Course Information

Schedule of Assignments

This course has as its title a deceptively simple question: “What is American literature?”. That question invites discussion, both serious and playful, and it also invites more questions. What is “American”? Who is “American”? What is the relationship between “American” and the United States? What is “literature”? Who gets to say whether texts count as “good” or “representative” or “canonical” literatures? Do movies count? What about narratives? For me, the very idea that we are beginning with a question implies activity: critical reading, collaborative discussion, analytical writing.

I hope this course will open or will continue for you an inquiry into what we might call literary cultures of the United States. The course design assumes that there are multiple points of entry to the full richness of U.S. literature. The "classical" American literature that originates in New England is just one part of a dialogue that includes Native American, Latino American, and African-American traditions older than the United States, and Asian Pacific American and "ethnic" European traditions that reach back well into the nineteenth century.

This particular section of this course is special in that it is one of three sections being "team-taught" this semester. That means that we will meet as a small class for about half of our meetings this semester. On the other days, most Thursdays of the semester, we'll meet with two other sections for shared conversations and frequent guest lectures. The other professors teaching in this group are Sara Blair and Joshua Miller. Together, we've designed our courses via a comparative logic, working across historical and identity rubrics under three operative thematics: self-invention, transition and translation, and alternative and hidden histories. I hope you enjoy the course and the opportunity to consider the texts and ideas of the course in small and large groups.

I will not make any adjustments to the class roster (i.e., oversubscribe or drop students) until after the second class meeting. At that point, I will automatically drop any student who has not attended both of the first two classes. After the second class, if there are spaces available I will authorize students who are on the waitlist and who have been attending class to register for the course until the course has again met its maximum capacity. Please do not email me requesting exceptions to this policy.