COURSE

SYLLABUS

EN250 AMERICAN LITERATURE I

COURSE INFORMATION
Term:
Credit Hrs:
Meeting Time:
Classroom:
Prerequisites:

Fall 2016
3 cr hrs
8 a.m. MWF
Mohler 218
NA

INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION
Name:
Office:
Office Hrs:
Email:
Phone:

Bruce Clary
Deans Suite
By appointment
claryb@mcpherson.edu
620.242.0506

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The principal goal of this course is to advance and diversify students knowledge of American
literature, 1500-1865, its social and cultural contexts, and its historical development. Class time will
also be devoted to techniques of critical reading, appreciation of aesthetic achievements, and
learning literary and critical terminology.
The course is organized chronologically and divided into weekly themes or subjects. Throughout
the semester, we will be examining the literature for what it tells us about our cultures emphasis
on individualism. We will return to three concepts in particularFreedom, Success, and Justice
for insights into the American character. Much of the semester is given over to study of the major
authors of 18001865, which opens me to criticism that I am enshrining the work of Dead White
European Males. The course does, however, regularly represent voices critical of Americas
Eurocentric culture and values. I structured the course this way in order to (1) provide more time
to explore major authors in depth and (2) avoid the fragmentation of course material that derives
from including so many disparate voices.

STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES

In commonplace entries, class discussions, exams, and essays, students will
1. Demonstrate knowledge of American history and American social structures in the period
1500-1865 by describing changes in social conditions, institutions, and basic conceptions of the
individual.
2. Analyze the tensions inherent within American society created by its emphasis on
individualism (as revealed in the literature) by (a) describing conflicts between personal
freedom and social responsibility embodied in individual literary works, the works of an
individual author, and particular historical moments or literary traditions; (b) drawing parallels
between situations experienced by authors or characters in the literature with contemporary
American situations; (c) identifying and discussing writers and/or characters whose position(s)
on self and society most nearly express/contradict their personal view.
3. Demonstrate knowledge of the historical development of American literature, 1500-1865,
of the roles played in that development by some of the major authors, and of works
representing landmarks in the history of American literature by (a) referring knowledgeably
to the historical development of American literature as a context for understanding individual

writers and works; (b) making informed arguments for the place of authors and their works in
the development of American literature; and (c) accurately dating, identifying, describing,
and/or defining i) authors and their works, and ii) important developments in the history of
American literature.
4. Demonstrate that they read carefully and critically by (a) comprehending and recalling
important textual and contextual details; (b) summarizing, paraphrasing, questioning,
interpreting and evaluating assigned readings; (c) explicating passages and explaining their
connection to larger artistic/thematic concerns; and (d) correctly using critical and literary
terms to discuss and describe the assigned works.
5. Demonstrate that they write effectively and purposefully by (a) responding to the readings,
effectively summarizing, paraphrasing, interpreting, and questioning the texts, and
(b) producing focused commonplace entries and essays that clearly, economically, and
adequately develop a thesis that displays active, informed engagement with the readings.

REQUIRED TEXTS
Paul Lauter et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vols. A and B. 6th ed. Houghton
Mifflin: 2010.
Hannah Webster Foster. The Coquette. 1797. Ed. Cathy Davidson. Oxford UP, 1986.

EVALUATION AND GRADING

Commonplace book (40 percent of grade). You will maintain a literary commonplace throughout
the semester. Commonplacing holds a storied and honorable place in the history of American
letters. In the last 250 years of the time covered in this course (1500-1865), many literate
Americans kept commonplaces as records of their reading and of their intellectual life. By adopting
the practice of commonplacing, you will be engaging with the assigned works in much the same
way that the works contemporary readers might have done.
Each day, you will select and copy no fewer than two quotations from the assigned reading into
your commonplace, adding some reflective comments about each passage. The passages appearing
there, and your accompanying comments, will become the basis of much of our class discussion on
the work(s) in question as well as the basis of much of your course grade and the source material
for your comprehensive essay.
Detailed instructions for the commonplace assignment are attached as an addendum. They are also
available on the course LMS: my.mcpherson.edu.
I will collect commonplace entries at regular intervalsabout every two weeks. I will evaluate each
daily commonplace as follows:
4 Demonstrates especially provocative and thoughtful engagements with the assigned readings.
3 Demonstrates adequate, thoughtful engagements with the assigned readings.
2 Suggests adequate, thoughtful engagements with the assigned readings.
1 Demonstrates less than adequate acquaintance and/or thoughtful engagement with the assigned
readings.
2

