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 Composition

Proposed courses

Syllabi for proposed literature courses

"Why don't you speak for yourself?"

Heroines of Hawthorne and James

 

First Proposed Course Syllabus:

"Why don't you speak for yourself?"
Authority, Identity, and Self-Representation in American Literature

A graduate-level American literature course, awarding three credit hours and meeting twice per week.

I. Course objectives:
This course examines the tensions involved when American writers use fiction, autobiography and poetry to "speak for others" or to "speak for themselves." Anglo-American novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, for instance, represented slaves in her fiction while arguing against slavery, but had to rethink her approach when a former slave, Harriet Jacobs, wrote about her life. Stowe used fiction to speak for slaves, but Jacobs used autobiography to speak for herself. Could readers distinguish between the slave characters Stowe created, and the actual slaves Jacobs described? Who was "right" about the lives and identities of slaves, the white novelist or the former slave? In similar veins, we'll place writings about Native Americans next to writings by Native Americans; compare leisure-class observations about laborers with some laborers' own testimonies; contrast representations of immigrants with one immigrant's attempt to represent himself; and read nineteenth-century accounts of "unnatural" sexuality against "America's first gay autobiography." Who is authorized to speak for whom, under what circumstances? What happens when people who belong to once-silenced groups first speak for themselves? Answers as well as complications will arise from Walt Whitman's most famous poem, a masterpiece of speaking for others, an attempt to empower others to speak, and above all, a "Song of Myself."

II. Required texts:
Books to be purchased: Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron-Mills (Bedford Cultural Edition); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (ed. Jane Tompkins); Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (ed. Edward Haviland Miller); Claude Hartland, The Story of a Life; Henry Roth, Call It Sleep.

Excerpts to be distributed: from The Lowell Offering; Zitkala-Sa, "Impressions of an Indian Girlhood," "Schooldays of an Indian Girl"; Henry James, "The Beast in the Jungle"; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "The Beast in the Closet"; Henry James, from The American Scene.

III. Written and Oral Requirements:
Written requirements include a medium-length paper and a final paper (see "Paper Assignments" below).

Oral and in-class requirements: active, regular participation in the class discussion. Please restrict 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. Course schedule:

Week 1: Introductions: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"
Longfellow, from "The Courtship of Miles Standish"

Weeks 2 & 3: Native Americans and Anglo-Americans
Child, Hobomok
Zitkala-Sa, "Impressions of an Indian childhood," "The school days of an Indian girl"

Weeks 4& 5: Laborers and the Leisure Class
from The Lowell Offering
Davis, Life in the Iron-Mills

Weeks 6,7 & 8: African-Americans and Anglo-Americans
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Week 7: first paper due

Weeks 9 & 10: Interlude: "What I shall assume you shall assume"
Whitman, Song of Myself

Weeks 11 & 12: The "Natural" and the "Unnatural"
James, "The Beast in the Jungle"
Sedgwick, "The Beast in the Closet"
Hartland, The Story of a Life

Weeks 13,14 & 15: "Natives" and New-Comers
James, from The American Scene
Roth, Call It Sleep
Week 14: second paper due

V. Paper assignments

First Essay: Choose one pairing from the following three: Child and Zitkala Sa, Davis and the writers of The Lowell Offering, or Stowe and Jacobs. As preparation for writing, mentally compare and contrast the representations created by the writer of fiction with the self-representations created by the writer of nonfiction or autobiography (e.g., compare Child's Native Americans to Zitkala-Sa's, Stowe's slaves with Jacobs's, or Davis's laborers with the laborers of Lowell). Then, write a paper using those comparisons and contrasts to address some of the following questions: To what extent do the autobiographers seem to respond to the writers of fiction when they represent themselves? To what extent do the autobiographers anticipate readers who might have other writers' fictional representations in mind as they read? Do the autobiographers write about their lives in ways that accord with these representations, or do they persuade readers to glimpse the "truth" behind the fictional representation? Five to seven pages, due during Week 7.

