NORTHAMPTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Syllabus — Fall 2009
American Literature I (ENGL205G)
Professor: Dr. J. Von Schilling
Office: CC353A Phone: (610) 861-4178
E-mail: jvonschilling@northampton.edu
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 1:00-2:00;
Tuesday and Thursday 2:00-3:00
Course Texts: (in addition to various
handouts):
Brown,
Dee Dee
Brown’s Folktales of the Native Americans
Dickinson,
Emily The Essential Dickinson
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass
Moliken, Paul D. (ed.) Classic
American Short Stories
Thoreau,
Henry D. Where I Lived and What I Lived For
Course Objectives:
1. To
study selected writers of the period from the settlement of the North American continent to approximately 1890.
2. To
examine and explore the relationships between the various cultural and historical periods in American civilization and the
literature each period produced.
3. To
encourage and develop the skills of analyzing literature and culture and responding with imagination and perception through
writing.
Course Topics and Literature Assignments:
Aug
25-Sept 29: American Literature -- Starting
Points and Looking Back
Washington Irving, “Henry Hudson” (from A History of New York) and
Rip Van Winkle
Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”
and “The American Crisis”
Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
Cotton Mather, “The Trial of Martha
Carrier”
Jonathan
Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
“The
New England Primer” (alphabet)
Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard’s
Almanac” (Proverbs)
and
"Project of Arriving at Moral Perfection"
Oct
1-Nov 10: Other Voices of American Culture
Henry David Thoreau,
Where I Lived and What I Lived
Dee Brown’s
Folktales of the Native Americans
"The Journey
of Cabeza de Vaca"
Phillis Wheatley, selected poems
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Nov 12-Dec 10: The Great American Writers
Edgar Allen Poe, The Cask of Amontillado and selected poems
Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
Emily Dickinson, selected
poems
Walt Whitman, selected poems
