Prof. Jared Gardner

Office: 530 DE

Hours: Wed 10-12 & by appt.

Email: gardner.236@osu.edu

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/gardner236/

English 550             

Colonial and U. S. Literature to 1830

The course will study the development of American literature from the colonial period through the emergence of a national literary culture in the 1820s. We will consider the ways in which writing played a central role in the struggles to develop and define an American nation, an American politics, an American self, and an American literature; and we will be interested in the numerous ways early writers both participated in and depicted these struggles. We will also study the development of many of the central modes that writers turned to address these concerns, from spiritual autobiography, to the captivity narrative, to the rise of the novel.

Required texts:

Gunn, Giles, ed., Early American Writing (Penguin) ISBN: 0140390871

Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative (Penguin) ISBN: 0142437166

Cooper, James Fenimore Last of the Mohicans (Penguin) ISBN: 0140390243

Sedgwick, Maria, Hope Leslie (Penguin) ISBN: 0140436766

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed., Women's Indian Captivity Narratives (Penguin) ISBN: 0140436715

Brown, Charles Brockden, Edgar Huntly (Penguin) ISBN: 0140390626

Rowson, Susanna,  Reuben and Rachel (Broadview) ISBN: 1551118394

Supplementary e-texts (marked on the schedule as *) will be found on the class’s Carmen site. Optional texts will also be placed in the Readings section of the Carmen site occasionally throughout the term.

Papers:

There will be two writing assignments: details will be provided roughly four weeks before they are due. The first paper will be due Friday, October 30^th; the final paper will be due Thursday, December 10^th. I encourage you to come see me in preparation to writing these papers and throughout the quarter. You must document all use of other people’s words or ideas in your paper; consult the MLA Handbooks or the Chicago Manual of Style for citation conventions. All cases of suspected plagiarism, in accordance with university rules, will be reported to the Committee on Academic Misconduct. Late papers will be penalized one full grade for each day they are late.  Each paper will be worth 20% of your grade.

Participation:

As we will be covering 200 years of American literary history, the class will involve a good amount of lecture. But despite the size of the class and the somewhat dizzying range of our focus, we will also make time and space for discussion in the second half of each class period. I expect you to come to class with issues for discussion, and I will expect you to be prepared to discuss if called on to do so. Your questions or insights do not have to be related to the lecture; the discussion period can provide a chance to turn the class in directions that seems important to you that might not be touched on during lecture. Class discussions will also be supplemented by Carmen discussion.

Attendance:

More than 2 absences will adversely affect your final grade.

Carmen

This course has an online component using Carmen. To get to the course site, go to http://carmen.osu.edu and follow the directions from there. This will be the space where announcements, links, supplementary readings, discussion forums, and other valuable resources will be found. The immediate requirements with which you need to familiarize yourself are a) discussion forums; b) readings

Discussion forums: To make sure everyone is on board the virtual early American train, post to the “Welcome to the City on the Hill” forum by Tuesday of the second week of classes). Regular activity on the discussion boards, while not required, will be considered as part of class participation and will effect your grade accordingly.

Readings: This section of the website will include both the readings listed on the schedule above marked with an asterisk (*) and optional readings.

Quizzes:

Instead of a midterm, we will have five in-class quizzes throughout the course of the term. The quizzes will be given approximately every two weeks at the start of class. The lowest grade will be dropped from the final average. No makeups will be given for absences or lateness.

Final:

The final exam will consist of a combination of short answers allowing you to demonstrate your command of the literary history, and short identification-essays allowing you to demonstrate  a) your ability to recognize the thematic and stylistic characteristics of individual authors and b) your ability to explain the significance of those characteristics. There will also be a chance in a longer essay to make some grand literary historical claims. The final exam is scheduled for Thursday, December 10^th at 1:30PM.

Grading:

A rough formula for grading is

20% paper 1

20% paper 2

20% quizzes

20% final

20% participation/attendance --a melting pot into which I stir class participation (including Carmen postings), progress (or lack thereof), attendance, and everything else that seems important as I sit down to evaluate your efforts and progress over the course of the term.

Academic honesty:

Plagiarism is the representation of another's works or ideas as one's own:  it includes the unacknowledged word for word use and/or paraphrasing of another person's work, and/or the inappropriate unacknowledged use of another person's ideas.  All cases of suspected plagiarism, in accordance with university rules, will be reported to the Committee on Academic Misconduct.

Disability Services:

If you need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability, please contact me to make appropriate arrangements. You should also contact the Office for Disability Services, located in 150 Pomerene Hall, which offers services for students with documented disabilities. Contact the ODS at 2-3307.