5:45P-7:00P  TR  (40) 3 cr
Topic: American Autobiography

Our course studies relationships between autobiography and the topics of travel, exploration,
nature, and environment in the Americas.  "Autobiography" will expand to include some works
of fiction with autobiographical narrative form.  We also look at some "life writing" in the form
of biography.  We'll ask how writers use autobiographical stories and formats to shape their
encounters with the Americas.  The "Americas" mean both North and South America.  Our
readings come from the 19th and 20th centuries.  Environmental themes and concerns play an
important part in at least some of these writings.  Traveling authors of the nineteenth century
sometimes wrote of themselves as venturing into new, pristine, or Edenic worlds, but those
stories typically faced major complications and problems.  We explore the desires, problems, and
complications and problems.  We explore the desires, problems, and satisfactions of travel.  The
metaphors of life as a river and actual travel along rivers should emerge as major concerns.
Going up mountains, literally and metaphorically, should emerge as another organizing focus.
While reading these works, students will be encouraged to think and write about their own past
(and future) travels.  That is, we'll consider ourselves as possible autobiographical subjects.
Student written work in the course will probably consist of a mid-term and a final and two papers
in the 8-10 page range, plus some short (paragraph-length) working papers.  Readings will
probably include some autobiographical excerpts from the South American explorers Alexander
von Humboldt and Alfred Russell Wallace, Isabella Bird's A LADY'S LIFE IN THE ROCKY
MOUNTAINS, John Muir's MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, Mark Twain's LIFE ON
THE MISSISSIPPI and HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Peter Matthiessen's: THE CLOUD FOREST:
A CHRONICLE OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN WILDERNESS, William Henry Hudson's
GREEN MANSIONS; A ROMANCE OF THE TROPICAL FOREST, and Don Stapp's A
PARROT WITHOUT A NAME.