American Literature: A Collaborative Journey into the 21st Century

The following is a working syllabus for a new course that I am teaching this year. 

I am still tinkering with how to use Canvas, but I am excited about the possibilities.

Here's the course vision for now....

 American Literature

A Collaborative Journey into the 21^st Century

Form V: 2014-2015

Mr. O’Brien

Welcome!

Having taught this course for ten years, I’ve always struggled with what content to include (and wrestled with whom to cut). American Literature courses typically cover a chronological sampling – the tip of the iceberg - without any appreciation to the depth and scope of American writers that exist below the syllabus surface.

It is the diversity of American voices that makes this literature great (and there’s danger to a single story). So why limit our experience to a dozen writers over the next nine months?

I invite you to an engaging approach to American Literature where you will take ownership of your learning through research and presentations that you share with your classmates via conversations and blog posts. Rather than a map, you will be given a compass; like cartographers you will explore the American landscape of past and present; then, record and present your findings. Together, we will create this course. 

Since technology and the Internet offer new possibilities, we can rethink the traditional classroom experience and transform your learning, by mirroring courses that you will take in college and beyond. Your future requires 21^st century skills. Perhaps, the greatest pitfall to your education (and career) may be plagiarism; you will learn how to site sources in a digital world. Collectively, our success in this course will be dependent on each student’s contribution.

With greater student autonomy, I hope to foster intellectual curiosity and deeper connections as students curate content in a collaborative learning environment. I want us to change the game that we call education – as we learn how to learn in the 21^st century.

I look forward to our journey together!

You will research and present from FIVE general periods:

1)    New World - Early America

2)    Pre-Civil War

3)    Civil War and the Aftermath

4)    The Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance

5)    20^th Century American Poets & (Short Story) Writers (two presentations)

You will also participate in a number of “Conversations” that will require you to research and read an array of material curated in Bedford St. Martin’s Conversations in American Literature (Aufses, Shea, Scanlon, Aufses).

Methodology, Mindset, Motivation:

Ø  Student Autonomy

Ø  Intellectual Curiosity

Ø  Agility of Mind

Ø  Mastery of Curated Content

Ø  Purpose: Collaborative Learning

Ø  Deeper Connections (Breadth and Depth)

Topics: American archetypes, myths, stereotypes, challenges

Themes: Rebellion, Rights, Religion, Race, Roles

Big questions: What is American Literature? What challenges does America face?

Old School meets 21^st Century: Paper and Pixels

Balance between common experience of major works with research projects where you will work independently as well as collaboratively.

You will write daily in this course, by hand as well as digitally.

You will keep a traditional Journal, emphasizing penmanship and visual note-taking.

For the most part, your journal is for your eyes only, so you may think in writing, but for some assignments, you will be asked to share (you’ll be given notice).

"Sometimes you have to write to figure it out."

These 9 words from Northwestern University Professor Charlie Yarnoff to

Daniel Pink in "Writing the Essay" changed his life.

Meanwhile, on your blog, you will post your presentations, essays, images, and other content. Through sharing your writing with classmates (and potentially the world), you will write for a greater audience than my eyes. By leveraging positive peer pressure, I believe that you will publish writing that gives you a true sense of purpose: to persuade (and impress) your classmates. With this motivation, your writing will improve as you find your voice, receive feedback, and work towards mastery.

In addition to frequent writing assignments, there will be regular reading and vocabulary quizzes plus journal checks.

You will create your own tests for each unit and presentation period.

You will post quotes and questions to Canvas/Google Moderator.

You will meet in Google Hangouts (Air – recorded) for presentations.

Your willingness to give and receive feedback is vital to learning in this course.

Be mindful. Be respectful.

To set the stage for the year:

Ø  Introductions: Who are you? What’s your story?

Ø  An example in self-guided learning: “Who was Pocahontas?”

Ø  Read aloud “The First Day” by Edward Jones

Set up digital platforms:

Ø  Canvas – Learning Management System (LMS)

Ø  Google Suite including Gmail, Moderator,

Ø  Google+, and you own Google Blog.

Ø  New Twitter Handle (professional or pseudonym)

Ø  MOOC: Enroll in ModPo @Coursera (optional participation)

Class Discussions:

Daniel Pink’s Drive

“Let Teenagers Try Adulthood” by Leon Botstein

Online Conversation: “Education: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time?”

“The Problem We All Live With” by Norman Rockwell (painting)

I. The New World: Early America

          

1^st Presentation (September): Who was…? What was…? What were…?

         You will become the resident expert: Master your content.

