English 350-309-001
American Literature: 1940-Present
Instr:
Cam Tatham
Office:
CRT 392, 229-4504
e-mail:
ctatham@uwm.edu
Office hours: MWF, 2-3pm and by appointment.
Course Information:
MW, 3:00-4:15, CRT
368
Required Texts:
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
John Updike, Pigeon Feathers
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Requirements:
Assigned reading, to be completed by the first class dealing with each
text. Regular attendance (no more than two cuts allowed). Participation:
you should come to each class prepared to discuss your various thoughts
and feelings about the readings – you may be called on at any time.
Either 18 pages of polished critical analysis (split up in any way that
feels appropriate to you – e.g., 1 eighteen page paper, or 2 nine page
papers, or 3 six page papers, etc.). Or a reading journal in which you
record your reactions to each text, to class discussion, and to the various
ways in which the texts and discussion intersect with your own experience.
All written work to be handed in by the last day of classes. Also:
you will be expected to participate in an online Discussion Forum, posting
at least twice each week (an ‘original’ and a ‘response’)**.
Grade:
class participation = 20%; participation in online Discussion Forum
= 20%; written work = 60%.
Description:
This course will trace, through various genres, certain of the major
concerns in post WWII American literature, especially the relationship
between shifting concepts of the personal ‘self’ and a collective identity,
be it racial or cultural. Attitudes toward the masculine, the feminine,
relationships, community, ‘nature,’ and so on will be explored in all these
writers. The question of the formation of ‘the canon’ is currently
an important issue, and we shall be studying a deliberately diverse group
of writers who are part of or outside the mainstream of American literature.
We shall take up questions of style, also, from ordinary speech rhythms
of Kerouac, to the elegant realism of Updike, the folk-oriented lyricism
of Silko and Morrison, and the postmodern experimentation of Pynchon and
O’Brien.
