English 223-331
American Writers to 1900
Instr: Hamilton, Kristie
Office: CRT 478; 229-5959
e-mail: kgh2@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MTR; 1:30-3:35pm; CRT 309
Course Description
This course will teach you about early U.S. history and culture in a unique way: through the voices and stories of the people who lived it.
We will study many of the most important writers spanning the period from native-European contact in North America and European colonization through the American Revolution, the Civil War and a bit beyond. We'll learn about Hopi resistance to the Spanish, about the fascinating struggles of the Puritans with despair and hope, and about the idealism and skepticism that preceded the American Revolution. We'll study poetry, essays, and short stories from the 19th century that paint vivid pictures of a diverse American culture in which many were debating the aims and functions of individualism and the family, how social reform movements such as abolition and women's rights might achieve equality for all, and the impact of capitalism and commercial culture on working-class and middle-class people. We will read such authors as Anne Bradstreet, Franklin, Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman in relation to their successful or significant contemporaries William Bradford, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Jack London. We will be concerned with the artful ways diverse American authors have been engaged in intense conversation with or about each other as they have responded to the literary traditions, historical events, social conditions and often competing cultural values that affected their writing and their lives. The reading for this course is invaluable for those who wish to become knowledgeable about the culture and history of the United States.Course Requirements: Two take-home exams of 3-5 pages, one comprehensive final exam, regular attendance and class participation.
Required Text-at UWM Bookstore: The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume One, 4th edition, 2002.