Typical routine: Day 1 - Preview on blogs,

Next day - Group presentations and feedback,

3^rd day - Discussions and study guides, Day 4 - Test

Random lottery pick – research one of the following:

Present on your blog – you may trade once. (no duplicates in the other section)

1.     Native American Stories

2.     Iroquois Confederacy

3.     Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

4.     Pilgrims Progress

5.     Witchcraft in Salem, MA

6.     Richard Frethorne

7.     Anne Bradstreet

8.     Edward Taylor

9.     Mary Rowlandson

10.   Cotton Mather

11.   John Hale

12.   John Winthrop

13.   Jonathan Edwards

14.   Christopher Columbus

15.   Patrick Henry

16.   Thomas Paine

17.   Thomas Jefferson

18.   George Washington

19.   Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

20.   The Federalist Papers

21.   Francis Scott Key

22.   William Cullen Bryant

23.   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

24.    James Fenimore Coope

Lecture: Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography and Poor Richard’s Almanac

How do we create a personal narrative (and self-improvement plans)?

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People

Lecture: The American short story: How has it changed and why?

Class Discussions:

Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”

 (On going question into the spring)

Edgar Allen Poe’s “Single Effect”

Pick a Poe Short Story – In Class Write

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener”

Hillis Miller, “A Deconstructive Reading Melville’s ‘Bartleby, The Scrivener’”

Lecture: Ekphrastic Poetry: George Washington and Frank O’Hara

What is role of art as text in American Literature?

What is role of poetry in American Culture?

Inspired Larry Rivers

II. Pre-Civil War: 2^nd Presentation (October):

Transcendentalists, Abolitionists, Native Americans, & Slave Narratives

Pick One:

(no duplicates in the other section)

1.     Margaret Fuller

2.     John Greenleaf Whittier

3.     Sojourner Truth

4.     Frederic Douglas “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” 

5.     Harriet Beecher Stowe

6.      Harriet Jacobs

7.     John Hall, “The Indian Hater”

8.     Catherine Maria Sedgwick, “Cacoethes Scribendi”

9.     Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, “The Dance”

10.   Lydia Maria Child, “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes”

11.   Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, “The Angel over the Right Shoulder”

12.   Harriet Prescott Spofford, “Circumstance”

13.   Chief Seattle

14.   Red Cloud

15.   Alexis de Tocqueville

16.    Elizabeth Peabody

17.    Louisa May Alcott

18.    John Muir

19.   Thomas Bangs Thorpe, “The Big Bear of Arkansas”

20.   Your choice – teacher’s approval required

Nathaniel Hawthorne: 

Short story “Young Goodman Brown”

            “The Prison Door” and “The Market Place” from The Scarlet Letter (First two chapters)

Conversation: Religious Tolerance in America

Lecture: Emerson and Thoreau

 Class Discussions:

            What is the legacy of the Transcendentalists?

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”

Read/Research: “American Scholar” “Nature” “The Poet”

Conversation: Henry David Thoreau’s Legacy

Lecture: Race in America from Phillis Wheatley to Ferguson, MO

How does race define America? What defines you?

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com

Conversation: Phillis Wheatley’s Legacy

Conversation: John Brown

III. Civil War and Aftermath:

Major Work: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(October-November)

Context on Huck and Biography on Mark Twian (Video)

Class Discussions:

Whitman and Dickinson (visit Coursera’s ModPo)

Select a favorite poem of each – post to your blog.

Whitman - read sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 47 & 52 of "Song of Myself"

Dickinson - “I dwell in Possibility” “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”

and “The Brain within its Groove”

We will share these daily while reading Huck

Thomas Nast’s “Worse than Slavery” (Political cartoon)

Conversation: Abraham Lincoln

3^rd Presentation (November): Civil War and Aftermath

Pick one:

(no duplicates in the other section)

1.     Kate Chopin “The Story of An Hour”

2.     Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

3.     Sarah Orne Jewett “White Heron”

4.     Mary Wilkins Freeman, “The Revolt of ‘Mother’”

5.     Stephen Crane “The Open Boat” or “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”

6.     Andrew Carnegie from Gospel of Wealth

7.     Jacob Riis “The Mixed Crowd”

8.     Jane Addams from The Subtle Problem of Charity

9.     Upton Sinclair from The Jungle

10.   Katharine Lee Bates

11.   Ambrose Bierce “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

12.   Ida B. Wells-Barnett from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

13.   Booker T. Washington

14.   Paul Laurence Dunbar

15.   W.E.B. DuBois

16.   James Weldon Johnson

17.   Charles S. Johnson

18.   Alain Locke

19.   E.A. Robinson

20.   Theodore Roosevelt “The Strenuous Life”

21.   Zitkala-Sa from The School Days of an Indian Girl or “The Trial Path”

22.   Charles W. Chestnut, “The Wife of His Youth”

23.   George Washington Cable, “Belles Demoiselles Plantation”

24.   Constance Fenimore Woolson, “Rodman the Keeper”

25.   Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

26.   Alison Dunbar-Nelson, “Tony’s Wife”

IV. The Jazz Age (Roaring Twenties) & Harlem Renaissance

(December – February)

Guest Lecture by Jazz teacher Ryan Dankanich

Class Discussions:

What was the Harlem Renaissance? Why Harlem? Why 1919-1939?

