Professor Karen Weyler
English 630-01: Studies in Early American Literature and
Culture
Wednesdays
Spring 2003
Office:
McIver 109
Office hours:
MF
Telephone: 334-4689 Email:
KAWeyler@uncg.edu Web site: http://www.uncg.edu/~kaweyler
Required
Texts
Brown, Charles
Brockden. Edgar Huntly. Penguin
Carretta,
Vincent. Unchained Voices.
Davidson, Cathy. Revolution and the Word.
Derounian-Stodola,
Kathryn Zabelle, ed.
Women's Indian
Captivity Narratives. Penguin
Foster, Hannah. The Coquette. Penguin
Mulford, Carla, ed. Early American Writings.
Course
Description
English
630 is a graduate-level course in early American literature for students
seeking the M.A., M.F.A., M.Ed., and Ph.D. degrees. This course is designed as an intensive
introductory seminar for graduate students in the field of early American
studies, focusing on literature in the
Major
literary and critical subjects include: rival models of colonialism and
colonization; contradictions in the ideas and ideals of civilization;
controversies over race and gender in early modern culture; and, the
development of nationalism. “Early
American Literature” includes, among others things, Spanish, French, and
English exploration texts; the literature of settlement and revolution; early
English-language texts of Native Americans; and writings of Africans both slave
and free, in London as well as in the American colonies.
Student
Learning Goals
By
the end of the semester, students will be able to write and speak insightfully
about the rationales and consequences of European exploration and settlement of
Course
Requirements and Evaluation
•
Term Paper (17-18 pages) 45%
•
Presentations (3 total) 30%
• Response Papers (2 total) 10%
•
Class Participation 15%
Office
Hours and Conferences
You are welcome to
visit my office at any point during the semester or to schedule an appointment
outside of my usual office hours in order to discuss reading assignments,
papers, etc.
Academic
Integrity Policy
I expect every student
to abide by the principles of the Academic Integrity Policy, which appears in
the Student Handbook. Students will need
to sign the Academic Integrity Pledge on all major work. In addition, you must properly document any
use of another's words, ideas, or research; unacknowledged use of someone
else's thoughts is plagiarism. Please
use MLA style documentation to document any sources used in written work. Work that is not properly documented will
receive a zero; further penalties may be assessed according to the criteria
established under the Academic Integrity Policy. If you have questions concerning
documentation, please consult me.
Attendance
Policy
In a discussion class,
your presence is important to the success of the class as a whole;
consequently, I require students to attend at least 75% of the scheduled class
meetings in order to pass this class.
More than two absences, regardless of excuse, may negatively impact your
grade. Four or more absences, regardless
of excuse, will result in the student being dropped from the class.
Course Calendar
Please note that this
syllabus is subject to change. In the
event of inclement weather, you should be guided by the UNCG adverse weather
policy. If necessary, I will send out
email informing you of any changes in our schedule of readings.
I've grouped your
readings by topic, in rough chronological order. We will not be able to discuss every text in
detail, but the range of readings for each topic will provide you with a broad
perspective.
W Jan. 15 Course
introduction
W Jan. 22 Spain in
the New World: Europeans' New World
23-28; Columbus, 28-43; de Las Casas 52-60; Cabeza de Vaca 60-68; de Castaneda
68-73; New Spain 358-60; Sor Juana 361-72; Pueblo Conflict 384-94; Fray Delgado
394-98
Review
texts: Patricia Seed, American Pentimento:
The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches;
David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in
W Jan. 29
Review
text: James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in
Colonial North America
W Feb. 5 The
British South and
Review
text: Leo Lemay, The American Dream of Captain John Smith.
W Feb. 12 Settlement
of
Review
texts: Sacvan Bercovitch, Rites of Assent; Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad; Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in
W Feb. 19 Heresies,
Witches, and Other Challenges to the Puritan Theocracy: Morton 250-57; Williams
257-58; 264-65;
additional readings by Mather, on the
Review
texts: Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare; Karol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
W Feb. 26 Indian
Conflict: in Mulford: Williams 328-49;
in Derounian-Stodola:
Rowlandson 1-51; Jemison 119-210
Review
texts: John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family
Story from Early
Richard
Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier,
1600-1800
W Mar. 5 The Great Awakening and Religious Pluralism: Edwards 668-87; Chauncy 687-97; Occom 867-83;
Ashbridge 602-15; Woolman 615-16; 620-28
March 10 – 14: No Class:
Spring Break
W Mar. 19 The American Revolution:
Paine 836-48;
Review
texts: Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal
Authority; Sandra Gustafson, Eloquence
is Power
W Mar. 26 The Black
Review
text: Pauline Schloesser, The Fair Sex: White Women and Racial Patriarchy in the
W Apr. 2 Eighteenth-Century
Women's Culture: Turrell 815-17; Terry
822-23; Moore 825-26; Stockton 829-36; Warren 1008-22; Adams 1029-37; Murray
1039-51
Review
texts: Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic; Laurel Thatcher
Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her
Diary, 1785-1812
W Apr. 9 Foster, The Coquette (all); Davidson, Revolution and the Word 1-150
W Apr. 16 Brown, Edgar Huntly (all); Davidson, Revolution and the
Word 212-53
W Apr. 23 Seminar
Presentations
W Apr. 30 Seminar
Presentations
Final
version of essay due by
Karen
Weyler
English
630: Studies in Early American
Literature and Culture
Oral
Presentations and
Response Papers
Oral Presentations
Over the course of the semester, each student
will be responsible for three presentations.
