| ENGLISH 102C | CONTESTED SITES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE | SWEENEY, E. | Not who, but “What is an American?” was the question Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur posed in the early years of American independence. This class will attempt an answer by way of many more questions; when, where, why, and how is American identity developed, contested, and reimagined in nineteenth century American literature? We will think about key trends in American poetry and prose in their historical, social, and material contexts by tracing how and when key sites like the home, the courthouse, and the outdoors were depicted. We will pay particular attention to how race, gender, class, and intellectual and spiritual liberty affected different people’s access to particular places and ability to move within and between them. We will also examine literature itself as a site of contest, and will think about how medium and genre—as well as access to literacy, literature, and the means to publish—shaped what and who was seen as “American” over the course of the nineteenth century. Course authors will include Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Jacobs, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Charles Chesnutt, among others. Course requirements include regular attendance and participation; a midterm; a final; and two short papers. |