American Fictions:
Cross-Examining U.S. Literature, History, Politics
(English 289Y, Fall 2010)
Professor Peter Lancelot Mallios
Lecture: MW 1-1.50 pm. 1412 Physics Building.
Discussion Sections: Fridays
Office & Hours. 3124 Tawes Hall. M 2-4 pm
Email: mallios@umd.edu
Teaching Assistants:
Lew Gleich (lgleich@umd.edu)
Rebecca Borden (peters_rebecca@yahoo.com)
This course concerns the relationship between two kinds of “American fiction.” One is the kind generally
associated with the phrase “American literature”—i.e., novels, short stories, poems, etc., written by U.S.
authors. The other is the more general category of cultural and political storylines through which U.S.
“America” has become constituted and contested as a people and polity. This latter kind of “American
fiction” refers to the general narratives and vocabularies framing how different groups of U.S. Americans
have come historically to understand and contest their relationships to one another and to the rest of the
world. In this course, we will see that the “literary” is a much larger category than we may previously have
assumed—very little textuality that circulates in human politics and culture, and certainly none of the most
consequential political, social, and legal documents and declarations in U.S. history, are lacking in literary
qualities central to their social meaning. We will also see that much of U.S. political history itself turns on
struggles over competing “American” fictions: i.e., narratives of national constitution, diverse cultural
composition, social justice, and world relation—often at their most vivid when being asserted and challenged
in works of U.S. novelists.
Integrated with important readings by Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and
Barack Obama, the heart of this course lies in exploring how diverse works of U.S. literary fiction spanning
the course of U.S. history turn as a matter of both their form and force on complex engagements with some
of the most pressing and enduring questions in U.S. and world political history. We will ask the general
question of how four major aesthetic “movements” in U.S. literary history—romanticism, realism,
modernism, postmodernism—are grounded in, arise from, and offer terms of engagement with different
moments and problems of U.S. and world history, and from a variety of different racial, ethnic, gender, class,
sexuality-based, regional, and transnational perspectives. More specifically, we will follow the chronological
arc of the U.S. republic from its founding to the present to explore how a diverse range of U.S. literary
fiction and voices are concretely engaged with political questions of revolution, independence, slavery,
segregation, removal, immigration, free speech, gender and sexual equality, labor rights, economic social
justice, civil rights, environmentalism, economic and technological globalization, and international human
rights.
This course is fundamentally concerned with how we may write, imagine, and actualize storylines of U.S.
American futures through a rich, complex, and critical understanding of the vexed templates and historical
experiences of the U.S. past. Given the emphatically global nature of both the challenges and communal
possibilities that seem increasingly to define the terms of our young twenty-first century, one question we do
not want to shy away from is why critical study of “fictions” presupposing a nationally framed (to at least
some degree) U.S. past may comprise a useful means of confronting the future. There are many answers to
this question—and also some rebuttals to those answers. This course is ultimately about seeking and arriving
at your critical terms with respect to the present utility, desirability, and possibilities of “American fictions.”
Texts
The following texts have been ordered at the University Book Center and the Maryland Book Exchange.
Please purchase the editions ordered. Please also note that there will be additional—and important—short
readings: some distributed as xeroxed handouts in lecture, all available to be downloaded at the Blackboard
site for this course (elms.umd.edu).
Sherman Alexie. Flight (2007). Black Cat.
Willa Cather. The Professor’s House (1925). Vintage.
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Dover.
Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Perennial.
James Weldon Johnson. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). Dover.
Ursula K. LeGuin. The Lathe of Heaven. Scribner.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Penguin.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Dover.
Course Requirements
The formal requirements of this course are the following.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Regular attendance of lectures; regular attendance of and active participation in discussion sections.
One in-class test in discussion section on Friday, October 1.
Two short papers: (1) a 2-3 page close reading due on Friday, November 5 in discussion section; and (2)
a 4-5 page paper due on Friday, December 3 in discussion section. All papers must be double-spaced
with one-inch margins and written in 12-point font or smaller. For both papers, specific topics will
be handed out well in advance of the due dates.
Occasional short assignments for discussion section.
Final Examination. Tuesday, December 14, 1.30-3.30 pm.
