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ENGLISH 842 - SECTION 001
- WINTER 1998
MONDAY 2-5
4199 ANGELL HALL
18C TRANSATLANTIC PRINT CULTURE
Julie Ellison
jeson@umich.edu
(h) 662-2280 / (o) 763-6048*, 763-4639
Office hours: Mondays 9-12 3259 Haven and by appointment 4008 Fleming
Reading Assignments
January 12 |
Introduction: How to Read The Shipping News
Questions arising from intergeneric practices and the culture of
multiplicity. Survey of the field: From nationalism to internationalism,
from literature to culture, "area studies," "rim studies," interdisciplinarity,
relationally, and the problem of comparison. Temporality and the
return of geography.
4 pm Attend talk by job candidate
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January 19 |
No class: MLK Day
Cornel West, 10 am, Hill Auditorium
Special event on Sunday Jan 25: Free public premiere of Prof. James
Standifer's documentary "Porgy and Bess: An American Voice"
Acquire course pack this week--leave yourself time! |
January 26 |
Poets, Provincials, and the News
William Cowper, The Task (1785) Books I and IV, including
footnotes, and photocopies of the Morning Chronicle and General
Evening Post (handout)
Skills assignment
- a. Using the microfilm reader/printers in the Serials Room of
the Graduate Library, read several issues of a British or British
North American newspaper. The material must date from 1783. Photocopy
the issue, or part of an issue, that strikes you as the most interesting.
Bring the photocopies to class.
- b. 10-minute class presentations: The challenge is to convey
the excitement and significance of your materials to other members
of the class. You may zero in on a particular newspaper item or
on the relationships among different kinds of content. Feel free
to use graphics, the blackboard, handouts. If you need an overhead
or slide projector, let me know no later than Thursday Jan 22.
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February 2 |
The Categories of "Space," "Geography," "Scapes"
and "Globalization": Transnational Cultural Studies
** Meet in 4006 Fleming (tentative) for worldwide web demo
- Timothy Brennan from At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism
Now (Coursepack)
- Patricia Yaeger, "Introduction: Narrating Space" from The
Geography of Identity (Coursepack)
- Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead ch 1, esp. 25-31
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February 9 |
"Print Culture": What Does It Explain?
- John Feather, from The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century
England (Coursepack)
- Richard D. Brown, from Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion
of Information in Early America (Coursepack)
- David S. Shields, "Introduction: Of Civil Discourse and Private
Society" and ch. 2, "Belles Lettres and the Arenas of Metropolitan
Conversation" Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America
Skills Assignment: Site Visits
Find a site on the worldwide web containing primary resources
that can be useful in this seminar. Then go to Special Collections
(Rare Book Room) in the Graduate Library and locate an archival item
that is pertinent to the material on the web site you have located.
Prepare a sheet containing the URL (address) for the web site and
bibliographical info on the print material. Write a 1-page description
and evaluation of both items, making sufficient copies for everyone
in the class. For the web site: be sure to specify the institutional
sponsor, the individuals who maintain the site, the date of the most
recent update, convenience (do you spend forever waiting for the page
to materialize on your screen?), and sources of support (foundations,
federal agencies, universities). For the printed item, include what
you have been able to discover about its provenance. The Special Collection
staff should be able to help you figure out when and how this item
came to reside at the University of Michigan.
