Office hours: Available after class both days, usually until 4:00 if needed; plus Tuesday 11:00- 12:00, Wednesday 1:00-1:50. I also hope to arrange a "virtual" office hour especially for this class on WebCT.

Course WebCT site: Go to http://mm3.uni.edu. If you are having trouble using the site please come see me and I’ll walk you through it on my office computer.

In this class we will explore the diverse writings produced in America from the Discovery period to the 1820s. We will approach this material with attention to its historical context, the literary and intellectual developments displayed by the texts, and to the questions of race, class, gender, and cultural authority. I have structured the semester to give prominence to several areas that are of particular interest to me, and which I think you will also find relevant and interesting: the tension between the ideal of a "holy society" in 17th-century New England and the challenge posed by various "others" (women, religious dissenters, Indians, "witches"); the changing ways people used the writing of autobiography to represent themselves and their world in the 18th century; and tensions in the ideology of revolution and nationhood, which manifest themselves, among other places, in the emerging genre of narrative fiction.

Along the way, we will find ourselves extensively engaged in the question, just what, and who, is "American"? Who gets to speak for this identity, how, and for what end? What is the function of writing in a society engaged in the process of self-definition? Equally, our readings will raise the question, what is "literature"? Is it a kind of writing, or a way of reading? Who defines when writing becomes literature? Is there an American literature, or many literatures? In addition to gaining knowledge of a fascinating body of material that is also central to understanding later writers, I hope students will learn a new set of questions to bring to their readings, and gain an expanded awareness of current debates among scholars over the changing literary canon.

Lauter et al, eds., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. I (Houghton Miffin)

Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft (Northeastern University Press)

William Apess, A Son of the Forest and Other Writings (University of Massachusetts Press)

William Hill Brown and Hannah Webster Foster, The Power of Sympathy and The Coquette (Penguin)

This is a WebCT course with an online component. To get to the course site, go to http://mm3.uni.edu and follow the directions from there. In addition to an online version of the syllabus with hotlinks to relevant websites and a course calendar with announcements and bulletins, and a mail program that will make it easy to send e-mail to one or many other class members, there is a bulletin board. You will be required to post a minimum of seven times to this board as part of your work for the course. WebCT also has the potential for real-time chat; you can conference with other class members any time you want, and I will try to set up some "virtual office hours" where you can talk with me online at times. (This is my first experiment with WebCT, indeed the first in the English Department, so there may be some glitches; be patient!)

My online research base for Early American studies:  http://fp.uni.edu/myles/amlit.htm.

There will be a number of background articles available for the course on reserve in the library (the list is part of this syllabus). 

Prerequisites: 620:034 or consent of instructor; junior standing.

Participation: This class is a joint effort. Your part is to read and participate actively in every class. We will be reading texts that may feel quite remote to you in their language, assumptions, and forms, and you may often feel uncertain how to discuss them in a "literary" way; so do I, sometimes. Developing the kinds of questions that it is appropriate to ask of these texts will be a large part of our work together. I encourage you not to fear a productive uncertainty as we journey through the textual wilderness. Your participation, along with your attention to your classmates and thoughtful responses to what they say and write, will create an engaging course.

I take attendance, and frequent absences are likely affect your final grade. If something comes up that will cause you to miss a number of classes, please let me know as soon as you conveniently can. Claims that although not in class you are "still keeping up with the reading" must be substantiated by regular and timely postings to the class message boards.

1. Posting on WebCT bulletin boards. You are required to do an initial post in the "I Made It!" forum by the end of the second week of classes to show that you’ve managed to find the site. You will be required to read what other people have written in the various "fora" (that’s plural for "forum") and to post messages a minimum of six additional times over the course of the semester, either on weekly discussion topics I will initiate, on ongoing topics, or by initiating a topic of your own. To be counted for credit, a posting must be at least a short paragraph long (four sentences or so); posts of only a line or two will not be counted towards your six. I hope most of you will feel comfortable using the board regularly, as it is designed to be a supplement to class discussion (hopefully an enjoyable one), not primarily a way of evaluating your performance. If you are very active on the bulletin boards, however, it will be considered a valuable form of class participation that is likely to raise your final grade. Grading: Six countable posts on any topic appropriate to the course will gain you the full 50 points for this section.