EN250 American Literature I

The standard by which your final commonplace grade will be determined is 3.5 points per entry. In
other words, it is my expectation that all your entries should meet the 3-point standard but that
only about half will attain the 4-point standard. Your three lowest commonplace scores will be
dropped from the gradebook.
I expect you to come to each class prepared to share your entries from that days readings. If it
becomes clear during class discussion that you have not completed your commonplacing for the
day, you will receive a zero for that days entry.
Comprehensive essay (30 percent of grade). You will write an essay of 2,0002,500 words tracing
a theme or pattern of interest that emerges from the readings and discussions throughout the
semester. The essay should draw upon your commonplace entries as well as several carefully
selected secondary sources. The matter of the comprehensive essay and possible themes and
patterns will arise frequently in class. A timeline for submitting a proposal, a preliminary draft, and
the final essay can be found in the Schedule of Initial Readings and Assignments. The rubric for
evaluating the researched essay will be distributed around midterm along with the assignment
guidelines.
Midterm exam (10 percent of final grade) and Final exam (20 percent of final grade). Two
exams will be administered, one at midterm and one during finals week. The exams will consist
primarily of essay questions, but some objective questions may be included that will ensure
accountability for basic chronological knowledge of works, authors, and historical contexts.
Grading scale. A = 91100%; B = 8190%; C = 7180%; D = 6170%; F = 60below.

EXPECTATIONS FOR STUDENTS

Attendance. I do not distinguish excused from unexcused absencesmaking such a distinction
puts me in a role I do not care to play. If you know ahead of time that you will be absent from class,
you can submit your commonplace entries before class for full credit. I do not accept for credit any
work that is late due to absence.
If you accumulate four absences, we will have a discussion about your future in the course. Barring
extraordinary circumstances, you will fail the course if you accumulate seven absences, you will fail
the course.
Special injunction. You are responsible for seeing that this syllabus does not interfere with your
education. You can always do more work or different work (within reason) than the syllabus
requires. Consult with me if you wish to explore the possibilities for better adapting this course to
your needs.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Honesty is fundamental to education. The college expects that both students and teachers will be
honest in all their academic dealings. Academic dishonesty includes (but is not limited to) cheating
on tests, turning in others work as your own (plagiarism), and making false reports about required
activities. A student guilty of academic dishonesty can be failed on the assignment or failed in the
course. Incidents of intentional academic dishonest are reported to the vice president for academic
affairs. Multiple reported incidents can result in suspension from the college.
EN250 American Literature I

DISABILITY STATEMENT
Students who, because of disability, may require reasonable accommodations to meet course
requirements should contact the instructor or access coordinator, Carole Barr (ext. 2506), as soon
as possible.

ACADEMIC SERVICES
The Royer Center for Academic Development (Miller Library, main level) is open to all students
who need academic assistance in any class.

DISCLAIMER
This syllabus is subject to modification. The instructor will communicate all substantial
modifications both to the Chief Academic Officer and to students enrolled in the course, prior to
enacting these modifications.

COURSE SCHEDULE
FIRST PEOPLES

M Aug 22

W Aug 24

F Aug 26

Introduction to course
Seneca, The Origin of Stories (55-77)
Beginnings to 1700 (1-11)
Native American Narrative (19-22)
Lakota, Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe (52-54)
Ojibway, Mans Dependence on Animals (62-65)
Tlinglit, Raven and Marriage (68-72)
Ritual Poetry, Song, and Ceremony
Native American Oral Poetry (104-23)

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

M Aug 29

W Aug 31

America in the World/The World in America (124-30)

New Spain (131-37)
Christopher Columbus (137-49)
Caveza de Vaca, Relation (157-70)
Chesapeake (253-55)
John Smith (273-87)
Yuchi, Creation of the Whites (73)
Lenape, The Arrival of the Whites (74-77)
Handsome Lake, How America Was Discovered (825-27)

PURITAN MISSION, PURITAN AESTHETIC

F Sept 2

Beginnings to 1700 (11-15)

New England (314-18)
Winthrop, Christian Charity (332-48)

EN250 American Literature I

W Sept 7

F Sept 9

Preface to Bay Psalm Book (447-51)

Tillam, Uppon first sight (569-70)
Bradstreet, poems (418-21, 426-37)
Taylor, poems (492-520)

WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?

