10:20a-11:35a D (30) 3 cr.
This course will address both a representative body of literary texts (examples of American literary production) and the organizing category of “American Fiction” itself. What has counted as American fiction at different moments and across varied institutional contexts? In what ways is fiction produced on U.S. soil “American”? To what extent might it be read as participating in a national literature tradition, or traditions? We will begin by asking how issues of nationality are at stake in the fictional texts themselves. Our reading will focus on selected works of early national and nineteenth-century literature with emphasis on the way this writing intervenes in a series of public debates on individual and corporate identities, property, citizenship, and the limits of enfranchisement.
As we examine the idea of a national literature, we will also consider the shifting delineations of the literary in this period. What confers on a text its specifically literary quality? How are ideologies of nationhood linked to norms of literary value?
Reading for the course will likely include: Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple; Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok; Nathaniel Hawthorne, selected short fiction; Fredrick Douglass, The Heroic Slave; Herman Melville, Benito Cereno; Stephen Crane, Maggie; Pauline Hopkins, Winona. Written assignments for the course will include three short essays and a final exam.