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Introduction to American Literature

ENGL 200.910
instructor(s):
MTWR 10:40-12:15

This summer English 200 will build its inquiry upon the architectural
metaphor of construction.  We will observe issues of design:  how has the
American literary canon been constructed and reconstructed?  how does
theory buttress our experience of texts?  And we will also observe issues
of production:  how do marketplace forces shape texts and audiences?  how
have the reputations of writers been built and rebuilt?   After a brief
survey of 17th and 18th century writers and notions about the place of
literature in an emerging culture, we will read an array of autobiography,
essays, novels, shot fiction, and poetry; a collection including colonial
naratives, Franklin's Autobiography, Jacob's Incident's in the Life of a
Slave Girl,  Thoreau' s  Walden,  Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, portions of
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and DuBois's and othersThe Souls of Black Folk.
 Requirements will include three papers (two shorter and one longer),
informal oral presentations, and a willingness to "Unscrew the licks from
the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from the jambs".  Auxiliary
readings (some recommended, some required) will cover such figures as
Bradstreet, Taylor, Wheatley, Freneau, Emerson, Dickinson.

fulfills requirements