2. Oral and web-posted research report on a course-related topic. Topics will be chosen early in the semester in consultation with me. They may involve doing extra critical reading related to a text we are studying, doing background research on a historical or cultural topic, or reading writers not covered in class; teaching-related topics are also possible. You will post an annotated bibliography, any relevant web links, and a brief synopsis on the class WebCT site during the week of your presentation. Grading: The grade will be about half for the quality of your content and presentation in class and half for the posted form.

3. Written response to critical articles. A series of 15-20 key critical articles (or book chapters) in the field will be placed on reserve in the library. You are required to read five of these articles and write a short (approximately two page) summary/analytic response to each of them. At least three responses will be due by October 3; the remaining responses will be due by Thanksgiving.

a) briefly describe the content of the article or chapter;

b) if possible, extend or connect the article’s ideas to readings or discussions in our class;

c) describe, to the extent you are able to, the author’s interests, perspectives, and position within the field of early American studies. For example, is this writer a literary scholar or a historian, and what difference does it make? Is s/he breaking new ground, challenging an existing interpretation (whose?) with new ideas, or presenting known information to a new audience? What does s/he think is right or wrong with others’ approaches?

d) did you find this article helpful or not? In what ways? What if anything was confusing for you? How might you draw on this author’s approach in your own reading and writing about early American texts?

You do not have to do b, c, and d in every paper, but you should attempt at least two of them each time. Grading: 10 points per response; you will receive full points if your response is at least 1.75 pages long, addresses the appropriate topics, and shows a good-faith effort to engage with the article, even if you had trouble understanding everything it said.

4. Midterm essay, 5-6 pages. This will be a close analysis of the rhetorical design of one of the New England texts we have read. Your paper will consider the following sorts of questions, although you will formulate your paper so as to make a specific claim about the particular text you are analyzing: How does the work you’ve chosen do whatever you think it is designed to do -- politically, spiritually, emotionally, and/or artistically? What is known, or implied, about the situation of the author and his/her audience? What beliefs or ways of seeing the world does the text draw on, and/or appeal to in its audience? How does its language, symbolism, structure, and use of other texts (such as the Bible) work to accomplish its design?

5. Final paper or teaching project, 10-12 page range. Option A: An analytic essay on a topic of your choice, drawing on at least two texts we have studied (or others). Secondary sources are recommended to improve your grasp of the background and relevant history, but are not formally required. Option B, Allowed (not required) for secondary teaching majors, and open to others who convince me they have a good reason for wanting to try it: Design a 3-4 week unit on some aspect of early American literature you would like to teach in the context of a high school literature course.

Grading:

Your semester grade will be based on the following percentage scale, minus subtraction for poor attendance or late/missing work not factored into other grading. Strong class participation will raise your semester grade if the grades for your written work do not seem to fully reflect your engagement in the material and the course.

Reading and Assignment Schedule

August

Writing Beginnings

22

Introduction

24

1-27; "Talk Concerning the First Beginning" (Zuni), 27-41; "The Origin of Stories" (Seneca), 56-58; "Raven and Marriage" (Tlingit), 62- 67

Find WebCT site (http://mm3.uni.edu).

Look at reader resources available at http://www.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/#readers, especially the Literature Links for relevant section of volume 1.