Second Essay: Choose any one of the five pairings we've examined this semester (other than the pairing you explored in your first paper), and find portions or themes in Song of Myself that seem relevant to both of the writers in your chosen pairing. Find ways in which the poem, for instance, speaks of runaway slaves and of slave-sympathizers, depicts Native Americans as well as Anglo-American settlers of the West, or addresses European immigrants who gain ground in America, along with native-born Americans who supposedly lose that ground. Then, address some of the following questions: What does the voice of Song of Myself seem to say to each of the writers in your chosen pairing? Does the voice agree with one writer more than with the other? Does he seem to sympathize with both sides equally, or to express a preference? Does the poem's persona understand the "songs" (or the silences) of people like the writers you've chosen, or does he seem to misapprehend something about them or their ways of singing? Your essay should find a way to discuss both works, as well as relevant sections of the poem, in considerable detail. You're free to use lines such as "Very well, then, I contradict myself" and "I am large, I contain multitudes" from Whitman's poem; but try to use such lines to enrich and complicate, rather than to escape, the questions and debates this question has raised. Ten to twelve pages, due during Week 14.

VI. A sampling of relevant critcism: (Books and articles to be placed on reserve).

Elizabeth Ammons, ed. Uncle Tom's Cabin: Authoritative Text, Background, Contexts, Criticism.

Sara Blair, Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation

Gregg Crane, "Dangerous Sentiments: Sympathy, Rights, and Revolution in Stowe's Antislavery Novels"

Wai Chee Dimock, "Class, Gender, and a History of Metonymy"

Leon Edel, Henry James: a Life

Betsy Erkkila, Walt Whitman the Political Poet

Ed Folsom, Walt Whitman's Native Representations

Jonathan Freedman, "Henry James and the Discourses of Anti-Semitism"

Thomas Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America and Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture.

Sharon Harris, Rebecca Harding Davis and American Social Realism

Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: a Life

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: the Imagination of Genius

Michael Moon, Disseminating Whitman

James Olney, "'I Was Born': Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and Literature"

Thomas Peyser, Utopia and Cosmopolis: Globalization in the Era of American Literary Realism

Jean Pfeaelzer, Parlor Radical: Rebecca Harding Davis and the Origins of American Social Realism

Vivian Pollak, The Erotic Whitman

Ross Posnock, The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James, and the Challenge of Modernity

Mary Louise Pratt, Criticism in the Contact Zone

John Carlos Rowe, The Other Henry James

Karen Sanchez - Eppler, Touching Liberty: Abolitionism, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body

Eric Schocket, "'Discovering Some New Race': Rebecca Harding Davis's 'Life in the Iron-Mills' and the Literary Emergence of Working-Class Whiteness" and "Undercover Explorations of the 'Other Half': Or, the Writer as Class-Transvestite"

Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines

Eric Sundquist, ed. New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin

Kenneth Warren, Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism

Hana Wirth-Nesher, New Essays on Call It Sleep

Rafia Zafar, We Wear the Mask: African-Americans Write Literature, 1760 - 1870 and New Critical Essays on Harriet Jacobs and the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Second Proposed Course Syllabus:

Heroines of Hawthorne and James E Lit 312
A junior-level course awarding three credit hours, proposed and accepted for Spring 2003 by Washington University's English Department and American Culture Studies Program.

Course Objectives:
We will survey of the supposedly scandalous transgressions, love affairs, tragic jiltings, small victories and substantial frustrations we find in fictional portraits of ladies by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) and Henry James (1843 - 1916). Our readings will include, from Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, and "The Artist of the Beautiful"; and from James, works such as Washington Square, The Bostonians, Portrait of a Lady, and "The Turn of the Screw" (including film adaptations). A sample of our guiding questions: when, if ever, does a relatively liberated, "modern" heroine emerge? Do the women whom these authors knew in real life appear as sympathetic or satirical characters in their fiction? Are Hawthorne's and James's heroines merely consigned to defeat, or are they designed to be inspirations for masculine and feminine readers alike? 3 units.

Class outline:
Weeks 1 & 2: from Hawthorne's short fiction: "Alice Doane's Appeal"; "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; "The Birthmark"; "Drowne's Wooden Image"; "Rappaccini's Daughter"; "The Artist of the Beautiful"

Weeks 3, 4 & 5: The Scarlet Letter
presentations for first group during week 5

Weeks 6 & 7: The Blithedale Romance
5 - 7 page paper, "Hawthorne's heroines," due week 6
presentations for second group during week 7

Week 8: "Daisy Miller"

Week 9: Washington Square
excerpts from Holland's film adaptation

Weeks 10, 11 & 12: The Bostonians
presentations for third group during week 12
5 - 7 page paper, "James's ingenues," due week 12

