Intro to Lit: Literary History (AM Landscapes)

American Landscapes

 

This course examines how authors of
short stories, novels, nonfiction, poetry, and drama from the mid-19
th century to
the present have described and conceptualized the changing landscape across the
United States. Thinking of landscape in terms of place, space, identity, and
environment, we will consider the implications of the natural
topography—rivers, mountains, vast plains, coastlines, forested lands, urban
developments and suburban enclaves. This will give us opportunities to write
and analyze how landscape offers freedoms but, at the same time, alters
patterns of community, creates hardships, imposes responsibilities, and
produces new ideological formations and social tensions.  Selected readings will include Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, Zitkala Sa’s Impressions of an Indian Childhood,
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, Abraham
Cahan’s “A Sweatshop Romance,” Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.

 

Classes will be discussions
(sometimes small-group discussions) with one person introducing the focus of
each session through a selected passage from the reading. There will be a
number of thesis-driven essays and revisions, in class midterm, and a final
exam essay, all within the context of writing-intensive practice and
requirements.

 

Text: NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, Volume 2: 1865 TO
THE PRESENT. Shorter Eighth Edition. 2012.