Native American Resources on the internet: http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/

Christopher Columbus, from Journal of the First Voyage to America, Narrative of the Third Voyage, 116-128; Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, from Relation, 128-140; Samuel de Champlain, from The Voyages, 173-178

1492:  An Ongoing Voyage: http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/intro.html

31

Thomas Harriot, from A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia [xerox]; John Smith, from The Generall Historie of Virginia..., 184-192 [plus xerox]; from A Description of New England 192-199

An exhibition on Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas: http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/kislak/index/cultural.html

Virtual Jamestown, http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/page2.html

A worthwhile essay on sexuality in the invasion of America: http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstruction/SexualityAndInvasion.html

"Colonial Period: to 1700," 3-20; Pocahontas film / discussion

William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation 245-266; Thomas Morton, from New English Canaan 215-223; from The Journal of John Winthrop 239-245

Library of resources related to Plymouth, http://www.plimoth.org/Library/library.htm

The living history museum itself is also worth exploring: http://www.plimoth.org/Museum/museum.htm

The Culture of Puritanism and the Problem of Difference

John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," 226-234; Thomas Hooker, "The Application of Redemption" [xerox]; Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," 592-604

A page with definition of key concepts in New England Puritanism, and links to essential bibliography: http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/purdef.htm

Fire and Ice: A site on Puritan writings: http://www.puritansermons.com/

Roger Williams, all 267-289; [Anne Hutchinson], from John Winthrop A Short Story of the Rise, reign, and ruin... plus trial transcripts [xerox]

Overview of Anne Hutchinson’s life: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/ah.html

Complete transcript of Hutchinson’s examination before the General Court: http://www2.pitnet.net/primarysources/hutchinson.html

Early Quaker writing; Mary Dyer and the "New England Martyrs" [xeroxed selections from 1659-61 Quaker narratives of ‘sufferings’], plus read an overview of Mary Dyer’s life, with links to letters by her and her husband: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/dyer.html

Quaker women, 17^th-19^th century: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~helfrich/

21

Anne Bradstreet, all poetry (can skip "Contemplations") 289-315; Michael Wigglesworth, from The Day of Doom, 315-26; other seventeenth-century poetry, 460-470

A Bradstreet page with links: http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/bradstreet.htm

poetry, continued

28

Mary Rowlandson, from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration, 340-66; Cotton Mather, narrative of Hannah Dustan [xerox]

A Mary Rowlandson page: http://www.mta.ca/faculty/humanities/religious/3041/maryrowl.htm

Bibliography on MR and captivity narratives: http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/capbib.htm

Rowlandson, finish; William Apess, "Eulogy on King Philip" (in A Son of the Forest)

A William Apess page: http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/apess.htm

Edward Taylor, poems 366-406 (I’ll indicate which to focus on)

Selected bibliography on ET, http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/taylorbib.htm

Cotton Mather, from Magnalia 425-433; from Wonders of the Invisible World, 421-425; Chap. 9, Three Sermons, from Salem Village Witchcraft (124-136)

Cotton Mather page: http://www.gty.org/~phil/mather.htm

12

Salem Village Witchcraft, read at least two of the following three trial records: chaps. 2, 3, 5; plus chapters 7 (contemporary accounts and reactions) and 8 (comment by outside authorities).

The Salem Witchcraft Papers (complete primary texts) http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/texts/

Salem Witchcraft Trials: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SALEM.HTM

Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and America, an extensive scholarly bibliography, http://www.hist.unt.edu/witch01.htm

Salem materials, finish; Samuel Sewall, from Diary, plus The Selling of Joseph, 408-419

Some Sewall background & images:http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/3092/famous11.htm

Elizabeth Ashbridge, from Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life... 605-616

A complete version of the Ashbridge text: http://www.sewanee.edu/amstudies/Ashbridge.html

"Eighteenth Century," 503-526, plus 527-29; John Woolman, from The Journal of John Woolman, 616-630; "Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," 630-636

John Woolman, Quintessential Quaker: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/quakerism/38392

Quakerism in the 18th century:  http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/quakerism/22168

Benjamin Franklin, 717-720, "The Way to Wealth," 724-730; "A Witch Trial at Mount

Holly," 730-731; "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America," 754-758; "On the Slave-Trade," 758-60

The World of Benjamin Franklin:  http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/rotten.html

Benjamin Franklin, from The Autobiography, 762-819

I will be away at a conference. I will try to arrange a showing of the video "A Midwife’s Story" during class time; alternatively, class will be cancelled and the video left on reserve in the library.

