Academic Catalog

ENGL 45AH: HONORS SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE I: BEGINNINGS TO 1865

Foothill College Course Outline of Record

Foothill College Course Outline of Record
Heading Value
Effective Term: Summer 2023
Units: 5
Hours: 5 lecture per week (60 total per quarter)
Prerequisite: Eligibility for college-level composition (ENGL 1A or 1AH or ESLL 26), as determined by college assessment or other appropriate method.
Advisory: Successful completion of college-level composition (ENGL 1A or 1AH or ESLL 26) or equivalent; not open to students with credit in ENGL 45A, 48A or 48B.
Degree & Credit Status: Degree-Applicable Credit Course
Foothill GE: Area I: Humanities, Area VI: United States Cultures & Communities
Transferable: CSU/UC
Grade Type: Letter Grade Only
Repeatability: Not Repeatable

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Students can select an appropriate literary-critical vocabulary and concept (from a variety of possible approaches) and apply the vocabulary/concept to the interpretation of an assigned piece of historical fiction.
  • A successful student will be able to read literary texts of various genres and literary movements and subsequently actively and critically assess those works within 16th to 19th century contexts for denotative and connotative meaning, structure and development, and connections between literal and figurative detail.

Description

The first in a two-course sequence that surveys the history of American literature from its beginnings to the present. Introduces students to works of American literature from its beginnings through the Civil War, focusing on the evolution of literary traditions, genres, cultural voices, and ecological landscapes within historical, philosophical, social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Special emphasis on the contributions of diverse cultures in shaping a distinctive national literature, landscape, and identity. Specific to honors: extensive research and review of scholarly criticism, as well as the analysis and application of theoretical paradigms.

Course Objectives

The student will be able to:

  1. Trace the formation of a national literature and aesthetic cultures through 1865 via the study of diverse writers and texts within the context of already existing and concurrent Indigenous literatures
  2. Identify major literary genres, debates, and periods up to and including the Civil War
  3. Evaluate texts within their historical, multicultural, and philosophical contexts
  4. Apply theoretical paradigms to interpret works of literature
  5. Demonstrate appropriate formatting and documentation

Course Content

  1. Major writers and canonical texts
    1. Pre-contact Native American literatures
    2. Early exploration and colonial narratives (e.g., Columbus, Cabeza De Vaca, John Smith)
    3. Puritan texts (e.g., William Bradford, George Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet)
    4. Revolutionary War era literature (e.g., Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Phillis Wheatley Peters)
    5. African American literature (e.g., Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs)
    6. Transcendentalism (e.g., Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller)
    7. Gothic literature (e.g., Hawthorne, Poe)
    8. American Folk literature (e.g., Irving, Boone)
  2. Literary genres and forms
    1. Oral
    2. Non-alphabetic sign systems
    3. Conversion narratives
    4. Captivity narratives
    5. Diaries, journals
    6. Letters
    7. Sermons
    8. Political documents
    9. Speeches
    10. Slave narratives
    11. Autobiography
    12. Nature writing
    13. Frontier fiction, tall tales
    14. Poetic forms
    15. Short fiction
    16. Essays
    17. Novels
  3. Relevant critical and theoretical frameworks
    1. Historical perspectives, including ethical, philosophical, political, religious, social, and aesthetic perspectives
      1. Identify the role of literary representations in creating (and subverting) significant American political ideologies, including slavery and abolition, Manifest Destiny, the concept of inalienable rights
  4. Theoretical paradigms
    1. Gender studies
    2. Queer theories; sexuality studies
    3. Psychological theories (Freudian or Jungian)
    4. Marxian or other socioeconomic frameworks
    5. Theories of race and ethnicity
    6. Postcolonial and neocolonial studies
  5. Formatting and documentation
    1. Modern Language Association (MLA)
    2. American Psychological Association (APA)

Lab Content

Not applicable.

Special Facilities and/or Equipment

1. When taught on campus, no special facility or equipment needed.
2. When taught virtually, ongoing access to a computer with LMS-compatible software and internet browser.

Method(s) of Evaluation

Methods of Evaluation may include but are not limited to the following:

Discussion participation
Journal entries
Literary analysis and critical thinking demonstrated in writing and/or other media
Presentations that employ literary, critical, and/or theoretical terminology
Research literary analysis compositions demonstrating the application of theory
Quizzes
Exams
"Unessay" projects

Method(s) of Instruction

Methods of Instruction may include but are not limited to the following:

Independent and collaborative reading/viewing/listening of assigned texts
Lecture presentations on the history and interpretation of assigned texts
Instructor-guided and collaborative interpretation and analysis
Student-led discussions and presentations
Presentations on inquiry projects focusing on key tools and skill sets in literary interpretation

Representative Text(s) and Other Materials

Kurant, Wendy, editor. Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution. 2019.

Levine, Robert S., and Sandra M. Gustafson, editors. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 2022.

Spires, Derrick R., et al., editors. The Broadview Anthology of American Literature: Volumes A & B, Beginnings to Reconstruction. 2022.

As this course spans the beginnings of American literature to 1865, many of the texts are contemporaneous with this time period (therefore older than five years); anthologies and theoretical texts are updated.

Online resources:

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. African American Woman Writers of the 19th Century. https://libguides.nypl.org/african-american-women-writers-of-the-19th-Century/home.

University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative. American Verse Project. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/amverse/.

Collections & Research, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian. https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/collections/search.

Colored Conventions Project. https://coloredconventions.org/.

Documenting the American South: Primary Sources for the Study of Southern History, Literature, and Culture. https://docsouth.unc.edu/.

North American Slave Narratives. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html.

University of Maryland, Digital Programs and Initiatives. Early Americas Digital Archive. http://eada.lib.umd.edu/.

Early American Literature Podcast. 2019-2022. https://eal.uky.edu/podcast.

Cornell University, HathiTrust Digital Library. Making of America. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=1930843488.

Types and/or Examples of Required Reading, Writing, and Outside of Class Assignments

  1. Reading from primary and secondary sources as assigned by instructor
  2. Quizzes on reading comprehension of assigned literary texts
  3. Analytical and reader response journal assignments on readings
  4. Composition of extended, theory-based, research-based literary analysis
  5. Writing and research assignments may include journal entries, reading responses, annotated bibliographies, essays, and "unessay" projects that require summary, interpretation, analysis, and synthesis of texts

Discipline(s)

English