AL 201.02 SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
Fall 2015, Louis Mazzari, louis.mazzari@boun.edu.tr
Office: TB 508, office hours: Wednesdays, 10:00 to 12:00 and by appointment
We will read American literature from the colonial period through the present, and we’ll
consider these kinds of questions: What have some of the best American writers cared
about? That is, what was important to them and why? And how did these stories, poems,
and novels differ from the great works of English literature being written at the same time?
In other words, what makes this writing specifically American? By understanding how
people have expressed themselves in other cultures, and in ways that reflect the times in
which they lived, we can better understand ourselves and our own places in the world.
Assignments
To be successful, students should read the material that has been assigned for each day
and attend class regularly. Students will also:
(1) Write a three-page essay during the semester.
(2) Respond to readings through in-class writing.
(3) Take a mid-term and final examination, both of which will consist of identifications,
multiple-choice questions, and in-class essays.
Grading
The two exams and the essay will each count thirty percent of a student’s final grade. Inclass writing and participation will account for the remaining ten percent of the grade. The
class will not include extra-credit projects.
Essay
Students will write a three-page essay relating any two course texts. Analyze and argue or
agree with the texts, then offer evidence for your viewpoint. The key to good writing is
revision. Allow enough time to revise your papers before the due date. Essays should be
typewritten, 12-point type, and double-spaced. Footnote all quotations and material that is
not your own. I will enjoy talking about your ideas. I’ll take any questions you have about
the material or the assignment.
Academic integrity
I encourage students to talk about their ideas with each other, but all of your work must be
completed independently and must be entirely the result of your own writing. Sources
must be cited, and quotations attributed in your written work using standard footnoting
procedures.
Class schedule by week
28 September
Introduction, “Puritanism”: William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Mary
Rowlandson
5 October
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Jean de Crevecouer
12 October
Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln
19 October
“Transcendentalism”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry
David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne
26 October
Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman
2 November
Herman Melville, “Realism”: Mark Twain
9 November
Henry James
16 November
Henry James; midterm exam
23 November
Kate Chopin; “Modernism”: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein,
Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, e e
cummings
30 November
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner
7 December
Eudora Welty; John Steinbeck
14 December
John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor, Allen Ginsberg, Theodore
Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop
21 December
James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo
“Postmodernism”; essay due
To be announced
Final exam