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CLASS & DUE DATES
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READINGS
Read both the books and the e-texts. You should print out the
e-texts and bring them to class along with our main books.
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PROF.
STUFF
Read my lecture notes, study questions, etc. before or after the associated
class. These get updated every semester, so don’t read/download too far in
advance.
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LINKS
Read
these cultural-historical or author links before class.
Now and again, fun (non-academic) sites are put in []s. You are not
responsible for these.
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Aug 23
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Course Introduction: What is (American) Romanticism?
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Aug 25
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DeTocqueville, excerpt from Democracy in America (e-text)
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Romanticism summary 1
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Another
Romanticism summary
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THE TRANSCENDENTAL SUBLIME: EMERSON
& THOREAU & FULLER
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Aug 30
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Emerson: excerpts from "Nature" (e-text), "The Oversoul" (e-text), & Journal (e-text)
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Romanticism summary 2 (from
castles to malls lecture2)
Transcendentalism
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Emerson bio.
Emerson & Abolitionism
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Sept 1
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Thoreau: Walden excerpts (e-text)
Fuller:
excerpts (e-text
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Emerson/Thoreau/Fuller review
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Thoreau bio.
Fuller bio.
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Sept 6
Labor Day
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No Class
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ANTI-BOURGEOIS VISIONS: MELVILLE,
HAWTHORNE, & IRVING
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Sept 8
see note to the right about class
Here is a quick roadmap
of the course thus far to help orient you:
1. The loss of hierarchy between the Renaissance (Puritan era in U.S.) and
now leads to social anomie and facile individuality: the DeTocqueville
passage.
2. Writers of the Romantic Rebellion at once reflect this turn to
interiority and attempt to rejuvenate/ empower selfhood with a sense of the
sublime: Emerson.
3. Emerson goes into Nature to reject bourgeois conventionality, but
ultimately Nature dissolves during his eyeball peak experience.
Emerson is more interested in self-reliance and sublime empowerment than
social reform: see his Journals. That is, although Nature is
transcended too, he uses Nature to take him away from all sociality,
politics, etc.
4. Fuller and Thoreau translate the quest for sublime being into a
liberty-quest that actually considers forms of the social: for Fuller, this
means pondering the political dynamics of gender inequality; for Thoreau,
this means envisioning a private economy (simplicity) in opposition to
capitalist spendthrift/luxury habits.
5. Our next set of writers (Melville, Irving, & Hawthorne: who are not
Transcendentalists) use narrative, rather than abstract exposition or
description, to see how a desire for the sublime can play out in “real”
lives. Although each story is well deserving of a week’s worth of discussion,
we will discuss them as an interconnected cluster, getting at the real
profound problem of having a “self” that also must be “social”.
I really look forward to hearing what you all have to say about the stories
(i.e. I’ll curb lecturing).
Tip & heads up: the discussion of these three stories will end up
seeming rushed, but there is, from my end, a strategy: to tantalize you
enough about the stories so you will potentially want to explore them more
in your essay for this class, without “exhausting” what might be
interpretively explored in class!
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Today we do catch-up for
Thoreau and Fuller; “Bartleby” et al for Sept 13th
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Bartleby review
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Melville bio.
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Sept 13
see note to the right about class
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Melville: “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (“Bartleby” is in the thin
Dover edition)
Irving: "Rip Van Winkle" (e-text)
Hawthorne: “Wakefield” (e-text)
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Irving review
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Irving bio.
Hawthorne bio.
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IMMENSITY
WITHIN: DICKINSON
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Sept 15
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Dickinson:
Letters and Poems (e-text)
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Overview: 1st 3rd of Course
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Dickinson bios (two).
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Sept 20
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Dickinson
continued
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POE'S GOTHIC INTERIORITY: METAPHYSICAL
CAPTIVITY
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Sept 22
Practice Exam (covering all main readings & e-texts,
including for today)
ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS (ESSAY DUE OCT.
29)
ESSAY BRAINSTORMING: DICKINSON
EXAMPLE
ESSAY TOPICS (ongoing)
ESSAY
SAMPLE (not ready yet)
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Poe:
"Marginalia (The Veil of the Soul)," "To Helen,"
"Annabel Lee," "The Poetic Principle," &
"The Oval Portrait" (e-texts)
Practice In-class Exam
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Overview: 1st 3rd of Course (same
as above)
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Poe bio.
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Sept 27
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Poe: "The Cask of
Amontillado,” "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat"
& "The Pit and the Pendulum” (in our edition of Poe)
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Sept 29
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Poe:
"The Purloined Letter," "Murders in the Rue Morgue,"
& "Manuscript Found in a Bottle" (in our edition of Poe)
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Poe
Fun Site: FYI only; not required.
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Oct 4
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Poe:
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
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Poe
review
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NARRATIVES OF PROTEST:
SLAVERY AND LIBERTY
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Oct 6
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Douglass: Narrative of... (read
the initial “Preface” and “Letter” too)
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Douglass
review
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Douglass bio.
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Oct 11
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Douglass: excerpt from 1855 edition (e-text)
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Overview: 2nd 3rd of course
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Oct 13
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Melville: Benito Cereno (in Dover edition)
Nat Turner: “Confession” (go to this page, and download
the PDF file from the “download” link near the upper right corner)
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Melville review (spoiler alert: read after reading
“Benito”)
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Melville
bio.
Turner bio.
READ THIS PAGE AFTER YOU READ "BENITO"-No
need to memorize the details, but note how clever/ politically sensitive
Melville has been in selecting names. Melville's story was based on a
actual ship revolt, and much of the deposition at the end is drawn
liberally from court documents .