Week 13: The Turn of the Screw
excerpts from Clayton's film adaptation

Weeks 14, 15 & 16: The Wings of the Dove
excerpts from Softley's film adaptation
presentations for fourth group during week 15

7 - 10 page paper, "Liberated women," due at the end of the term

Written requirements:

1. Hawthorne's Heroines
What does an additional heroine from Hawthorne tell us about Hester? Choose one heroine from Hawthorne's canon, whom we have or have not studied as a class, and consider her in relation to Hester Prynne. Your meditations might revolve around the narrators' attitudes toward these heroines, the degree to which they seem independent in their thoughts and actions, their supposed transgressions or sins, their implied status as objects or complex human beings, or their relationships with others as daughters, sisters, fiancees, wives, or mothers. Then, write a paper discussing how the addition of the second heroine should alter readers' understanding of Hester. Perhaps comparing Hester with the second character makes her seem more independent, "realized" to a greater degree, less submissive to the men around her, or less of a conventional mother, than she had originally seemed. Argue whatever seems to be your strongest thesis arising from your comparisons and contrasts, but seek overall to help readers revise their earlier impressions of Hester. Essays of 5 to 7 pages, due during week 6.

2. James's Ingenues
What do the lives of Daisy Miller, Catherine Sloper, and Verena Tarrant suggest to you about the fates of young and impressionable ingenues in Henry James's work, or in his day and age? Take two or, if possible, all three of these characters, and consider their educations, successes, or follies. Then, attempt to derive a general rule (with exceptions) about these young women in relation to their guardians, their suitors, their experiences that build character, their fortunes abroad or at home, or their ultimate mistakes or successes. Your approach should allow you to discuss each heroine extensively, and to call upon passages and details that demonstrate and support your claims. Essays of 5 - 7 pages, due during week 12.

3. Liberated Women
What do you see changing in the fictional depiction of women's lives, as reflected in a small selection of the heroines whom we have studied this semester? Take at least two heroines from our reading selections this semester (these may or may not be the same heroines whom you've written about previously) and argue that they show a general alteration in the lives of women, or in the depiction of women in fiction. You might argue that you observe increased liberation or intensified repression, greater independence or continued submissiveness, greater "interiority" for fictional characters or continued objectification, or some other change of your choice. You are encouraged to call upon the criticism you used during your group presentations (a list appears below), or to mention relevant historical events, such as suffrage movements, changes in definitions of families and marriages, or women's career choices. Essays of 7 - 10 pages, due at the end of the term.

Oral requirements:

Students are expected to participate actively in the class discussion and to cooperate with fellow students for one panel presentation. When your group presents, arrive with questions to pose, significant passages to interpret, references to criticism to bring to the class's attention, and plans for facilitating class discussion. These groups should plan these presentations with the instructor well before the day arrives.

Criticism on reserve:

McCall, Dan. Citizens of Somewhere Else: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James.

Idol, John L. and Melinda Ponder, eds. Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition.

Coale, Samuel. Mesmerism and Hawthorne: Mediums of American Romance.

Romera, Laura. Home Fronts: Domesticity and its Critics in Antebellum America.

Bentley, Nancy. The Ethnography of Manners: Hawthorne, James, Wharton

Walter, T. Herbert. Dearest Beloved: The Hawthornes and the Making of the Middle-Class Family.

Bell, Millicent, ed. New Essays on Hawthorne's Major Tales.

Brown, Gillian. Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America

Thickston, Margaret. Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representations of Women.

Person, Leland. Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Melville, Poe, and Hawthorne.

Hutner, Gordon: Secrets of Sympathy: Forms of Disclosure in Hawthorne's Novels

Brodhead, Richard. The School of Hawthorne.

Berlant, Lauren. The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life

Colacurcio, Michael. The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales.

Eakin, Paul John. New England Girl: Cultural Ideals in Hawthorne, Stowe, Howells, and James.

Hadley, Tessa. Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure

Izzo, Donatello. Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James.

Graham, Wendy. Henry James's Thwarted Love.

Lustig, T. J. Henry James and the Ghostly.

Pollak, Vivian, ed. New Essays on "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn of the Screw"

McWhirter, David. Desire and Love in Henry James.

Greiner, Donald J. Adultery in the American Novel: Updike, James, and Hawthorne

Habegger, Alfred. Gender, Fantasy, and Realism in American Literature

Sicker, Philip. Love and the Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Henry James.