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OVERVIEW
In the American Romantic period (1830-1860), U.S. literature achieved
unprecedented imaginative glories (the age is sometimes called the
"American Renaissance"). The works of Emerson, Melville, Poe,
Whitman, Stowe, Dickinson, and Douglass are deeply psychological and socially
astute, often mythic or melodramatic, and stunningly adventurous in form and
theme. We will explore each author's unique vision, as well as what the
writers hold in common. Many of the issues important to them--the convolutions
of power, racial and gender tensions, the value of nature, the inviolable
dignity of selfhood, the quest for metaphysical meaning--remain important to
us today. I will give occasional lectures to fill in biographical and
historical/cultural context, but the bulk of class time will be devoted to
discussion.
The course has three Learning Outcome goals:
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To increase your knowledge about mid-nineteenth-century
(“Romantic” era) American authors
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To improve your analytical ability to see how texts work
aesthetically and culturally
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To develop your skill and pleasure in communicating ideas, both
in class and on paper
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TEXTS
Total cost new = about $45.00; you can use other editions,
except for the Poe, but for ease during class of finding pages we’re
discussing, it’s best to purchase the versions I ordered.
1. Edgar A. Poe: Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings
(Signet, 1998) ISBN: 0451526759
2. Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of …
(Penguin, 1982) ISBN: 014039012X
3. Herman Melville: Bartleby and Benito Cereno (Dover
Thrift, 1990) ISBN: 0486264734
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Oxford,
1998) ISBN: 0192827871
5. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Oxford, 1998) ISBN:
0192834096
6. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Viking Penguin, 2003) ISBN: 0142437247
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COURSE POLICIES
& ASSIGNMENTS
Participation and attendance:
Every student is a vital part of the class community, and I will expect you
to work to make the class an intellectually energizing experience. The
flow of good discussions will result in a course more satisfying for
everyone. Participation can take a variety of forms--the raising of
questions or issues, stating opinions about the work or topic being
discussed, responding to other students’ or my comments, involvement in group
activities, and so on. Classroom participation will affect your final
grade positively, helping to pull it up a notch or two, especially in borderline
cases.
Always bring the syllabus and current text to class. Regular, and on
time, attendance is required. You get two absences penalty free. I
won't ask, and you don't need to tell me the reason. For the next two
absences, your grade will be docked a notch--e.g. B+ to B--except in cases of
true emergencies. If you miss more than six classes, you cannot pass
the course.
Turnitin Site: The Essay and Final Synthesis Essay Exam are both
turned in via Turnitin (www.turnitin.com). You will need to register on
Turnitin for this course by using the course I.D. and password mobydick.
Essay: Topics
will be given for this ten-page paper. I encourage you, however, to
develop your own. A handout for topics and essay-writing tips, along
with research requirements, will be provided down-the-road. Little slack
will be given for sloppy prose. Any essay with a number of major
grammatical or sentence-construction glitches will be returned without a
grade and required to be revised. A late paper will be penalized a
grade for each class period submitted late, and only emergencies will allow
you to submit your essay late without a penalty. Revisions will be
accepted up to two weeks after you get your paper assessed on Turnitin.
Please review your paper with me in conference before you revise it.
The revision grade replaces the original grade; however, my standards for
revision are very high, so casual revising (fixing a problem here and there)
will not earn you a better grade. Submit the revised paper directly to
me via email (not Turnitin).
In-class Exam: The questions will be multiple-choice/true-false,
with perhaps a few fill-in-the-blank or short-response questions. The
questions will range from straightforward factual questions about the readings
to more complex interpretive ones. If you’ve diligently kept up with
the course, this should be an easy “A” for you. A required practice
exam will be offered a month into the semester, kindred to the real/graded
later exam.
Take-home Final Synthesis Exam:
You will be given three broad and comprehensive questions roughly two weeks
before the due date of the exam (the otherwise date for an in-class exam, if
there was one: Dec. 8). You will choose one of the questions, leading
you to discuss an issue/theme/etc. in four or five of our main authors.
Instructions will be provided down-the-road. As this essay is
due at the very end of the semester, revisions will not be possible.
Incompletes:
These can only be granted if you have a health or family emergency.
Plagiarism:
Don't do it. Plagiarism is easy to detect (especially by the Turnitin
site), and the consequences for being found guilty of it can be devastating
for your FIU career, besides being ethically nasty. If you do not know
FIU's policies on plagiarism, learn them. If you get desperate or
stressed in your course work, it’s better to talk to your professor than to
passively not turn in work or cheat.
Conferences, Email, etc.: I am always happy to meet with you
during office hours to talk more about the readings or other course
matters. For brief questions or to set up a conference outside of my
regular office hours, you may call me at my home number (for emergencies),
leave a message on my office phone (305-919-5254), or email me at harveyb@fiu.edu.
I almost always return email messages within the same day I receive them, so
if you don't get a reply within a day, you should assume I didn't get the
original message. P.S. If you are interested in pursuing an advanced
degree, whether in a profession (Law, for example) or an MA or PhD in an
English or Humanities field, feel free to come by to discuss such with me.
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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 Scriver” (“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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THE
WHALE
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Nov 3
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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 8
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continued
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Nov 10
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continued
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Nov 15
IN-CLASS EXAM INSTRUCTIONS (NOT READY): TO BE TAKEN
NOV. 15
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In-class Exam
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Nov 17
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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
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AMERICAN BODILY ECSTASY & EMPATHY:
WHITMAN
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Nov 22
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Whitman: "Song of
Myself" (You can skim thru the following sections somewhat: 7,
12, 14, 16-18, 21-23, 26, 30, 41-47; the other sections should be read
intently)
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Whitman
review (skip references to poems/essays we did not read)
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Whitman
bio.
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Nov 24
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continued
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Nov 29
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Whitman: Calamus poems--"In
Paths Untrodden," "Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand,"
"For You O Democracy," "Trickle Drops," "City of
Orgies," "I Hear it was Charged against Me," "Here the
Frailest Leaves of Me," "A Glimpse," "I Dream'd in a
Dream," "Among the Multitude"
"The Wound-Dresser" and "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of
Life"
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Dec 1
TAKE HOME FINAL EXAM ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS/
QUESTIONS (NOT READY): DUE BY MIDNIGHT OF DEC. 8
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Review, Final Exam Preparation, Class Evaluation, etc.
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