M Sept 12

W Sept 14

F Sept 16

Eighteenth Century (589-605)

Voices of Revolution and Nationalism (835-37)
Crvecouer, Letters from an American Farmer (954-89)
Franklin, The Way to Wealth (837-46)
Autobiography (909-19)
Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1022-42)

FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

M Sept 19

W Sept 21
F Sept 23

Jefferson, Letters to Madison (1042-46)

Federalist and Anti-Federalist Contentions (1059-73)
Jefferson, correspondence with John Adams (1018-22)
Royall Tyler, The Contrast, Acts I-II (1350-71)
Tyler, The Contrast, Acts II-V (1371-93)

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVEL

M Sept 26
W Sept 28
F Sept 30

Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (3-54)

Foster, The Coquette (55-108)
Foster, The Coquette (108-69)

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY

M Oct 3

W Oct 5

Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Poetry (743-46)

Murray, On the Equality of the Sexes (1245-47, 1253-59)
Turell, poems (788-90)
Fletcher, poems (handout)
Stockton, poems (795-99)
Anonymous poems by women (821-23)
Wheatley, poems (1297-1314)
Midterm Exam

RACE, SLAVERY, AND THE INVENTION OF THE SOUTH

F Oct 7

M Oct 10

W Oct 12

Race, Slavery, and the Invention of the South (1981-82)

Walker, Appeal (1982-93)
Garrison, editorial (1994-97)
Grimk, Appeal (2018-27)
Fitzhugh, from Southern Thought (2142-52)
Frederick Douglass (2035-37)
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (2102-20)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Uncle Toms Cabin (2573-2614)

EN250 American Literature I

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

F Oct 14

M Oct 17
W Oct 19

Hawthorne (2398-2401)
Alice Doanes Appeal & Young Goodman Brown (2414-2430)
Ministers Black Veil & The Birthmark (2451-70)
Rappaccinis Daughter (2451-70)

EDGAR ALLAN POE

M Oct 24

W Oct 26
F Oct 28

Poe (2484-86)
Ligeia & The Fall of the House of Usher (2487-2510)
The Tell-Tale Heart (2517-20) & The Purloined Letter (2527-39)
Philsophy of Composition and selected poems, TBA (2546-71)

HERMANN MELVILLE

M Oct 31

W Nov 2
F Nov 4

Melville (2647-50)
Bartleby, the Scrivener (2651-77)
Billy Budd (2753-82)
Billy Budd (2782-811)

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

M Nov 7

W Nov 9

F Nov 11

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1704-06)

from Nature: Nature (1707-10) & Language (1714-18)
Self-Reliance (1714-18)
Henry David Thoreau (1859-62)
Resistance to Civil Government (1862-76)
from Walden (1877-1911)
Last date submit comprehensive essay proposal

WALT WHITMAN

M Nov 14

W Nov 16
F Nov 18

Whitman (2992-95)
Emerson, The Poet (1763-79)
Song of Myself (3010-54)
Song of Myself (cont.)
Selected poems TBA

EMILY DICKINSON

M Nov 21

T Nov 22
M Nov 28
W Nov 30
F Dec 2

W Dec 7

8 a.m. Final exam period

Th Dec 8

Last date to submit comprehensive essay

Dickinson (3125-29)
Higginson, letters (2182-84)
Selected letters TBA
Selected poems TBA
Last date to submit draft of comprehensive essay
Dickinson, selected poems TBA
Dickinson, selected poems TBA
Dickinson, selected poems TBA

EN250 American Literature I

American
iterature

I
EN250

KEEPING AN AMERICAN LIT I COMMONPLACE BOOK

Students with literary tastes, in days when books were hard to come by,
kept commonplaces or notebooks into which they copied out verses
or prose extracts that particularly appealed to them.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England,
2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965. 49.

