Instructor: Henkel, J Areas: III / G
Unique #: 35645 Flags: Writing
Semester: Spring 2013 Restrictions: n/a
Cross-lists: WGS 345 Computer Instruction: No
Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.
Description: In this course we will read captivity narratives by and about women. We will begin with an early American bestseller, a 17th-century Puritan woman's account of her captivity among the Native Americans of New England. Later in the course we will read (or view) examples of this particularly American genre as it recurs in later autobiography, fiction, and film. We will read these narratives not just for the remarkable personal experiences they depict, but also for the cultural values, concerns, and anxieties they encode, particularly as these relate to experiences and outcomes imagined as possible for women.
Texts:
--Michel Rene Hilliard d’Auberteuil, Miss McCrea: A Novel of the American Revolution (on Blackboard).
--Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, ed., Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives.
--Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
--Deborah Larsen, The White.
--Toni Morrison, A Mercy.
--Susannah Haswell Rowson, Slaves in Algiers: Struggle for Freedom.
--Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie.
--Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter.
--other Blackboard readings (Angela Carter, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie); secondary readings on Blackboard (Axtell, Ebersole, Namias, etc.).
--Films or film excerpts: Last of the Mohicans; Dances with Wolves; Not Without My Daughter.
Requirements & Grading: Minimum requirements are: 1) satisfactory work on quizzes (20%); 2) a passing average score on exams (two; no exam may be missed) (20% each; 40% total); 3) minor written and oral exercises, most to be completed in class (10%); 4) a course paper (in two drafts) (20%); and 5) an abstract of 1-2 pages and (depending on class size) an oral presentation on secondary material (10%).
Attendance, class preparation, informed discussion, and courteous classroom behavior are considered essential, and unsatisfactory marks in these areas are deducted from the final average. Final grades include "plus" or "minus" grades.