Grading
Final grades will be determined based on the instructor’s and the teaching assistants’ holistic assessment of
students’ cumulative performance in the course. This means that statistical percentages are only indicators, rather
than guarantors, of what final grades will be. Here, however, is a rough set of guidelines for how the individual
requirements of this course will be weighted in determining final grades:
•
•
•
•
•
Discussion section attendance, participation, and short assignments: 15%
In-Class Test: 15%
Close reading paper: 15%
Longer paper: 25%
Final Exam:
30%
Course Policies
Attendance & Promptness. Please make every effort to attend and be on time to lectures and discussion sections,
as our class meetings are very short and interruptions are disruptive. If you are unable to attend either lecture or
your discussion section, it is important and your responsibility to discern what assignments you have missed and
to catch up on what you missed in class.
Courtesy. Please be respectful of everyone’s opinions, presence, and person in this course. And please also make
sure to turn off cell-phones prior to coming to class.
Late work. All work must be turned in on time. Please balance your schedule accordingly.
Emailing work. All work for this course—unless the instructor or teaching assistants specify otherwise—should
be submitted in hard-copy form, not by email.
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is one of the very worst possible offenses a student could possibly commit in this
course—a violation of the honor and integrity of the entire avocation of learning, and a grievous act of disrespect
toward both instructors and student colleagues. “Plagiarism” means directly copying someone else’s work,
paraphrasing someone else’s work without giving them credit, or having someone else do your work for you. The
consequences of doing this or helping someone to do this (for instance, by letting someone copy your work) are
automatic expulsion from the course: with a failing grade and an ‘X” placed on your university record indicating
that you have committed this act.
Blackboard. We will be using Blackboard (www.elms.umd.edu) as a place in which you can download certain
shorter texts (mostly poetry) for this course, and also as a place for certain other postings, study guides, and
reminders that may prove helpful to you. If you are having any trouble using Blackboard, please contact your TA.
Other problems or have special needs or even questions. Please do not hesitate to consult the teaching assistants
or instructor——and please do so as soon as possible.
Lecture Calendar
Note: Please be sure to bring your copy of the book or other text we are reading to lecture on the days for
which they are assigned below.
(Week 1)
August 30 (M)
September 1 (W)
Course Introduction & Overview
Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence” (1776)
(In Xerox Packet 1 handed out with Syllabus; also on Blackboard)
Topic 1:
Constituting America: Nature, Liberty, Romanticism
(Week 2)
September 6 (M)
September 8 (W)
(Week 3)
September 13 (M)
September 15 (W)
Labor Day: No Class
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)
• Intro. & Chapters 1-4 (XP 1; BB)
Edgar Allan Poe, “Israfel” and other poems (1845) (XP 1; Blackboard)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to The House of the Seven Gables (1850) (XP 1; BB)
Online Lecture (Blackboard): Do Not Come to Class!
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
Topic 2:
“Equal Protection”: Legacies of Slavery and Segregation After the Civil War
(Week 4)
September 20 (M)
Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided” Speech (June 16, 1858) (BB)
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) (pp. 1-22)
September 22 (W)
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
(Week 5)
September 27 (M)
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
September 29 (W)
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
October 1 (F)
In-class Test: taken in discussion section
(Week 6)
October 4 (M)
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
October 6 (W)
Johnson, Autobiography
Harlem Renaissance Poets: [Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay,
Langston Hughes]: Download Poems from Blackboard
Topic 3:
“Modern” Problems: Citizenship, Immigration, Economic Social Justice, Civil Rights
(Week 7)
October 11 (M)
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (1925)
October 13 (W)
Cather, The Professor’s House (1925)
(Week 8)
October 18 (M)
Cather, The Professor’s House
October 20 (W)
Cather, The Professor’s House
(Week 9)
October 25 (M)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Second Bill of Rights” Speech (State of the Union
Address, January 11, 1944) (BB)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
October 27 (W)
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
(Week 10)
November 1 (M)
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
November 3 (W)
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
November 5 (F)
Paper #1 [Close-reading] due in discussion section
(Week 11)
November 8 (M)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
November 10 (W)
Hurston, Their Eyes
(Week 12)
November 15 (M)
Hurston, Their Eyes
November 17 (W)
Hurston, Their Eyes
Topic 4:
After the Rights Revolution: (World) Futures of Democracy
(Week 13)
November 22 (M)
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
November 24 (W)
No Class: Happy Thanksgiving
(Week 14)
November 29 (M)
LeGuin, Lathe of Heaven
December 1 (W)
Le Guin, Lathe of Heaven
December 3 (F)
Paper #2 due in discussion section
(Week 15)
December 6 (M)
December 8 (W)
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (March 18, 2008) (BB)
Sherman Alexie, Flight (2007)
Alexie, Flight
Course Conclusion
FINAL EXAM: Tuesday, December 14, 1.30-3.30 pm