11
3 Nov: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, selected poems (1184-89). Of these poems,
concentrate on “Eliza Harris” and “Bury Me in a Free Land.”
5 Nov: Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” (603-19). Ninth journal
entries due.
Week 12
10 Nov: Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1099-1128).
11 Nov: Veterans Day: campus closed!
12 Nov: Hawthorne, “The Birthmark” (645-56). Tenth journal entries due.
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Week 13
17 Nov: Melville, “Benito Cereno” (1128-83).
29 Nov: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (through section 33: 1024-52). Extra Credit
journal entries due!
Week 14.
24 Nov: Read Whitman, three poems from Drum-Taps (1079-82), and Emily Dickinson,
Biography (1189-93) and 112 [67] [Success is counted sweetest] (1193-94).
26 Nov: Thanksgiving
Week 15
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I
know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I
know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 16 August 1870
1 Dec: Dickinson, 1263 [1129] [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--] (1213); 124 [216]
[Safe in their Alabaster Chambers--]; 202 [185] [“Faith” is a fine invention]; 236 [324]
[Some keep the Sabbath going to Church--]; 269 [249] [Wild Nights – Wild Nights!], and
365 [338] [I know that He exists].
3 Dec: Dickinson, 320 [258] [There’s a certain Slant of light]; 340 [280] [I felt a Funeral,
in my Brain]; 359 [328] [A Bird came down the Walk]; and 656 [520] [I started Early—
Took my Dog—].
Week 16
8 Dec: Review for final examination. Discussion of additional Dickinson poems selected
by the class.
10 Dec: Final questions about the exam followed by additional discussion of Whitman
and Dickinson.
Week 17
15 Dec, 10:30-12:30 p.m.: Final exam
Note: Instructors must turn in their students’ grades by 11 p.m. on Thursday,
December 31.