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Syllabi
Completed Courses
American Novelists on Film
Through The Eyes of A Child: Representing Adolescence in American Literature
Chief American Writers
American Presidential Rhetoric
Text and Tradition: Special Focus in CompositionProposed courses
Through The Eyes Of A Child: Representing Adolescence In American Literature
Course Syllabus
I. Course information
E Lit 151: Through the Eyes of a Child: Representing Adolescence in American Literature
Adam Sonstegard, PhD
Meetings: Tues & Thurs, 2:30 to 4:00 in Prince Hall, Room 231
Office hours: Tues, 4:00 to 5:30 (and by appointment) in Duncker Hall, Room 205
Phone and email: (W) 935 5190; (H) 367 8289 (before 9 pm only); atsonste @ artsci.wustl.edu
II. Course objectives
A survey of American novels that take a child's point of view or take childhood as a point of departure. We will ask what novelists gain from "adopting" child narrators, and what these narrators can see or say that adults, speaking as adults, cannot. How do "innocent"children see through double standards, ethnic ghettos, or color lines that adults complacently accept, and how do such narrators express writers' or readers' nostalgia or escapism? How do authors assume a child's necessarily limited point of view and yet present multiple perspectives as they tell "the full story"? Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield will contribute the most to our conversation, which will also include the views of child narrators from Henry James (What Maisie Knew), Henry Roth (Call It Sleep), and Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle), as well as agonized adolescents from Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye) and James Baldwin (Go Tell It On the Mountain).
III. Textbooks, Requirements & Expectations
Required texts for the course include: Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; James, What Maisie Knew; Roth, Call It Sleep; Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain; Morrison, The Bluest Eye; and Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle. (Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story and John Irving's A Prayer For Own Meany, are also available. These are not required texts, but you may read them for the final paper, an exercise in research and reflection.)
Written requirements include three papers of five to seven pages each. The first paper is an opportunity for creative, autobiographical writing, while the second and third papers are expository essays ("expository" can also mean "creative"). See "Paper Assignments" below.
Oral and in-class requirements: active, regular participation in the class discussions and at least one class-leadership day. When you're assigned to be the class leader, arrive with several questions for discussion and prepare for up to twenty minutes of facilitating discussion for your classmates. You're free to proceed as you like, but the best class-leaderships will engage some of the fundamental questions of the course and involve as many classmates as possible. All students are encouraged to plan class-leadership days with the instructor before the day arrives, and particularly extroverted students are encouraged to choose an additional day of leading the class. Choose from among the days designated with an asterisk on the course schedule below.
Expectations for punctuality, regular attendance, respect for your fellow students, and academic integrity in all formal work should go without saying. Please restrict your absences to dire, unavoidable emergencies, and please make up for the work you miss on your own time. Office hours are excellent opportunities for catching up, asking for clarification, or requesting special attention. Complete all of the written assignments for the course and enough of the reading assignments to make intelligent, daily contributions to the class discussion. If I detect that assigned texts are going unread, I will give reading quizzes, so, to modify the cliche, "read the book; don't wait for the pop quiz."
IV. Class schedule
(legend: Two asterisks, **, indicate material that will be handed out in class. One asterisk, *, indicates a class leadership day. See details for class leadership days under requirements above.)
8/28: Precepts and introductions
9/3 & 9/5: Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"**
McCullers, "Wunderkind"**
Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl**
9/10* & 9/12: Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
9/17* & 9/19: Twain, continued
9/24 & 9/26*: Twain, continued
Briden, Smith, Morrison on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
James, What Maisie Knew
First paper: a disingenuous narrative, due 10/1
10/1* & 10/3: James, continued
10/8* & 10/10: James, continued
10/15* & 10/17: Roth, Call It Sleep
10/22* & 10/24: Roth, continued
10/29* & 10/31*: Roth, continued
Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Second paper: comparison and contrast, due 11/5
11/5 & 11/7*: Salinger, continued
criticism on The Catcher in the Rye**
Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain
11/12* & 11/14: Baldwin, continued
11/19* & 11/21: Morrison, The Bluest Eye
11/26*: Morrison, continued
12/3* & 12/5*: Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
Final paper: research and reflection, due 12/10
Paper assignments.
1. A disingenuous narrative.
Tell a story from the perspective of a child or an adolescent narrator who participates in an event or observes it first-hand, and tell that story disingenuously. That is, pretend that the narrator does not understand something that most adult readers do understand, or that the narrator misses something that he or she will understand at a more reflective age. Perhaps the events that the narrator observes add up to something beyond the narrator's comprehension, or perhaps readers know something significant about the event, while the narrator remains comically ignorant of it. Huck Finn's story will provide some examples, and we'll discuss others in class. The story may be autobiographical, fictive, or some combination of these. Creativity will be appreciated. Five to seven pages, due 10/1.
2. Comparison and contrast.
Compare and contrast the narrator and the narrative mode of Huckleberry Finn and eitherWhat Maisie Knew or Call It Sleep. Topics to consider: the author's means of manipulating a character's point of view, the comedy or tragedy the author derives from that manipulation, the narrator as a potential vehicle for satirizing the world of adults, and the author's investment of sympathy in the child. Please dispense with five-paragraph themes and develop one or more of these prompts into a considerate, balanced thesis, and please derive some kind of conclusion that goes well beyond pointing out similarities and differences.
Five to seven pages, due 11/5.
3. Research and reflection.
Take an idea presented in the class in a direction of your own that involves considerable reflection on your part and at least some outside reading and research. Extend the ideas we discuss with regard to one novel to another work by the same author; debate whether what we say about girls as narrators also applies to boys (or vice versa); read another novel that should be on the syllabus, but isn't, and argue for its conclusion in these categories; or endeavor to convince me we've been wrong all along about some aspect of adolescence, its narration, or its representation in American literature. We will work on fulfilling one of these tall orders together, but to avoid overload late in the semester, be thinking about possible topics for this final paper as we read the first several works of the semester. Five to seven pages, or longer, due 12/10; this paper will be weighted double, making it "worth" twice as much as the other papers.
Grading
Your final grade will be an average of the following six grades: one grade for general participation; one for your class-leadership days(s); one for your first paper; one for your second paper; and one, weighted double, for your final paper. I grade on a numerical scale in which an "A" is worth twelve points, an "A-" eleven points, a "B+" ten points, a "B" nine points, a "B-" eight points, and so on.
This syllabus is subject to alteration to suit instructional and student needs.
