The following list of topics and required reading is preliminary. The final list of topics and required reading will be provided to students at the first meeting of the class.
Weeks 1-2 Exploration and Settlement / Making a New World
Required Reading for the Week: Christopher Columbus: from "Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage," from "Letter to Ferninand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage"
Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca: The Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca: "Dedication," "The Malhado Way of Life," "Our Life among the Avavares and Arbadaos," "Customs of That Region," "The First Confrontation," "The Falling-Out with Our Countrymen"
John Smith: from A Description of New England
William Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation, Book І, Chapter IX, Book І, Chapter X, Book ІІ, Chapter XI
Weeks 3-5: The Puritan World View / American Renaissance / Enlightenment: Franklin and Jefferson
Required Reading for the Week: Anne Bradstreet: "The Author to Her Book," "To My Dear and Loving Husband," "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House"
Jonathan Edwards: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
Benjamin Franklin, from The Autobiography (Parts I and II)
Thomas Jefferson, from The Declaration of Independence
Weeks 6-9: The Early 19th Century / Transcendentalism: Preachers in the Garden / Narratives of Interpretation: Hawthorne and Melville
Required Reading for the Week: Washington Irving: "Rip Van Winkle"
Edgar Allan Poe: "Annabel Lee," "The Fall of the House of Usher”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance"
Henry Thoreau, Walden, Chapters 1 & 2
Nathanial Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown"
Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Weeks 9-11: The Founders of Modern American Poetry: Whitman and Dickinson / Realism and Naturalism
Required Reading for the Week: Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," from "Drum Taps," "Memories of President Lincoln"
Emily Dickinson, selected poems.
Kate Chopin, "Desiree’s Baby"
Jack London, "To Build a Fire"
Weeks 12-14: Modernism and Postmodernism / American Literature Since 1945
Required Reading for the Week: T. S Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," "Child."
Flannery O'Connor, "Good Country People"
Billy Collins, selected poems.