American Literary Traditions is a survey course of “American” literature from the first colonial encounters through the twenty-first century. Since it is impossible to account for all the great writing and great writers between the 1400s and 2018, I have crafted the syllabus with a conversation among writers in mind. This conversation focuses on the question of how we define or construct a canon of literature. We will examine writing over a 600-year period even as we question and reevaluate what constitutes “America” and “American” writing: How does a writer or a work gain a place in the canon? What work does a nation-based canon of literature do? For example, why do we still have a class called “American Literary Traditions” rather than “Literature of the United States”? How can literature be representative of such a heterogeneous nation as the United States?
Many of the writers we will read have had to fight for the ability to claim access to U.S. citizenship, let alone recognition as an intellectual or an artist by the publishing industry or communities of readers. The selections are arranged both so that you can become familiar with major literary periods—Colonial literature, Romanticism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism—and the major concerns of literary movements. The selections in this course allows writers to speak with each other in elaborating what it means to live in the U.S. and to call oneself “American.” Of course, we will challenge the definitions of literary movements and genre by reading non-canonical texts and texts by ethnic minorities, women, and other writers not typically considered well-established in the American literary canon.
With this framework in mind, we will aim for a broader understanding of the multiple forms an American identity can take. This course will introduce you to a variety of reading practices and new directions in the field of American literary studies. We will also turn to writings of various genres such as letters, poetry, short stories, novellas, essays, and plays, in order to examine historical forces and events such as exploration, colonization, migration, nation and empire building, among many others.
Finally, as a course with rigorous reading and writing, we will explore the acts of reading and writing themselves: what happens when we read? What knowledges are constructed by the act of reading and writing? How does a text encourage or discourage particular ideas and ideologies? How do our own reading and writing practices help construct and develop a literary canon? How do these practices form our cultural identity as individuals and a nation? To answer these questions, throughout the semester we will develop a literary vocabulary that include terms such as “plot,” “image,” and “symbol” (among others) that you will hone through close reading, literary analysis, and classroom discussion.