English 2013: Introduction to American Literature
Syllabus

Instructor:

 

Carl Brucker

Phone:

 

(479) 968-0484

Office Hours:

 

M-F: 9-10 and 1-3

E-mail Address:
  cbrucker@atu.edu
 
Scroll down to read assignments or click below to jump to specific assignments:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14
Required Text

Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 7th Edition. W. W. Norton, 2008.
Assignments

This course will require you to complete five types of assignments: reading assignments, Discussion Board responses, examinations, a research report, and an analytic essay.
Click here to read a description of each type.

Weekly Assignment Schedule
Assignment One : The Natural World
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Wed
Aug 19

Getting started. Read Some Tips That Will Help You Pass This Course.
Read: Introduction to Assignment One
Literature reading assignment one:
Philip Freneau "On the Religion of Nature" pp. 418-419; William Cullen Bryant, "To A Waterfowl" and "The Prairies" pp. 479-482; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature" Introduction and chapter 1, pp. 492-495; Henry David Thoreau, chapters 2 and 18 from Walden pp. 886-896 and pp. 912-920; Walt Whitman "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" and "The Dalliance of Eagles" p. 1067; Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" pp. 1591-1598.

Login: to Blackboard and review the Assignment One forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, September 1.
Read:
How to Use the Course Discussion Board and How to Write a 10-Point Response

Assignment Two : The Natural World
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Mon
Aug 31

Read: Introduction to Assignment 2
Literature reading assignment two:
Emily Dickinson "These are the days when Birds come back" pp. 1201-1202; I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died" and "The Brain is wider than the Sky" pp. 1215-1216; "Apparently with no surprise" p. 1221; Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" pp. 1779-1795; Jack London, "To Build a Fire" pp. 1826-1836; Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," pp.1960; "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Desert Places," and "Design" pp. 1963-1964; William Carlos Williams "Spring and All" p. 2012.
Login: to Blackboard and review the Assignment Two forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, September 8.
Read: Click here to view topics and instructions for the research report assignment that will be due Tuesday, October 6.

Assignment Three : The Urban Environment
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Mon
Sep 7

Read: Introduction to Assignment 3
Literature reading assignment three:
Walt Whitman "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" pp. 1057-1062; Herman Melville "Bartleby the Scrivener" pp. 1093-1118; Carl Sandburg "Chicago" pp. 1988-1989; Gwendolyn Brooks "kitchenette building" pp. 2538-2539, "We Real Cool" p. 2540; Allen Ginsberg "A Supermarket in California" p. 2601.
Login: to Blackboard and review the Assignment Three forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, September 15.

Assignment Four : The Urban Environment
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Mon
Sep 14

Read: Introduction to Assignment 4
Literature reading assignment four:
Rebecca Harding Davis "Life in the Iron Mills" pp. 1227-1253; Allen Ginsberg "Howl" pp. 2592-2600.
Login: to
Blackboard and review the Assignment Four forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, September 22.
Click here to access Examination # 1. This examination covers Assignments One through Four and is due Sunday, September 20.

Sun
Sep 20
Examination # 1 is due today.  
Assignment Five : Maturation
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Mon
Sep 21

Read: Introduction to Assignment 5
Literature reading assignment five:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux" pp. 592-605 and "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" pp. 615-622; William Faulkner "Barn Burning" pp. 2224-2236; Richard Wright "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" pp. 2289-2297.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Five forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, September 29.

   
Assignment Six : Maturation
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Mon
Sep 28

Read: Introduction to Assignment 6
Literature reading assignment six:
Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl pp. 805-825; Countee Cullen "Incident" p. 2284; James Baldwin "Going to Meet the Man" pp. 2557-2568.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Six forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, October 6.

Assignment Seven : Parents and Children
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Mon
Oct 5

Read: Introduction to Assignment 7
Literature reading assignment seven:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The Mother's Struggle" from Uncle Tom's Cabin, pp. 767-776; Langston Hughes "Mother to Son" pp. 2265; Gwendolyn Brooks "The Mother" p. 2539; Galway Kinnell "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" pp., 2605-2606; Lucille Clifton "wishes for sons" p. 2716; Alice Walker "Everyday Use" pp. 2771-2778.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Seven forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, October 13.
Read:
Click here to view topics and instructions for the analytic essay that will be due Tuesday, November 17.

