FALL 1999
This information effective for Fall 1999.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
FALL 1999
This information effective for Fall 1999.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Instructor: Michael Cowan Office:
Oakes 322 (x. 4455, x. 4658)
Office hours: TBA
Lectures: MWF, 9:30-10:40am, College 8, Room 240
Discussion Section times TBA
A very large number of important literary texts were produced by U.S.
writers
during the forty years between the start of this century and the
beginning of
World War II. It is impossible to offer even a "representative"
sample of
this work within the space of a ten-week course. This year
American
Literature 100C will focus on novels and short fiction published
between 1913
and 1940. One aim of the course is to give you some sense of the
variety and
significance of this writing. We will examine the specifically
"literary"
elements of these works--the literary conventions on which they draw,
their
rhetorical and stylistic devices, their formal structure, etc.; we
will
consider some of their major explicit and implicit ideas and themes;
and we
will also give attention to the relationship of these works to the
specific
biographical and historical contexts out of which they emerged and to
which
they often directly or indirectly referred.
Lectures and Discussion Sections
Lectures normally will be given three times each week, on Mondays,
Wednesdays,
and Fridays. Discussion sections will be held once a week.
Required Reading
The required reading for the course averages around 230 pages a week.
We will
be reading the following:
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
William Faulkner, Light in August
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Langston Hughes, The Ways of White Folks
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing
Katherine Anne Porter, selected stories
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
Papers and exams
Students will write three 2-page papers, a take-home midterm essay,
and a
five-page paper on a single text. They will also have their choice
between
taking the final exam or writing a final paper.