English 232

American Literature II, 1865 to the Present

Spring 2003

HSS 65

TR 3:40- 4:55

Dr. Jonathan P. Eburne

This course proposes that the era we consider “modern” began in America sometime around 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War. We may still think of the United States as undergoing a constant process of reconstruction: many of the pressing issues faced by the writers, politicians, and thinkers of that immediate post-war moment continue to haunt the way we think about modern life. On the one hand, the United States still struggles with the political and emotional residue of the 19^th century: segregation and racial persecution, gender inequality, the gulf between rich and poor, and disagreements about the nation’s political structure. On the other hand, American literature since the Civil War has continued to interrogate how these very problems shape American life and American values.

Beginning with Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), a novel set in the 1870s, we will look back upon the history of American Literature and examine the ghosts— whether individual or social and political— that haunt it. This course surveys major literary works in America from the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, whose authors strove to piece together what American life looks and feels like as it enters the modern age. Many poets and writers struggled to invent entirely new languages with which to express this experience; others reinvented traditional forms in order to give them new meaning. This course will examine how American writers write about some of the most difficult issues— the trauma of war, the evils of racial and sexual violence, and even about their own fears of the future— in ways that still manage to find hope and meaning within the “heap of broken images” of modern life.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

available at the UT Bookstore

• Toni Morrison, Beloved

• Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. II, 5^th Edition. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998).

• Handouts of additional texts are available online from the Online Library Reserve.

Course Requirements

There will be three brief (2 page) writing assignments throughout the term, which will require you to respond critically and conceptually to recent readings. There will be one in-class exam and one final exam. Each exam will ask you to identify passages from the works we’ve read and explain their significance. Finally, the final paper will be a more involved essay that undertakes a more fully-developed analysis of some of the text we’ll have read (5-7 pp.). All assignments are due in class on the day listed on the syllabus. I will not accept late papers, and there will be no make-up exams except in the most extreme of cases.

Attendance and class participation are mandatory and will significantly affect your final grade (10%).

The three writing assignments will combine to make up 30% of the course grade (10% each); the final exam will be worth 20% and the mid-term will be worth 15%. The final paper will be worth 25%; attendance and participation will combine for the remaining 10%.

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