Summer 2008

E s316K • Masterworks of Literature: American

Course Description

Literature, Culture, and Identity--
This course is a historically arranged survey of American literature that includes voices and perspectives spanning the 17th through the 21st centuries. Novels by Kate Chopin, Toni Morrison, Luis Urrea, and Sherman Alexie will serve as focal points for our discussions about culture and identity (for example, national, ethnic, or gendered) at different historical moments. Our goal will be to see these works as embedded in specific contexts that must be explored in order to understand, as much as possible, the particularized expressions of American identity offered in each.

Grading Policy

Grades will be based on four exams (25% each) and attendance.
More than three absences will adversely affect your final average.

Texts

Flight, Sherman Alexie
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Sula, Toni Morrison
In Search of Snow, Luis Urrea

Course packet including additional authors such as Gertrude Bonnin, Frederick Douglas, Charles Alexander Eastman, William Faulkner, Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Flannery O'Connor, Mary Rowlandson, and Amy Tan.

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