What is the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance?

What role did Jazz/Art/Literature play in the Harlem Renaissance?

Jazz

Recommended listening

Poetry:

Claude McKay,“If We Must Die” (1919)

Langston Hughes, “Jazzonia” (1923) “Harlem” (1951)

Art:

                        William H. Johnson, Jitterbugs

Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape

Writing :

Ralph Ellison, excerpt from Invisible Man

Robert O’Malley, excerpt Seeing Jazz

Gerald Early, excerpt Jazz and the African American Literary Tradition

4^th Harlem Renaissance Presentations (February):

Biography List From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Renaissance

Recommend selecting a name in BOLD

(Italics = will be covered in class or other unit)

Dancers

·       Josephine Baker

·       Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson

·       The Nicholas Brothers

Leading intellectuals

·       William Stanley Braithwaite

·       Cyril Briggs

·       Marion Vera Cuthbert

·       W. E. B. Du Bois

·       Marcus Garvey

·       L.S. Alexander Gumby, Archivist and salon host

·       Hubert Harrison

·       Leslie Pinckney Hill

·       Langston Hughes

·       James Weldon Johnson

·       Charles Spurgeon Johnson

·       Alain Locke

·       Mary White Ovington

·       Chandler Owen

·       A. Philip Randolph

·       Joel Augustus Rogers

·       Arthur Schomburg

·       Carl Van Vechten

·       Walter Francis White

Literature

Authors

·       James Baldwin

·       Countee Cullen

·       Langston Hughes

·       Zora Neale Hurston

·       Nella Larsen

Poets[

·       Lewis Grandison Alexander

·       Gwendolyn Bennett

·       Arna Bontemps

·       Sterling A. Brown

·       Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

·       Mae V. Cowdery

·       Countee Cullen –The Black Christ and Other Poems(1929)

·       Clarissa Scott Delany

·       Alice Dunbar-Nelson

·       Jessie Redmon Fauset

·       Angelina Weld Grimke

·       Robert Hayden

·       Gladys May Casely Hayford

·       Langston Hughes

·       Georgia Douglas Johnson

·       Helene Johnson

·       James Weldon Johnson – God's Trombones

·       Claude McKay

·       May Miller

·       Effie Lee Newsome

·       Richard Bruce Nugent

·       Anne Spencer

·       Jean Toomer

·       Lucy Ariel Williams

·       Kathleen Tankersley Young

Drama

·       Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., author of the play, On the Fields of France.

·       Charles Gilpin, actor

·       Angelina Weld Grimke, author of the drama, Rachel

·       Langston Hughes, Mulatto, produced on Broadway. Hughes also helped to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater

·       Zora Neale Hurston, author of the play Color Struck

·       Georgia Douglas Johnson, author of the play, Plumes, A Tragedy.

·       Richard Bruce Nugent, author of the play, Sahdji, an African Ballet

·       Paul Robeson, actor

·       Eulalie Spence, author of the play, Undertow

·       Krigwa Players, popular Harlem theatre group.

·       Thomas Montgomery Gregory, supporter of Negro Theatre Movement.

Novels

·       Arna Bontemps — God Sends Sunday (1931), Black Thunder (1936)

·       Countee Cullen — One Way to Heaven (1932)

·       Jessie Redmon Fauset — There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun(1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), Comedy, American Style(1933)

·       Rudolph Fisher — The Walls of Jericho (1928), The Conjure-Man Dies (1932)

·       Langston Hughes — Not Without Laughter (1930)

·       Zora Neale Hurston — Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

·       Nella Larsen — Quicksand (1928), Passing (1929)

·       Claude McKay — Home to Harlem (1927), Banjo (1929), Gingertown(1931), Banana Bottom (1933)

·       George Schuyler — Black No More (1931), Slaves Today (1931)

·       Wallace Thurman — The Blacker the Berry (1929), Infants of the Spring (1932), Interne (1932)

·       Jean Toomer — Cane (1923)

·       Carl Van Vechten — Nigger Heaven (1926)

·       Walter White — The Fire in the Flint (1924), Flight (1926)

Short story collections

·       Eric Walrond — Tropic Death (1926)