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February 16 |
"The Atlantic": The History of a System
** Meet in Clements Library (facing the Law School on South
University, next to the President's house)
- Ian K. Steele, from The English Atlantic (Coursepack)
- David Cressy, from Coming Over (Coursepack)
- John Feather, from The Provincial Book Trade (Coursepack)
- Richard D. Brown, from Knowledge is Power: The
- Diffusion of Information in Early America (Coursepack)
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February 23 |
Making Up Magazines (And Anthologies)
Barbara Benedict, from Making the Modern Reader:
- Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies
(Coursepack)
- Kathryn Shevelow, from Women and Print Culture: The Construction
of Femininity in the Early Periodical (Coursepack)
- Jon Klancher, from The Making of English Reading
- Audiences in conjunction with Thomas Carlyle's "The Signs
of the Times" (Coursepack)
Skills Assignment:
Using the collections of the Clements Library, find a magazine, essay-periodical,
review, or quarterly that had some degree of transatlantic circulation
in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Write a one-page report
on this periodical, making sufficient copies for everyone in the
class. |
March 2 |
VACATION
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March 9 |
Worldly Manners and Imperial Sensibility:
The Tatler and The Spectator
Selections from Addison and Steele, stressing starred items:
- Tatler 1, 21, 25, 158, 163, 164, 167*, 181, 224, 229,
271
- Spectator 1, 2, 6, 10, 11*, 37, 50*, 69*, 324*
- Peter Hulme, from Colonial Encounters (Coursepack)
- Roach, Cities of the Dead, chs 3-4
- Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters, pp. 262-74
* Plan group presentations for next week
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March16 |
Either/Or, Both/And, Back-and-Forth Narratives:
Family, Class, and Captivity
- Charlotte Lennox, Euphemia (Coursepack II) OR
Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly OR Maria Edgeworth,
Belinda
- Ellison, "There and Back: Transatlantic Novels and Anglo-American
Careers" (handout)
Group presentation:
The seminar will hear from small groups according to who read what:
the Euphemias, the Edgars and the Belindas. Each small group will
prepare a 20-minute presentation about "their" text. Feel free to
come in costume.
* Due in class: 1-page statement of term paper topic
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March23 |
Poetry, Slavery, and Revolution
Carretta, Unchained Voices: selections by Jupiter Hammon,
Phillis Wheatley, Francis Williams, and "Belinda." Read the Introduction
to the volume and the footnotes for each selection. (The edition
of choice remains the Schomburg's The Collected Works of Phyllis
Wheatley, ed. John Shields, if you are writing on Wheatley.)
- Ellison, "The Politics of Fancy in the Age of Sensibility" (Coursepack)
- Paul Gilroy, from The Black Atlantic (Coursepack)
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March 30 |
Labor, Color, Captivity
In Carretta, Unchained Voices: The Interesting Narrative of
the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African
and A Narrrative of the Lord's wonderful Dealings with John Marrant,
a Black.
- Selections from antislavery periodical (Coursepack)
- Peter Linebaugh, "All the Atlantic Mountains Shook" (Coursepack)
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April 6 |
Conversation, Race, and Nation
- Freneau, The Rising Glory of America
- Selections from American Gentleman and How to Behave
- Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters, chs. 5, 6,
and 7 to p. 226
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April 13 |
Individual or Group Presentations on Periodicals, Newspapers,
or Transatlantic Careers. Presentations Should Develop from Research
on Final Papers |
April 20 |
Next Steps in Transatlantic Studies
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April 22 |
Day after Classes End: Class Symposium in 4006 Fleming
Mini-conference format: 20 min individual presentations with questions
and suggestions for revisions
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April 27 |
Term paper due, 5 pm, Ellison's Haven Hall mailbox
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WRITTEN WORK AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS
Weekly e-mail:
The day before each class, I would like to receive an e-mail from each
member of the seminar -- a substantial paragraph in length -- containing
some initial thoughts and queries pertaining to the week's reading. Clearly,
everyone in the class has to be on e-mail! I will set up a group e-mail
for us--transan@umich.edu, probably--and you should send your feedback
to the group address. I have decided not to assign a short paper in this
course but rather to weight weekly preparation more heavily.
Class Symposium:
A mini-conference in which short papers, distilled from the term paper
projects, will be presented to the group for feedback and questions.
Term Paper:
18-20pp. on a topic of your choosing. Bibliography and annotation required.
You may not submit a paper for credit in more than one course without
advance consultation with both professors involved. See syllabus for topic
due date. I do take into account essayistic skill--style, argument, exemplification--in
grading all papers.
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