Learn more about the woman (Martha Ballard) and book (by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich) this film is based on at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/midwife/ and http://www.dohistory.org/book/.

Week 13

7

Briton Hammon, Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance, 1002-1008; Lucy Terry, "Bars Fight," 676; Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," 1104, "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," 1106; Letter to Samson Occom, 1112; Olaudah Equiano, from The Interesting Narrative of the Life... 1018-1050

PBS site on Africans in America; excellent 18^th-C resources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html

An Equiano page with bibliography: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/equiano.html

William Apess, A Son of the Forest

An interesting exhibition site on print and native cultures: http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/kislak/print/williamapes.html

Thomas Paine, from Common Sense, 882-890; John Leacock, from The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times, 841-847; Milcah Martha Moore, "The Female Patriots," 692-93; Phillis Wheatley, "To His Excellency, General Washington," 1108-10; Lemuel Haynes, "Liberty Further Extended," 1112-1124

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, from Letters of an American Farmer, 849-866; Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia 923-940

Thomas Paine National Historical Association (lots of links): http://www.mediapro.net/cdadesign/paine/home.html

Look at the handwritten, edited draft of the Declaration of Independence: http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/conpict.html

The Revolutionary era through the media of the day (kind of hokey, but good images): http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/index.html

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, from Letters of an American Farmer, Letter XII, 866-882; "Landscapes" [xerox]; Ann Elizabeth Bleecker, "Written in the Retreat from Burgoyne," 699-700.

Remaining critical article responses due by today

A Crevecoeur page: http://www.nt1.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/c/crevecoeur1718.htm

23

Royall Tyler, The Contrast, A Comedy in Five Acts, 1147-88

A Royall Tyler page with bibliography: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/tyler.html

Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes," 1058-65; Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette

The Judith Sargeant Murray Society: http://www.hurdsmith.com/judith/

The Coquette, finish

Charles Brockden Brown, "Somnambulism, a fragment," 1226-1241

A Brown page: http://www.nt1.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/b/brown19ro.htm

The Literary Gothic: http://www.litgothic.com/

Exam Period 1-2:50 p.m. (Wednesday): Final essay or teaching project due at this time

You are required to read five of these articles and write a short (approximately two page) summary/analytic response to each of them. At least three responses will be due by October 3; the remaining responses will be due by Thanksgiving.

Perry Miller, "Errand into the Wilderness" (chap. 1). In Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1956. (Miller is the "Big Daddy" from whom modern scholarship of New England springs; this article is a good introduction to his approach. You may also substitute any chapter in Miller’s The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1939).

Sacvan Bercovitch, "The Ends of Puritan Rhetoric" (chap 3). In The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America. New York: Routledge, 1993. ("Big Daddy" number two. His thesis is that Pur. rhetoric and symbology has structured America to this day. You may substitute chapters 4 or 5 from this book, or read an early chapter from either of his two main books, The Puritan Origins of the American Self or The American Jeremiad.

De Prospo, Richard. "Marginalizing Early American Literature." New Literary History 23.2 (1992): 233-65. (An insightful article about the state of the field of early American literary studies. There have been some changes since he wrote this, but I think it still is quite valid.)

Harris, Sharon M. "Contemporary Theories and Early American Literature." Early American Literature 29.2 (1994): [pages?]. (A forum where three scholars attempt to model applying feminist, social, and queer theories to early American lit. I have mixed feelings about how well they do it, but if you’re interested in theory, see what you think.)

Spengemann, William C. "Early American Literature as a Period of Literary Study." In A New World of Words: Redefining Early American Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. (Spengemann is well known as a gadfly in the field. How would you compare his approach to Miller’s or Bercovitch’s, or compare his critique to DeProspo’s?)

