American Literature II: 1865 to the Present

Elizabeth Boyle // boyle30@purdue.edu

English 200

Course Description:
In this course, we will survey American Literature from 1865 to
the present. Our class discussions will consider why certain texts
make it into the canon of American literature, the major themes
that define American literary history, and the relationship between
literature and national identity. In short, we’ll ask not only what
makes American literature American, but also how American
literature helps define what it means to be American at different
moments in history. To identify and examine various facets of
American literary culture, we’ll read canonical and non-canonical
works by American authors like Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston,
Sylvia Plath, e. e. cummings, Stephen Chobsky, and Sherman
Alexie. Through such voices, we’ll examine how Americans have
historically used literature to represent and respond to concerns
surrounding such themes as: modernity; urbanization; changes in
ethnic, racial, and gender relations; national and global conflict;
and rapid technological innovation.
Course Objectives:
¬ Explore our national culture(s) as they are represented
in literature;
¬ Understand how and why certain genres became popular
at different moments in American history;
¬ Situate American literature within its broader historical,
cultural, and aesthetic contexts;
¬ Utilize difference methodologies and perspectives to
research and analyze literary works.
Required Texts and Materials:
¬ The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volumes C,
D, E (1865 to Present), Ninth Edition (978-0-393-
26455-5);
¬ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (MTV,
9780671027344);
¬ Printing funds and supplies.

Assignments:
¬ Exams (50%): Each of the exams we take this semester is worth 15% of your final grade. The exams will mark the end of
each unit, which are organized as follows: Unit 1, 1865-1910; Unit 2, 1910-1945; Unit 3, 1945-Present. The first two exams
will take place during our regularly scheduled class meetings (during week 4 and week 8, respectively) and the last exam will
be held during finals week (time and location to follow). If enough of the class is interested, we can schedule review sessions
outside of our regular class time.
 ¬ Class Discussion Prompts (15%): Once a week (with the exception of the first week), you will submit a brief discussion board
post (by 5pm the night before we meet) listing two aspects of the reading you’d like us to address during that class or our
subsequent classes that week. You are free to choose the day you’d like to submit a discussion prompt, but you should post
once per week; this means that on exam weeks you will have only one option for posting. In these prompts, you can ask a
question about a scene, theme, or historical detail, make an argument about a connection between two readings, and/or call
our attention to similarities/differences between the present readings and past readings. We will draw on these discussion
board posts when conducting class discussion, so try to read your peers’ posts before we meet.

¬ Passage Interrogation Assignments (35%): This semester, you will complete three “Passage Interrogation” close reading
assignments—one for each course unit. For each of these assignments, select a 250-word passage from one of our
assigned readings we completed during that unit. Type this passage in a word-processing (Microsoft Word or Pages)
document and then, using the “Footnote” feature of your word processing software and the Oxford English Dictionary,
interrogate the text by annotating the words, phrases, references, and sentences in that passage. Your goal in this
assignment is to observe interactions between the passage’s overall meaning (and its relationship to the broader work) and
its individual parts (words, phrases, and references). Your grade for this assignment will be based on two parts: 1.) your
annotated passage and 2.) a brief (3-page) reflective synthesis essay where you make explicit connections between the
individual items you’ve identified/annotated in your selected passage and the broader work.

Course Calendar:
* All readings, except Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and those labeled “Blackboard,” are in one of the three Norton
anthologies. I’ve indicated the volume and page number for each reading parenthetically. Every author’s section is prefaced by a
biographical note; you are responsible for this material whether or not the headnote is included in the reading assignments below.

