ENGL 3665: AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1860
Daily Schedule
Notes
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I will add to and clarify this schedule as needed throughout the semester.
Instructions from me always supersede this document.
Consult Text List for where to obtain readings. It is up to you to obtain the texts in question, either
through the means I have provided or on your own.
All work listed for a given week is due by Sunday at 11.59 pm. For example, the work assigned for
Week 1 is due by Sunday 23 Janurary at 11.59 pm.
Lectures are available in CULearn as audio files. You may listen to them through your browser or
download them to listen to them elsewhere. Be aware, however, that in most if not all cases you will
need to have access to certain readings as you listen. I will make you aware of which readings you will
need at the beginning of a given lecture.
Essays and reading responses will be turned in via CULearn in response to assignments. Quizzes and
discussion threads will also be administered through CULearn.
See the syllabus or write to me via CULearn (not email) if you have any questions.
Week
Reading
Lectures
17 – 21
January
Declaration of
Independence
US Constitution
Lincoln, Gettysburg
Address
Douglass: "The Meaning
of July Fourth for the
Negro"
Whitman: “When Lilacs
Last in the Door-Yard
Bloom'd”
Melville: “Hawthorne and
His Mosses”
James: from Hawthorne
Introduction to the Course
The United States and the
Civil War
The United States and its
Literature
Discussion thread 1
Reading response
2
24 – 28
January
Whitman: from preface to
Leaves of Grass; from
Song of Myself
Dickinson: selected poetry
Twain: The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
(chapters 1 – 11)
American Romanticism
and American Poetry
Twain: American
Romanticism and
American Realism
Discussion thread 1
Reading response
Quiz 1: up to Dickinson
3
31 January –
4 February
Twain: Huck Finn (finish)
Twain, Race, and Death
Discussion thread 1
Reading response
4
7 – 11
February
James: Daisy Miller
Crane: Maggie, A Girl of
the Streets
Realism and Naturalism
Discussion thread 2
Reading response
Quiz 2: up to Crane
14 – 18
February
Gilman: “The Yellow
Wallpaper” & “Why I
Wrote the Yellow
Wallpaper”
Chopin: The Awakening
American Feminism at the
Turn of the Century
Discussion thread 2
Reading response
Short essay 1
1
5
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Writing/Quiz
ENGL 3665: AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1860
Daily Schedule
21 – 25
February
Washington: “The Atlanta
Address”
DuBois: “Of Our Spiritual
Strivings” & “Of Mr.
Booker T. Washington
and Others” (both from
The Souls of Black Folk)
Toomer: from Cane
Hughes: selected poetry
Race and America in the
20th Century
Discussion thread 2
Reading response
Quiz 3: up to Hughes
7
28 February –
4 March
Eliot: The Waste Land
Williams: “The Red
Wheelbarrow”
Stein: from The Making of
Americans
American Modernism:
Experiments in Poetry
Discussion thread 3
Reading response
8
7 – 11 March
Fitzgerald: The Great
Gatsby (chapters 1 – 6)
Modern America and The
Death of the American
Dream I
Discussion thread 3
Reading response
9
14 – 18 March
Fitzgerald: The Great
Gatsby (finish)
Agee & Evans: from Let
Us Now Praise Famous
Men
Modern America and the
Death of the American
Dream II
Discussion thread 3
Reading response
Quiz 4: up to Fitzgerald
10
21 – 25 March
6
Spring break
28 March – 1
April
Faulkner: “Barn Burning” &
“A Rose for Emily”
O'Connor: “A Good Man is
Hard to Find” and “The
Life You Save May Be
Your Own”
Violence and the Southern
Gothic
Discussion thread 4
Reading response
Short essay 2
12
4 – 8 April
Ginsburg: from “Howl”
Ellison: from Invisible Man
Pynchon: The Crying of
Lot 49 (chapters 1 – 3)
Violence and the Outsider
at Mid-Century
Postmodernism and
Suburbia
Discussion thread 4
Reading response
Quiz 5: up to Ellison
13
11 – 15 April
Pynchon: The Crying of
Lot 49 (finish)
Postmodernism and
Incomplete Knowledge
Discussion thread 4
Reading response
14
18 – 22 April
Zoline: “The Heat Death of
the Universe”
Perelman: “China”
Hejinian: from My Life
Morrison: Beloved (pp 3 –
153)
Postmodernism and the
Fragmentation of the Self
Postmodernism, Slavery,
and History
Discussion thread 5
Reading response
15
25 – 29 April
Morrison: Beloved (finish)
Postmodernism, Race,
and Narrative
Discussion thread 5
Reading response
Quiz 6: up to Morrison
After the fact
None
None
Final essay
11
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