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Literature 3A: American Literature, Beginnings to 1865

Vak
2024-2025

Admission requirements

Students in English: Literature 1A and Literature 2, or equivalent. Minor students: none.

Description

This seminar surveys the development of a distinctly American literary culture and history from the first encounters between Native Americans and Europeans to the mid-nineteenth century. In exploring this expanding terrain, we will encounter new genres and media, consider the impact of race and gender on ideas of freedom and democracy, and assess the formation of an American literary canon. Our goal is a critical familiarity with texts that have claimed a place in American literary history and the social movements that produced them. We will consider: what constitutes "American literature" before 1789? What factors determined the canonization of primarily English language texts from a multi-lingual, multi-colonial, and native population? How have pre-revolutionary and antebellum America been represented in our own time?

Course objectives

  • To evaluate works of U.S. American literature during the colonial and early national periods from the standpoint of genre, historical context, and literary conventions.

  • To situate these texts within the larger developments in the disciplines of literary studies and American studies.

  • To identify and understand persistent American political and societal ideas rooted in this period.

  • To recognize cultural and social differences in the U.S. American context, and to understand historical developments and disadvantages in this community from global and comparative perspectives.

  • To analyze a wide-range of challenging historical texts using established critical approaches by style, genre, and rhetorical aim.

  • To develop MLA-based and archival research skills in the composition of a term essay, and to improve written communication through in-class writing assignments.

  • To independently seek knowledge about a text or genre, and to take advantage of opportunities to apply creativity and curiosity to expand the existing canon.

  • To communicate ideas in discussion, oral and written presentations, and collaborative team-work.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

Seminar

Assessment method

Assessment

  • Midterm Exam: Written Examination with closed questions and essay questions

  • Paper: Essay and analysis of 1500 words

  • Oral Presentation

  • Participation

Attendance is compulsory. Missing more than two tutorials means that students will be excluded from the tutorials. Unauthorized absence also applies to being unprepared, not participating and/or not bringing the relevant course materials to class.

Weighing

  • Midterm Exam: Written Examination with closed questions and essay questions: 30%

  • Paper: Essay and analysis of 1500 words: 30%

  • Oral Presentation: 30%

  • Participation: 10%

The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.

Resit

If the final mark is insufficient, students can resit the part(s) that was (were) insufficient: the essay and/or one combined resit exam covering the entire course. The sufficient parts cannot be retaken.

Inspection and feedback

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

Reading list

Required: Norton Anthology of American Literature (NAAL), vol. A & B
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Students will be required to write the paper on one of the following texts:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass *“Song of Myself” *Walt Whitman
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

(Note: do not purchase all four books; students will be choosing one of these texts)

Registration

Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.

Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange

Information for those interested in taking this course in context of À la carte education (without taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.

Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.

For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.

Contact

  • For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.

  • For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal

Remarks

None