Tues
Oct 6
Research Report is due today
Click here for information on topics and guidelines to research
Assignment Eight : Parents and Children
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Mon
Oct 12

Read: Introduction to Assignment 8
Literature reading assignment eight:
Edward Taylor "Upon Wedlock, and the Death of Children" pp. 140-141; F. Scott Fitzgerald "Babylon Revisited" pp. 2201-2215; Theodore Roethke "My Papa's Waltz" p. 2321; Robert Hayden "Those Winter Sundays p. 2424; Anne Sexton "little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman" pp. 2617-2619; Sylvia Plath "Daddy" pp. 2656-2658.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Eight forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, October 20.
Read: Click her to read full-credit answers to Examination 1 questions.

Assignment Nine : Marriage
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Mon
Oct 19

Read: Introduction to Assignment 9
Literature reading assignment nine:
Washington Irving "Rip Van Winkle" pp. 448-460; Kate Chopin "At the 'Cadian Ball" and "The Storm" pp. 1604-1615; Mary Wilkins Freeman "A New England Nun" pp. 1620-1628; Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper" pp. 1684-1695; Susan Glaspell "Trifles" pp. 1968-1977; Zora Neale Hurston "The Gilded Six-Bits" pp. 2161-2169.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Nine forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, October 27.

Yellow Delta
Assignment Ten : Love is Strange
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Mon
Oct 26

Read: Introduction to Assignment 10
Literature reading assignment ten:
Kate Chopin "Desiree's Baby" pp. 1615-1619; William Faulkner "A Rose for Emily" pp. 2218-2224; Flannery O'Connor "Good Country People" pp. 2569-2583; Eudora Welty "Petrified Man" pp. 2325-2336; Maxine Hong Kingston "No Name Woman" pp. 2744-2753.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Ten forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, November 3.
Click here to access Examination # 2. This exam covers material in Assignments Five through Nine and is due Sunday, November 1.

Sun
Nov 1
Examination # 2 is due today
Yellow Delta
Assignment Eleven: Love is Gone
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Mon
Nov 2

Read: Introduction to Assignment 11
Literature reading assignment eleven:
T. S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" pp. 2039-2042; E. E. Cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town pp 2178-2179; John Cheever "The Swimmer" pp. 2409-2417; John Updike "Separating" pp. 2661-2670; Yusef Komunyakaa "My Father's Love Letters" pp. 2780-2781.
Login: to
Blackboard and review the Assignment Eleven forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, November 8.

Assignment Twelve: Love Is All
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Mon
Nov 9

Read: Introduction to Assignment 12
Literature reading assignment twelve:
Anne Bradstreet "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," "To My Dear and Loving Husband" and "A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment" pp. 107-109; Edgar Allan Poe "Annabel Lee" and "Ligeia" pp. 678-688; Walt Whitman "Live Oak, with Moss" pp. 1084-1088; Edna St. Vincent Millay "Recuerdo"and "I Too beneath Your Moon, Almighty Sex" pp. 217-21710; Li-Young Lee "This Room and Everything in It" pp. 2849-2850.
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Blackboard and review the Assignment Twelve forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, November 17.

Assignment Thirteen: Conflict and War
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Mon
Nov 16

Read: Introduction to Assignment 13
Literature reading assignment thirteen:
Walt Whitman from Drum-Taps pp. 1067-1070; Herman Melville "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight" p. 1175; William Dean Howells "Editha" pp. 1463-1475; Ambrose Bierce "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" pp. 1476-1482; Stephen Crane from "War Is Kind " pp. 1815-1817.
Login: to
Blackboard and review the Assignment Thirteen forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, November 24.

Tues
Nov 17
Click here for topics and instructions for the analytic essay.
Analytic Essay is due today
Assignment Fourteen: Conflict and War
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Mon
Nov 23
Read: Introduction to Assignment 14
Literature reading assignment thirteen:
Claude McKay, "The Lynching," "If We Must Die," and "America," pp. 2146-214; Carl Sandburg, "Grass" p. 1990; E. E. Cummings "next to of course god america i" and "i sing of Olaf glad and big" pp. 2176-2177; Randall Jarrell "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and "Second Air Force" pp. 2425-2427; Robert Lowell "For the Union Dead" pp. 2535-2537.
Login: to
Blackboard and review the Assignment Fourteen forum questions on the Class Discussion Board. Post a 150+ word response to one of the questions by Tuesday, December 1.
Assignment Fourteen: Conflict and War
Tues
Dec 1
Exam 3: Click here to access Examination # 3. This exam covers material from Assignments Ten through Fourteen and is due Wednesday, December 9.
Wed
Dec 9
Examination # 3 is due today.
Click here to access Examination # 3.

Grade Computation

10

Responses to individual posted questions

10 points @
100 points
29 %
3

Examinations

50 points @
150 points
43 %
1

Informative research report (500-750 words)

50 points
14 %
1

Analytic paper (500 words)

50 points
14 %

350 points
100 %

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updated: October 27, 2009