Unit 1, 1865 -1914

week Topic: A Nation Transformed

1
Tuesday Thursday
Introductions to the Course Twain: excerpt from How to Tell a Story and Others
(Blackboard)
American Literature 1865-1914 Introduction (C: 1-14) Dickinson: #320, #409, #1263 (C: 82, 85, 91)
Whitman: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (C: 21-25)

week Topic: Regionalism and Local Color

2
Tuesday Thursday
Jewett: “A White Heron” (C: 522-29) Chopin: “The Storm” (C: 531-35)
Freeman: “A New England Nun” (C: 626-35) Chesnutt: “The Goophered Grapevine” (C: 689-96)

week Topic: Realism and Naturalism

3
Tuesday Thursday
Howells: from “Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading” (C: Norris: “A Plea for Romantic Fiction” (923-25)
915-18) Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (C: 957-1000)
James: Daisy Miller: A Study (C: 391-429)

week Topic: Post-Reconstruction Black Identity

4
Tuesday Thursday
DuBois: from The Souls of Black Folk (894-910) Johnson: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (C:
Washington: from Up from Slavery (655-87) 1021-37)
Passage Interrogation Assignment #1 Due
 week Topic: America for All?

5
Tuesday Thursday
Zitkala Ša: excerpt from The School Days of an Indian Martí: excerpt from Our America (C: 1164-67)
Girl (C: 1113-20) Lazarus: “The New Colossus” (C: 520)
Yezierska: “Soap and Water” (Blackboard)

Unit 2, 1914 -1945

week Topic: Approaching Modernism and Seeking Justice

6
Tuesday Thursday
American Literature 1914-1945 Introduction (D: 1177-90)
Exam #1
Sui Sin Far: “In the Land of the Free” (C: 880-86)
Glaspell: Trifles (D: 1412-20)

week Topic: Modernism: Harlem Renaissance and Imagism

7
Tuesday Thursday
Hurston: “Sweat” (Blackboard) Pound: “In a Station of the Metro” (D: 1482)
Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Negro H.D.: “Oread” (D: 1516)
Artist and the Racial Mountain” (D: 2027, 1511-13) Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say” (D:
1469, 1472)

week Topic: Modernism: Nature in Modernism / The Big 3

8
Tuesday Thursday
Frost: “Mending Wall,” “Birches” (D: 1390, 1400) Fitzgerald: “Winter Dreams” (D: 1823-38)
Stevens: “The Snow Man,” “Of Modern Poetry” (D: Hemingway: “Snows of Kilimanjaro” (D: 1983-98)
1441, 1453) Faulkner: “Barn Burning” (D: 1955-67)
Passage Interrogation Assignment #2 Due

week Topic: Modern(ist) Experiments

9
Tuesday Thursday
Eliot: “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (D: 1577-79)
Moore: “Poetry” (D: 1352) Exam #2
cummings: “in Just—,” “pity this busy
monster,manunkind” (D: 1809, 1816)

Unit 3, 1945-Present
week Topic: The Science of Literature / Feminist Declarations

10
Tuesday Thursday
American Literature Since 1945 Introduction (E: 2083- Plath: “Lady Lazarus” (E: 2701-05)
92) Le Guin: “She Unnames Them” (E: 2671)

Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (Blackboard)

week Topic: Postmodern Manifestos

11
Tuesday Thursday
Morrison: “Recitatif” (E: 2685-97) Lorde: excerpt from “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” “Coal” (E:
Pynchon: “Entropy” (E: 2817-26) 2501, 2782)
Ashbery: “Soonest Mended” (E: 2606-07)

week Topic: Civil Rights and Drawing the Margins to the Center

12
Tuesday Thursday
Brooks: “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Kingston: excerpt from The Woman Warrior (Blackboard)
Till” (E: 2414-18) Alexie: “Do Not Go Gentle” (E: 3245-48)
Baldwin: “Going to Meet the Man” (E: 2509-20)

week Topic: America at the Millennial Verge

13
Tuesday Thursday
Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Passage Interrogation Assignment #3 Due

week Topic: Post-9/11 America

14
Tuesday Thursday
King, “The Things They Left Behind” (Blackboard) Clifton, “september songs, a poem in seven days”
Oates, “The Mutants” (Blackboard) (Blackboard)
Collins, “The Names” (Blackboard)
Danticat, “On the Day of the Dead” (Blackboard)

finals Exam #3:

week date and time TBA