AMERICAN ANXIETY:
Cultural and Social Change at the Turn of the Last Century
American Studies 470
(Last taught Spring 2002)
Robert Nelson
Office: James Blair 354
Phone: 11136
Email: rknels@wm.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays and Wednesdays 2:30pm to 3:30pm and by appointment
Course Description
In this course we will have two primary preoccupations. The first is historical in nature. In our discussions of four novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and of scholarly works focused on that period, we will attempt to achieve an understanding of two interrelated cultural and social transformations of the period: (1) the ascension of a "modern" cultural sensibility over a once pervasive "Victorian" sensibility and (2) the rise of progressivism following a period of massive corporate growth and widespread conflict between labor and capital. In other words, we will be attempting to better grasp both the changing cultural and political perspectives of different Americans during the period and the social and economic realities that facilitated or encouraged those changes.
Our second preoccupation is more conceptual: the relationship between text and context, between literature and history. We will study the novels as products of a particular historical moment. Throughout the course we will be treating them as primary sources, the analysis of which tells us much about the culture and thought of the period. Reading them will teach us about attitudes towards gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity (and a host of other issues) common among certain Americans-primarily white, middle-class Americans-during the period. Yet these works are not merely reflections of the culture and thought of the moment, but interventions in that culture. In other words, these novels don't mirror in any simple way gender and class attitudes, but encourage (or discourage) changes in readers' attitudes towards these and other issues. Throughout the semester we will be trying to better grasp both how these narratives are influenced by their social and cultural context and how they in turn attempt to function as active forces engaging and influencing that society and culture.
Assignments
Discussion board contributions
For at least six weeks of the semester, you will need to make an approximately 100-word posting to the discussion board on the course's Blackboard site (http://blackboard.wm.edu/courses/1/AMST470-06-S02). Contribute an informal analysis of a passage or idea, a criticism of an argument, a note about an idea or argument you found confusing, questions you think would be good to consider for our discussion, or a response to one of your classmates' contributions. Your contribution should be posted by 8:00 on Monday morning. If you're not contributing anything yourself, please read through your classmates' contributions each week. I will not be grading these contributions, but, together with your participation in class discussion, your discussion board entries will have an impact on your participation and attendance grade.
Response Papers
Over the course of the semester I will ask you to write two response papers, each four to five pages in length, in which you thoughtfully analyze a novel (your primary source) and a paired historical study or studies (the secondary source) we're reading this term. In your paper you might draw upon the study to make an interesting argument about the cultural politics of the novel, or you might draw upon the novel to complicate or critique the argument of the historical study. However you decide to use the two works, your aim in the paper should be to develop an interesting and coherent argument that critically engages some aspect of the culture, thought, and/or politics of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. Your options and due dates for the two papers are: Bederman/Norris, February 11; Abelson/Dreiser, March 11; Hofstadter/Sinclair, April 1; Lears-Singal/Chopin, April 15.
Research essay
Your final essay will be a 12- to 15-page research paper on a topic of your choosing relating to the history and literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Possible topics might be: a work of another naturalist (Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Hamlin Garland are three that come to mind) or another novel by one of the authors we read this semester; the work of an author who worked in the closely related genre of realism; a non-fictional literary work from the period (Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk, or Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House perhaps); depictions of immigrants in naturalist novels; naturalism and feminism; naturalist art. On April 8 I will ask you to turn in a short paragraph description of your topic and a preliminary list of articles, books, and electronic resources relevant to your essay. Your essay is due the day of the scheduled final exam listed in the registration bulletin.
Grading
Attendance and participation: 20%
Response paper #1: 20%
Response paper #2: 20%
Research essay: 40%