These presentations will be as follows:
1)
Book Review
These reviews are intended to introduce you and
your classmates to some of the major studies of early American literature as
well as to give you a chance to practice writing a book review. You will be responsible for summarizing for
the class the main argument(s) of the book/article, along with the critic's
general approach and supporting evidence.
Consider how this argument might be useful to us, ways to extend this
argument, the methodology, flaws or gaps in the argument, etc. Your review should be about three pages in
length. A good rule of thumb for reviews
is to aim for about 2/3 summary and 1/3 analysis. For models, you may look at recent reviews in
American Literature or Early American Literature.
You will turn in to me the written version of
your review on the day you give it. For
the oral portion of your report, you will read your paper. Afterward, be prepared to answer questions
about your topic and how it relates to our readings.
2)
Pedagogical assignment
For this assignment, you will put together a
teaching unit of early American literature.
Many of you plan to teach literature, at one level or another. If you are called upon to teach early
American literature, how would you do so?
What would be your teaching goals?
What would you want students to learn?
What teaching strategies would you use to achieve those goals? This assignment will help you think through
some of these issues as you develop a sample teaching unit for early American
literature.
You will:
define the class level (e.g. high school, college level survey, etc.);
develop teaching and learning goals relevant to that class level; decide which
texts and editions you will use; and, develop reading and writing assignments.
These presentations will be scheduled at the end
of the semester. You'll have 5 minutes
in which to present your ideas to the class.
Make enough copies of all your materials so that everyone in the class
can take home a copy.
3) Research presentations
These are scheduled on the syllabus for the end
of the semester. During these
presentations, you will deliver a short version of your essay to your
classmates, with time allowed for discussion.
Each student will also serve as a respondent to another student's paper.
Response Papers
Each of you will be responsible for writing two
response papers over the course of the semester, which we will use to
jump-start our discussions. At the
beginning of the semester, I'll set up an assignment schedule for dates/topics. In your response paper, you should indicate
what strikes you as interesting, surprising, and significant. What questions were you left with? You'll bring to class two copies of your
response paper—one to give to me at the beginning of class, and the other to
read aloud to begin our discussion.
Karen Weyler
English 630: Studies in Early American Literature and
Culture
Research Paper Assignment
Due dates:
Prospectus and proposed
bibliography: no later than Monday,
March 31. (I'll return these in-class on April 2)
Final version of paper:
Friday, May 2,
Length and formatting of final essay: 17-18
pp. All essays should be typed and
double-spaced with 1 ½ inch margins and a professional-looking 11- or 12-point
font. All source material should be
cited parenthetically according to MLA style.
Your final project for this
class is a research paper of significant scope.
You should: develop an original
idea about one or more of the texts that we have read; research your idea in
the relevant scholarship; and then coherently argue for your idea throughout
your essay, while gracefully incorporating scholarly evidence to further your
argument.
The prospectus that is due by
March 31 will provide a preliminary overview of what you intend to do in the
final paper. I’ll respond to your
prospectus with comments designed to guide you in further work on your
topic. I’ll suggest which avenues of
inquiry seem most productive and which seem least productive. I’ll also comment on the quality of your
proposed sources. You are encouraged to
use me as a sounding board before you turn in a prospectus.
Your prospectus should be 1-2
pages in length. In it, you should
sketch out the major elements of your argument, including questions or issues
you want to explore. This is not an
outline—your prospectus should be written in well-organized paragraphs. Along with your prospectus, include a “Works
to be Consulted” page that lists the sources you
intend to consult. You do not have to
have read all these sources yet. In
fact, you may need to request some of them through interlibrary loan—order
those as soon as possible so that they will arrive in time to be useful to you.
Library Research: The amount of scholarly research on the
authors whose works we have read this semester varies widely. There is considerable scholarship on Jonathan
Edwards, for instance, but not as much on Samson Occom. Obviously you can’t read everything written
about Edwards and will thus have to be selective in
your sources, but you could easily look at everything relevant to your topic
written about Samson Occom's narrative.
There is no magic number of
scholarly sources for any given paper, but I expect your essay to demonstrate a
professional awareness of the present state of scholarship on your topic. That means your scholarship needs to cover
both important earlier scholarship and studies that are well as more recent.
Where to start with
research: After you have a potential
topic or two in mind, spend some time with the MLA Bibliography, which you can
access from the library itself or the library’s home page. Has your topic been done to death?
That fact that there are many
entries on a particular topic doesn’t mean you can’t write on it. You can still write on that topic, IF you
have something new to say, something new to contribute to the scholarly
conversation on this topic. If you
have nothing new to say, then you should choose a different topic, as I am not
interested in reading a simple survey of the scholarship.
Note: While the Dictionary of Literary Biography
entries and other biographically-based reference essays are useful for
providing background information, but they do not provide enough depth for a
graduate-level research paper. If you
need biographical information for your essay, you should consult a standard
biography. In general, however, you will
want to avoid excessive use of biographical information.
Student research
presentations are scheduled for the last two weeks of the semester. I'll announce the schedule once I know what
your topics are. You'll be expected to
give a formal, 8-10 minute version of your paper, to be followed by a 10 minute
discussion led by a respondent (one of your classmates). We have numerous reports to hear, so I will
hold you strictly accountable for time.