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Oct 18
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continued
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Oct 20
Dear
Students,
I'm deeply concerned about English majors at FIU and in fact all students
at FIU, both as a professor and administrator. I increasingly see
students overburdened by whatever complexities they face in their real
lives, and not being able to handle basic chores such as showing up for
class prepared. It literally gets worse and worse every
semester.
I could quiz or test you more, obligating reading/preparedness priorities
by incremental monitoring. Many, perhaps most, professors hold to
that pedagogic approach. Some of you, indeed, would even find such
comforting and familiar. I believe it to be inappropriate in a
senior-level English course, however. And it goes against the very
theme of the course, which juxtaposes the bureaucratization of being
against the sublimity (the rich interiority) of being.
As a teacher
what I most care about is that students learn something, intensely, to the
depths of their intellectual souls. To be frank, although it is
difficult and awkward to convey this to you as your professor, I care less
that you've read Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Douglass, Melville et. al. in
a “lite” fashion (adequate to pass a multi-choice exam, say) than that
you’ve read two or three authors passionately and carefully and
intensely. It is much better, to my mind, that you understand one
thing on an "A" grade level, than several things, on a
"B-" grade level, as it were. Better to play the piano
well, than play it, sort of; and the guitar, sort of; and the drums, sort
of. This is because in humanities subjects--unlike math, or
whatever--you grow, as a student, by maximizing your intellectual curiosity
and penetration. That's why I've spent so much time saying
"write a ten page paper on a 10-line poem" and so on. If
you figure out that, you will have an analytical/intellectual skill for
life.
So… how am I going to help you make it so?
Here’s the deal.
1) We will read Stowe as scheduled on the syllabus.
2) We will cut Whitman from the syllabus entirely, freeing up 3 or 4 days
(if you’ve already purchased the Whitman book, I will buy it back from you
at cost).
3) We will start over with Melville, more leisurely going thru “Bartleby”
and “Benito Cereno”; and then conclude the course with Moby-Dick.
I have tried a new teaching strategy this semester—concentrating on what I
call “symptomatic” passages, but have done so, I fear, at the cost of your broader
understanding of the palpable complexities of our texts. To return to
the music analogy: understanding a few bars of a jazz piece intensely can’t
happen unless you understand the whole piece, and thus the return to
“Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno” and a more leisurely stroll thru Moby-Dick.
4) Your best two grades out of the otherwise three grades (paper, exam,
synthesis essay) will be the grades that count (50% + 50%, rather than 33%
+ 33% + 33%). This means, theoretically, that you could get an “F” on
either the paper, or the exam, or the synthesis essay, without harm
(although you might be embarrassed!). To reward those who have been,
by the end of the term, dutiful in all of the original class assessment
components: anyone who has a “B-” average on the three, and has made a good
faith effort at participation moving forward, will get their grades bumped
a full grade (to an A- or A); usually the participation bump is somewhat
less than that.
Some of you may feel that above arrangement rewards… hmmm…
slackerness. The reward for those who are excellent in all three
grade categories, however, extends beyond the particular grade for the
course. I’ll be blunt and arrogant: I write killer letters of
recommendation, and because I’m an administrator, getting a recommendation
letter from me has a certain extra weight in the larger scheme of things.
You all have
marvelous capacities (Emerson teaches us that!): and, at some point,
perhaps in a final detour in one of the final days this semester, I will explain
my personal philosophy more amply. Ask, dear students, the point of
the original anecdote about curiosity and the treasure chest in the
tree--the treasure inside, are the minds and hearts of students I get to be
witness to in my rather nice job, so saith the professor!
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Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin (read first several historical/contextual pages of the editor’s
Introduction before you start on the novel; read the rest after you finish
the novel).
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Read initial letter
Browse around this site
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Oct 25
ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS: DUE OCT 29
ESSAY TOPICS (ongoing)
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continued
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Oct 27
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continued
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Stowe
review
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Nov 1
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continued
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Nov 3
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Melville: “Bartleby”
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Nov 8
PRACTICE IN-CLASS EXAM
& EXAM INSTRUCTIONS: TO BE TAKEN NOV. 15
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Melville: Benito Cereno (in Dover
edition)
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Nov 10
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BC continued
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Nov 15
PRACTICE
IN-CLASS EXAM & EXAM INSTRUCTIONS: TO BE TAKEN NOV. 15
TAKE HOME FINAL EXAM ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS/
QUESTIONS: DUE BY MIDNIGHT OF DEC. 8 via email
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In-class Exam
Essay Debrief
Review of expectations for Final Take Home Exam Essay
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THE WHALE
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Nov 17
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Melville: Moby-Dick: xi-xv (introductory material in the edition
I ordered, but if you have a different edition just read the
introductory/prefatory stuff in it) and Chapters 1-22, 26-32, 35-39, 41-42,
44, 46-52, 55, 58-61 (I've cut mainly chapters that detail aspects of
whaling, but which do not develop the plot or characters)
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Nov 22
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continued
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Nov 24
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continued
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Nov 29
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Moby-Dick: Chapters 66, 76-79, 81-83, 86-87, 91-96,
99-100, 104, 106-119, 124-epilogue
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Moby-Dick review (not ready)
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Dec 1
TAKE HOME FINAL EXAM ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS/
QUESTIONS: DUE BY MIDNIGHT OF DEC. 8 via email
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AMERICAN BODILY ECSTASY & EMPATHY:
WHITMAN
Review, Final Take Home Exam Preparation, Class Evaluation,
etc.
Whitman: “Crossing B. Ferry” (handout) if time
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Dec 6 (Finals Week)
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Coffee, Doughnuts, & an Introduction to Literary Theory
(Meet in my office AC1 378)
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Dec 8 (Finals
Week)
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Coffee, Doughnuts, & an Introduction to Applying to
Graduate School in English/Humanities
(Meet in my office AC1 378)
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