L352 15878 AMERICAN LITERATURE 1865-1914
Gareth Evans

12:20p-1:10p MWF (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.

This class will offer a far from exhaustive survey of American Literature from 1865-1914. We will read Emily Dickinson because she’s there and because there is no one quite like her. Our major focus, however, will be on the fiction of the period. In part, we will examine the development of, and the relations between, American realism, naturalism, and modernism. We will look, too, at how the writers we examine engage directly, or otherwise, with cultural, social, and political issues central to the period: race and Jim Crow racism, suffrage and women’s rights, class difference and exploitation, immigration, the growth of the city, and the development of consumer capitalism. We will be concerned, then, not only with how writers do what they do, but also with the impact they wished to have on their readers and the culture of which they were members. Be prepared, then, to do a small amount of historical reading and research.

Class participation, two 6-8 page essays, an exam, and a series of in-class and out-of-class written responses.

Reading: stories by Charles Chesnutt on e-reserve; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Stephen Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets; Emily Dickinson, Final Harvest; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; stories by Joel Chandler Harris on e- reserve; Henry James, Daisy Miller and other tales to be announced; Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.