Materials of American Literature

American Literature 1, Summer 2009

Here is the syllabus.

The value of frequent classroom low-stakes quizzes

Quizzes work for me, so I enjoy reading about scholarship that concludes they are a good idea. All students might benefit from David Glenn's May 1, 2009 article, "Close the Book. Recall. Write it down," for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Early UA materials found

For the Akron Beacon-Journal, Colette M. Jenkins reports on the discovery of archival materials for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron, which oversaw Buchtel College until 1913. It contains some details that might amuse current students:

The Universalists administered the college until 1913, with ministers of the Akron church serving as its presidents. That year, it became a municipal college, which is now the University of Akron.

A Buchtel Leaflets publication that was among the documents in the box reveals that college tuition was $40 in 1885. Room rent was $10 to $30. Steam heating and gas was $12. The college offered three courses of study and required candidates for the freshman class to pass exams in Greek, Latin, math, drawing and English.

American Literature 1, Spring 2009

Here is the syllabus.

Whitman and Dickinson, Spring 2009

Here is the syllabus.

American Literature 1: The books

This is all you need for my section of American Literature 1 in Spring 2009:

Nina Baym, general editor. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Seventh edition. Package 1: Volumes A & B. Norton, 2007. ISBN13 978-0393929930. Note: Earlier editions will not work for you. Make sure you get the seventh edition.

Whitman and Dickinson: All the texts

Here are the texts that I ordered for the course. You do need these particular editions.

Dickinson, Emily. The Poems. Ed. R.W. Franklin. Reading edition. Cambridge: Belknap, 1999. ISBN 0674676246. There are multiple published versions of all of her poems, and we will work only with these Franklin versions.

Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times. Ed. Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN13 978-0822339427.

For Whitman's poetry, we will read in the Whitman archive. Mainly from links on this page, which gives you the full text (with page images) of all seven American editions of Leaves of Grass.

We will also read a lot of this book. I will explain more on the first day of class.

Emily Dickinson's love life

For Slate, Christopher Benfrey summarizes biographical scholarship by Carol Damon Andrews, Brenda Wineapple, Genevieve Taggard, and George F. Whicher on Dickinson's early love, George Gould.

American Literature 1, Fall 2008

Here is the syllabus.

American Literature 1, Fall 2008, All the words

Here are all the beautiful words.

American Literature 1, Fall 2008, All the dates

Here are all the dates you need to know.

American Literature 1 book order

Here are the books for my section (number 002) of American Literature 1, 3300:341.

Nina Baym, general editor. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Seventh edition. Package 1: Volumes A & B. Norton, 2007. ISBN13 978-0393929930. Note: Earlier editions will not work for you. Make  sure you get the seventh edition.

Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times. Ed. Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN13 978-0822339427. 

Classroom change

The classroom for American Literature 1 has been changed. We had this room, which is a bit big for 25 students. We now have Zook Hall 409. Zook is the home of the UA's College of Education. Find it here and here, right in the middle of campus and near the fountain.

Poe and Hawthorne, Summer 2008

Here is the syllabus.

Kate Tucker and the Sons of Sweden, "Everything Went Down"

More Kate Tucker, in another video directed by Miriam Bennett. If your connection can support the larger stream, you can click through to YouTube to see the video in a higher quality resolution.

Summer 2008: Poe and Hawthorne

The Poe and Hawthorne graduate seminar will be offered this summer, from June 23rd to July 26. It will meet every day from 9:45am to 11:15am.

The syllabus will be much like the one used the last time I taught the seminar. You can find it with the Poe link on the right.

There will be two differences, however. Because of the short time frame, we will focus much more on shorter works than on longer ones. Not one of the Hawthorne novels will be assigned. His short fiction is pretty good, and well worth all the study, so this is no great loss.

Graduate students will also be free to propose alternate writing assignments. Not everyone will write the standard 25-page academic article.

Spring 2008

I am on leave, but I can be reached, most days, in the usual ways.

The Advocate of Moral Reform (May 1, 1839)

Adam Miller has prepared this full-text PDF reproduction of George Cragin's The Advocate of Moral Reform. This is volume 5, number 9, dated May 1, 1839, and it's eight pages long. As Adam writes in his one-page postscript, the Advocate was the mouthpiece of the New York Female Moral Reform Society from 1835 to 1845. It continued the notorious McDowall's Journal, which began in 1833 and met a quick end when its proprietor, the Rev. John Robert McDowall, was engulfed in a variety of scandals.

Unlike the other editions, this one reproduces the look and layout of the original. And I did none of the PDF production; Adam Miller made this all by himself.

Gina Franco on "Live from Prairie Lights"

Prairie Lights is a great bookstore in the center of Iowa City, the home of The University of Iowa and its various MFA programs in writing. The bookstore's "Live from Prairie Lights" series features writers who are visiting or working on campus. The shows are broadcast on WSUI, AM 910, and they are now archived on this NPR station's website. There are hundreds more hour-long readings from current authors archived. I'd rank Prairie Lights bookstore and the "Live from Prairie Lights" radio broadcast as two of the very best things about living in Iowa City.

Gina Franco reads poems from her 2004 book, The Keepsake Storm, in the June 22, 2004 broadcast of "Live from Prairie Lights." We're reading this book the last few weeks of American Women Poets. You can find the link to the stream here. (You'll need the Realplayer to stream the real audio (.ram / .ra ) files.)

American Female Poets (1848)

Students in American Women Poets interested in choosing the edition assignment can browse this work for a subject.

Choose a nineteenth-century poet. Many of the scans in this PDF are defective, but not to worry. I own a copy and will make photocopies for you.