The Commonplace Requirement

Aside from completing the readings themselves, the most important part of your daily class
preparation this semester will take the form of a commonplace book, a popular practice among
American readers up to the end of the 19th Century. Lucia Knoles has defined commonplacing as
the act of selecting important phrases, lines, and/or passages from texts and writing them down;
the commonplace book is the notebook in which a reader has collected quotations from works s/he
has read. Commonplace books also include comments and notes from the reader; they are
frequently indexed so that the reader can classify important themes and locate quotations related
to particular topics or authors <www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles/commonplacebook.html>.
How to Prepare Your Commonplace Entries
Follow these steps in keeping your commonplace:

As you read, mark passages that you see as good candidates for your commonplace
submission. After you finish reading the assignment for the upcoming class session, select no
fewer than two passages and carefully and accurately copy them. After each transcribed
passage, add a paragraph reflecting on the meaning and importance of the quotation within
the assigned work. Except for the documentationthats it!

Throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, commonplace entries were copied (or, in the
19th Century, occasionally cut and pasted from newspapers or magazines) into a bound
notebook. However, because I want to regularly collect your entries without taking your
commonplace book out of your possession, I am asking that you use a three-ring, loose-leaf
binder. Thus, when I want to collect your entries for review, all you need to do is remove the
relevant pages from your binder.

Start your entries for each reading assignment on a fresh page, prominently labeling it with
the due date of the reading assignment. Provide the author, title, and original publication
date for the source of each selection. At the end of each passage, add the page number from
the Heath Anthology.

For several reasons, I require that your commonplaces be neatly handwritten. First, the act of
hand copying meaningful passages worth remembering, in ink on paper, puts you in touch
with the way the first readers of the assigned works interacted with these texts; it is a way
for you to discover how different technologies affect the way we think about, and respond
to, what we read. Second, the research on this is clear: Writing by hand, compared to
keyboarding, significantly boosts memory and the ability to retain and understand

concepts. There are several reasons behind this, including the different memories left in the
sensorimotor part of the brain as well as the simple fact that you spend more time
handwriting a passage than you do typing it. In other words, the more slowly, carefully, and
neatly you transcribe a passage, the more thoroughly you are considering its nuances and
implications.
Choosing Passages to Quote
Originally, commonplaces were catchall repositories for whatever struck the fancy of the
commonplacer. In addition to quotations from poems and essays, they often included factoids from
newspaper and magazine articles and recipes. The rationale for passages you choose to quote and
comment on, however, should be something more than I liked it or It sounded cool. The
passages you choose to quote should do at least one of the following:

Seem central to the overall meaning of the work at hand.

Correlate with, or strike a contrast with, present-day culture and/or situations. Again, such
entries should not comprise the bulk of your selections.

Help clarify something important about the complete text.

Represent a quality or characteristic that seems common to the author.
Recall another author or work we have previously read.
Pose problems for understanding or interpretation.
Connect deeply with you and your lifebut please dont allow these kinds of entries to
dominate your selections or responses.

Qualities of Good Commentary

Good comments in commonplace books dont just say what is boring or interesting or hard or
easy. They dont just say I agree or I disagree with the text. Rather, they explain clearly the
reasons you thought the passage worthy of quotation, commenting on its possible meanings and
significance and its relationship to the work as a whole. Good comments take into consideration the
context in which the work was originally written in order to evaluate its possible meanings and
ways the text might have been received in its own time. Good comments might also add information
about the passage not available in the anthology.
A commonplace book is serious but it is also a journalan informal work-in-progress rather than a
finished product. Hence, it does not need to meet the standards for spelling, grammar or usage
expected of formal papers. Nevertheless, your comments need to communicate ideas clearly and
persuasively, in a fashion that earns the respect of you and your readers.
Value of the Commonplace
A good commonplace book, although made up of separate entries about separate texts, will reflect
your gradual development and growth as a student of early American literature. Entries will expose
the patterns and themes that emerge over time in a way that will allow you to compare and
contrast works and to consider the evolution of particular ways of thinking and writing styles. As
specific kinds of questions or patterns strike you as particularly important, your commonplace
comments can explore those questions or patterns on a deeper level.
Assessment of the Commonplace
See the syllabus for a complete explanation of the evaluation of the commonplace book.