Musicians and composers

·       Marian Anderson

·       Louis Armstrong

·       Ivie Anderson

·       Count Basie

·       Gladys Bentley

·       Eubie Blake

·       Lucille Bogan

·       Cab Calloway

·       The King Cole Trio

·       The Chocolate Dandies

·       Duke Ellington

·       Ella Fitzgerald

·       Dizzy Gillespie

·       Adelaide Hall

·       Roland Hayes

·       Fletcher Henderson

·       Earl "Fatha" Hines

·       Billie Holiday

·       Lena Horne

·       James P. Johnson

·       Lonnie Johnson

·       Moms Mabley

·       Pigmeat Markham

·       The Will Mastin Trio

·       McKinney's Cotton Pickers

·       Nina Mae McKinney

·       Florence Mills

·       Thelonious Monk

·       Mantan Moreland

·       Jelly Roll Morton

·       Ma Rainey

·       Nora Douglas Holt Ray

·       Cecil Scott

·       Noble Sissle

·       Bessie Smith

·       Mamie Smith

·       Victoria Spivey

·       William Still

·       Billy Strayhorn

·       Fats Waller

·       Ethel Waters

·       Chick Webb

·       Bert Williams

·       Fess Williams

Visual artists

·       Charles Alston

·       Henry Bannarn

·       Romare Bearden

·       Leslie Bolling, Wood carvings

·       Beauford Delaney

·       Aaron Douglas

·       Palmer Hayden

·       Sargent Johnson

·       William H. Johnson, Painter

·       Lois Mailou Jones

·       Jacob Lawrence

·       Norman Lewis, Artist

·       Archibald Motley

·       Augusta Savage

·       Prentiss Taylor

Major Work: Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Read (mostly) in class (December)

FSF Biography Winter Dreams (Video)

Major Work: Hurston’s Eyes Were Watching God

(January - February)

Conversation: Changing Roles of Women

V. 20^th Century American Poets and (Short Story) Writers:

5^th & 6^th Presentations: Short Stories (March) and Poetry (April)

          Select one of each – no duplicates in the two sections.

Blog posts for both poet and writer.

American (Short Story) Writers:

Inspired by Anne Charters, The American Short Story and Its Writer

1.     O. Henry

2.     Willa Cather

3.     Edith Wharton

4.     Jack London

5.     Sui San Far

6.     Sherwood Anderson

7.     Theodore Dreiser

8.     Katherine Anne Porter

9.     Dorothy Parker

10.   William Faulkner

11.   John Steinbeck

12.   Pearl S. Buck

13.   James Thurber

14.   John Cheever

15.   Shirley Jackson

16.   Tillie Olsen

17.   Philip Roth

18.   Flannery O’Connor

19.   Eudora Welty

20.   James Baldwin

21.   John Barth

22.   Joyce Carol Oates

23.   Grace Paley

24.   Raymond Carver

25.   Leslie Marmon Silko

26.   Bobbie Ann Mason

27.   Ursula K. LeGuin

28.   John Edgar Wideman

29.   Sherman Alexie

30.   Annie Proulx

31.   Edwidge Danticat

32.   Helena Maria Viramontes

33.   Lan Samantha Chang

34.   Kurt Vonnegut

American Modern and Contemporary Poets:

Inspired by Al Filries and his Coursera course ModPo

1.     Lorine Niedecker

2.     Cid Corman

3.     Rae Armantrout

4.     H.D.

5.     Ezra Pound

6.     Wallace Stevens

7.     Gertrude Stein

8.     Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven

9.     Tristan Tzara

10.   Genevieve Taggard

11.   William Carlos Williams

12.   Richard Wilbur

13.   Gwendolyn Brooks

14.   Amiri Baraka

15.   Allen Ginsberg

16.   Jack Kerouac

17.   Anne Waldman

18.   Bill Berkson

19.   John Ashbery

20.   Kenneth Koch

21.   Barbara Guest

22.   Frank O'Hara

23.   Ted Berrigan

24.   Bernadette Mayer

25.   Bob Perelman

Ernest Hemingway:

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

“Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

“Soldier's Home”

Biography (Video)

Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”

Select a favorite Frost poem

Post to blog

Tim O'Brien and Phil Klay: America and War  

Focus: “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried

Phil Klay: Redeployment

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/books/review/redeployment-by-phil-klay.html?_r=0

College Essay: Who are you? What’s your story?

Final Presentations: Post to your blogs (May)

Pick a Conversation below to present with a partner:

Ø  Immigration: The Lure of America

Ø  The American Cowboy

Ø  Japanese Internment and Reparations: Making It Right?

Ø  The Atomic Age

Ø  The American Middle Class

Ø  America’s Romance with the Automobile

Ø  Create a Conversation – teacher approval required

Final Conversation: What is American Literature?

Parini’s Thirteen Books that Changed America

Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco – the Camden Chapter

from Days of Destruction Days of Revolt

Final Lecture: America: Decline & Fall or Renewal & Reinvention?

What challenges does America face?

How will America face (and embrace) these challenges?

How will American Literature make a difference?

What is the future for America(n Literature)?

Last Week: Exam Review

Connections between Major Works