ENGL 453 - Frontier to Factory:Defining America in 19th Century Literature

Institution:

Trinity College

Subject:

Description:

Interrogating American identity in the national or individual sense requires that we grapple with the places that so often define what we consider to be American experience. As 19th-century American authors wrestled with the difficulty of fully representing what it means to be American they frequently depicted and revised our ideas of quintessentially American places-the frontier, the home, the city, the factory, the countryside, and the contrasting idea of "abroad." For example, reading Upton Sinclair, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' various portrayals of the factory helps us understand not only how the factory functions as a symbolic site in American consciousness, but also how diverse authors build and challenge the meaning of labor, class, race, and nation. Reading widely across the 19th century and into the 20th, we will trace the literary conversations that construct and constantly rewrite our understandings of these American spaces and ask how they contribute to our ideas about American identity. We will consider the impact of race, class, and gender on these literary conversations and read a diverse group of authors that may include: Washington Irving, Thomas Detter, Zitkala- a, Frank Webb, Stephen Crane, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Upton Sinclair, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Charles Chestnutt, Henry James, Herman Melville, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, and Henry David Thoreau. (Note: English 453 and English 853 are the same course.) For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1800, or a course emphasizing cultural context. For the English graduate program, this course satisfies the requirements of a course in American literature, or a course emphasizing cultural contexts for the literary studies track; it counts as an elective for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track. 1.00 units, Seminar

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.Trincoll.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 297-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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