Warner, Michael. "What’s Colonial About Colonial America?" In Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed Robert St. George. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. (Takes a stab at defining what being colonial actually means/does in this literature. Clearly written and illuminating.)

Andrew Wiget, "Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History." American Literary History 3.2 (1991): 209-31. (An excellent article by an important scholar of Native American literature; addresses a number of Heath Anthology texts.)

James Axtell, "Imagining the Other: First Encounters in North America" (chap. 1). In Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (Axtell is an ethnohistorian and extremely important in this field. A clear chapter about an important topic.)

Stephen Greenblatt, "Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century." In Fredi Chiappelli, ed., First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. (A classic article about European/Native encounter by a major Renaissance scholar; great article to read if you’re interested in Renaissance literature.)

James Axtell, "Reduce them to Civility" (chap. 7). In The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. (On Puritans and Indians in New England)

Jeffrey Hammond, "The Forgotten Pilgrim: Biblical Reading and the Puritan Experience of Poetry" (chap. 1). In Sinful Self, Saintly Self: The Puritan Experience of Poetry. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1993. (You may also substitute the two Anne Bradstreet chapters in this volume.)

Patricia Caldwell, "The Antinomian Language Controversy." Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 345-67. (Still probably the best article about Anne Hutchinson I’ve read, and there are tons.)

Michael Warner, "New English Sodom." American Literature 64.1 (1992): 19-47. (Fascinating article on the image of Sodom and homoerotic dynamics within Puritan orthodoxy.)

Elizabeth Reisman, "The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul." In Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. (Current gender-studies approach to the issues suggested by the titles.)

Tara Fitzpatrick, "The Figure of Captivity: The Cultural Work of the Puritan Captivity Narrative." American Literary History 3 (1991): 1-26. (Good overview of this subject.)

Christopher Castiglia, "Her Tortues were Turned into Frolick: Captivity and Liminal Critique, 1682-1862" (chap. 2). In Bound and Determined: Captivity, Culture-Crossing, and White Womanhood from Mary Rowlandson to Patty Hearst. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. (Interesting theoretical approach; focuses on Rowlandson but not exclusively.)

Mechal Sobel, "The Revolution in Selves: Black and White Inner Aliens." In Through A Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America, eds. Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. (Conceptions of "self" in the eighteenth century, also a section on dreams; compelling article if you’re interested in autobiography. Deals with race but not quite as centrally as it sounds.)

Rosalie Murphy Baum, "Early-American Literature: Reassessing the Black Contribution." Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (1994): 533-50. (What it sounds like!)

Nelson, Dana D. "An Uncommon Need: ‘Race’ in Early American Literature" (chap. 1). In The World in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638-1807. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (Takes on this topic in broad terms.)

Nelson, Dana D. "Reading the Written Selves of Colonial America: Franklin, Occom, Equiano, and Palou-Serra." Resources for American Literary Study 19.2 (1993): 246-59. (A study/teaching-oriented look at a few figures in particular.)

Robert A. Ferguson, "What is Enlightenment? Some American Answers." In The Cambridge History of American Literature. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. 307-44. (Up to date starting point on this fundamental topic.)

Jay Fliegelman, "The Debt of Nature Reconsidered" (chap. 4). In Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. (On ideas of the family in Revolutionary ideology; discusses Ben Franklin quite a bit.)

Shields, David S. "British-American Belles Lettres." In The Cambridge History of American Literature. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. 307-44. (Shields is an expert on 18^th-C. poetry and the salon culture.)

Richards, Phillip M. "Phillis Wheatley and Literary Americanization." American Quarterly 44 (1992): 163-91. (How and why a Black poet adapts English literary forms.)

Cathy Davidson, "Privileging the Feme Covert: The Sociology of Sentimental Fiction" (chap. 6). In Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. (One of the first books to do serious work with 18^th C. women writers; influenced my approach a lot.)

Elizabeth Barnes, "Seductive Education, and the Virtues of the Republic" (chap. 2). In States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. (More recent work on The Coquette and related texts.)