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This course will examine major American authors from 1865 to the present. In order to develop a consistent theme from which to compare readings, each reading will consider an American city or urban life. Through the analysis of the ways in which race, class, gender, and nation are presented by each author's presentation of life in the city, we will trace the development of industrialized cities and the changing conceptions of American life as one which takes place in an urban environment.
Students will work in groups and lead the discussion for one class period. In addition, there will be weekly quizzes, two 3-5 page papers and a final exam.
Required Texts:
Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume 2
Nella Larsen Quicksand and Passing
Copies that I will provide
Week 1:
Introduction
Rebecca Harding Davis "Life in the Iron-Mills" 41
Sarah Orne Jewett "A White Heron" 112
Week 2:
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) "from The Guilded Age"
217
Henry James "The Beast in the Jungle" 597
Kate Chopin "A Pair of Silk Stockings" 645
Week 3:
Stephen Crane Maggie, Girl of the Streets (copy)
W.E.B. Du Bois "from The Souls of Black Folk" 785
Booker T. Washington "from Up from Slavery" 853
Week 4:
Upton Sinclair "from The Jungle" (selections) 815
Theodore Dreiser "Typhoon" 1129
Gertrude Stein Melanctha (copy)
Week 5:
William Carlos Williams selected poems 1205
Eugene O'Neill The Hairy Ape 1227
Djuna Barnes "Smoke" 1259
Week 6:
T.S. Eliot "The Waste Land" (selections) 1312
F. Scott Fitzgerald "Babylon Revisited" 1335
Ernest Hemingway "Hills Like White Elephants" 1390
Week 7:
Locke "The New Negro" selections 1460
Langston Hughes poems and "When the Negro Was in Vogue" 1488
Zora Neale Hurston "The Gilded Six-bits" 1545
Claude McKay poems 1557
Week 8:
Nella Larsen Passing
Blues lyrics and listening to Blues 1581
Week 9:
Richard Wright "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" 1788
James Baldwin "Sonny's Blues" 1913
Week 10:
Michael Gold "The Soul of a Landlord" 1602
Carved on the Walls: Poetry by Early Chinese Immigrants" 1755
Maxine Hong Kingston "from The Woman Warrior" 2095 and copy
Week 11:
Bharati Mukherjee from Jasmine (copy)
Gwendolyn Brooks "We Real Cool" 2318
Robert Lowell "Memories of West Street and Lepke" 2325, "For
the Union Dead" 2328
Allen Ginsberg "from 'Howl'" 2379
Week 12:
Adrienne Rich "Diving into the Wreck" 2410
Amiri Baraka poems 2448
Audre Lorde poems 2456
Week 13:
Pedro Pietri poems 2509
Victor Hernandez Cruz poems 2533
Lorna Dee Cervantes poems 2579
sapphire poems (copy)
Week 14:
Junot Diaz "Boyfriend" (copy)
Edwidge Dandicat "Carolyn's Wedding" (copy)
