The possible approaches to the topic of American literature are legion. It's
difficult to describe what, exactly, makes a work of literature "American,"
given the tangle of competing values that could inform the description (e.g.
which "America" are we talking about? The one settled by European colonists?
The pre-American one whose descendants are called Native Americans?). Indeed,
the paths through the tangle often don't get "through" anything as much as lead
us right into the thick of it, the darkest part of the woods, the Protean,
uncatchable now, where we have to confront some of the more difficult facts that
underlie the adjective "American".

Yet nearly all the major approaches to American literature must in some way
engage the peculiar terrain of the physical continent itself, its unexpected
vastness, its unforgiving landscapes, but also its imaginative potential. What
language can capture it? How do we best describe the place? How might our
descriptions effect what happens to it? "It is conceivable," wrote William
Carlos Williams, "that a new language might have sprung up with the new
spectacle and the new conditions, but even genius, if it existed, did not make
one." Instead, writers had to struggle to use an aging English language that
wasn't always up to the task of describing the land still new and unbroken by
the colonists. BUT, so, too, were the colonists new to the civilizations
already alive in the land. And the responsive literary traditions of the
American Indians have proven to be a lasting rebuttal and complex challenge to
the Westward-moving forces of Europe's illegitimate child called "America."

This course, then, approaches the topic of American Literature by way of the
various cultural and literary responses to the variegated character of the land
itself--the binding force that all who live "here" must confront. The texts
we'll read in this course--narrative, poetic, and visual--make ideas out of the
land. As we encounter those ideas, we will situate them within the narratives
we make of our own lives in America, and, increasingly, the world.

The readings are dense and demanding--so students must be prepared to spend time
and trouble both in and out of class.
Student responsibilities include several short responses, periodic reading
quizzes, a group presentation, a 6-8 pp. essay, and an exam.

Texts and writers will include:
Thoreau: Walden [ISBN: 0691096120]
Willa Cather: My Ántonia [ISBN: 019953814X]
William Faulkner: Go Down, Moses [ISBN: 0679732179]
Louise Erdrich: Tracks [ISBN: 0060972459]
Susan Howe: Singularities [ISBN: 0819511943]
A photocopied course reader, including texts by William Bradford, Lewis & Clark,
James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, William Carlos Williams,
Leslie Marmon Silko, and others.