ENGL 2007 - N Survey of American Literature II

Abstract

American Literature II is an introductory survey of the period between the end of the Civil War and the present. We’ll read a wide variety of works over a broad sweep of time. We’ll learn about some of the literary movements of the time, starting with the realist tradition and ending with postmodernism, and about some of the schools of poetry that have emerged over the period. We’ll consider literature in its context and look at how literature responds to changes in the culture at large. Fiction will include works by Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Abraham Cahan, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Maxine Hong Kingston, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and Mark Twain. Poetry will include (but not be limited to) works by Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. We’ll also be reading a play, August Wilson’s Fences. You’ll write two reading response letters, respond to peer discussion forums, give a short presentation, and write one argument paper in two drafts (7-10 pages.) There will not be a midterm or a final. ___ In this course, you will: • Practice skills in close reading and interpretation • Express ideas in writing and practice revising your work • Gain familiarity with the social and political forces shaping American culture during the period and understand literature in its cultural and intellectual context • Understand the literary movements of the period (i.e. modernism, realism, regionalism)