My students and I will be taking on two separate projects to get a little closer to the rich interdisciplinary and inter-discursive nature of 19th century American texts :
1) a "Time Travel" reading of multiple, consecutive issues of mid-century magazines featuring the work of canonical authors, as well as the many contemporaries publishing beside them in a variety of disciplines.
Each selection focuses upon a different time span and literary turning point.
- The United States Democratic Review (1830s; including early printings of several of Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales")
- The Dial (1840s, including Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit")
- Putnam's Monthly (early 1850s, including the holiday issue sequence of Melville's "Bartleby, a Tale of Wall-Street")
- Harper's New Monthly Magazine (late 1850s, including poetry and stories by Emerson, Whitman, Alice Cary, and others)
In the past I have used this blog space rather infrequently to share or post information or share ideas and practices that were part of talks or presentations. But because of a simultaneous project in my undergraduate Writing Pedagogy course inviting students to explore unfamiliar genres (more on that project in a later post), I've committed myself to try to make this a more regular and interactive space.
For the next few months, then, it will attempt to offer dispatches of this experiment--itself serializing the process of re-serialization a mammoth 19th century novel for a 21st century context.
Our schedule of readings is below. Feel free to join along and/or comment along the way!
______
LITR 569 American Renaissance 1830-1860
John Staunton
Eastern Michigan University
Preliminary Schedule of Reading/Topics/Assignments Due (Subject to change):
Week 1 M 1/11 Introductions
Melville, Moby-Dick “Etymology”/”Extracts”; Chs 1-3: “Loomings”, “The Carpet-Bag”, “The Spouter Inn”
Week 2 M 1/18 No Class, MLK Day
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 4-14 (“The Counterpane”-”Nantucket”)
Week 3 M 1/25 READINGS: Caroline Kirkland, A New Home, Who’ll Follow?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Critical Readings TBA
Transmediation 1
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 15-25 (“Chowder”- ‘Postscript”)
Week 4 M 2/1 READINGS: Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Circles", "The American Scholar," and
"The Writer" and/or "The Poet") Link
Margaret Fuller (Woman in the 19th Century) Link to Donna Campbell's American Literature site at Washington State University
Transmediation 2
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 26-36 (“Knights and Squires”- “The Quarter Deck * Ahab and All”)
Week 5 M 2/8 READINGS: Julia Ward Howe, The Hermaphrodite
X Version of Critical Inquiry (Proposal and Abstract)
Transmediation 3
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 37-47 (“Sunset”- “The Mat-Maker”)
Week 6 M 2/15 mid -19th century Poetic Forms 1
selections from Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1855 version)
Longfellow, "Evangeline," Sigourney, & others)
Critical Teaching Presentation 2
(Critical Readings TBA by group)
__Students 1 , 2 & 3_____
Transmediation 4
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 48-58 (“The First Lowering”- “Brit”)
Week 7 M 2/22 NO CLASS—EMU WINTER BREAK
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 59-69 (“Squid”- “The Funeral”)
Week 8 M 2/29 Happy Leap Year!
Time Travel Reading Presentations
(Primary and Critical Readings TBA by groups)
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 70-80 (“The Sphynx” – “The Nut”)
Week 9 M 3/7 READINGS: Henry David Thoreau, Walden Link and " Resistance to Civil
Government"Link
& Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes Link [google ebook]
Annotated Bibliography for Critical Inquiry
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 81-91 (“The Pequod Meets the Virgin”- “The Pequod Meets the Rosebud”)
Week 10 M 3/14 READINGS:
Harriet Beecher Stowe [Excerpts]
Link to the Re-Serialization from The National Era version with contemporary critical commentary
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life [Excerpts] Link
Critical Teaching Presentation 3
(Critical Readings TBA by group)
__ __Students 1 & 2__
Transmediation 5
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 92-102 (“Ambergris” - “A Bower in the Arsacides”)
Week 11 M 3/21 READINGS: 19th Century Prose Forms (Selections from
Hawthorne, Poe, Cary and others)
Critical Teaching Presentation 4
(Critical Readings TBA by group)
__ _Students 1 & 2_______
Transmediation 6
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs.103-113 (“Measurement of a Whale’s Skeleton” – “The Forge”)
Week 12 M 3/28 Y Version Critical Inquiry (submitted for peer review in doc
sharing)
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 114- 124 (“The Gilder”- “The Needle”)
Week 13 M 4/4 mid -19th century Poetic Forms 2 (READINGS TBA)
Transmediation 7
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 125- Epilogue (“The Log and Line”- “Epilogue”)
Week 14 M 4/11 mid- 19th century Prose Forms 2 (READINGS TBA)
Transmediation 8
Image ____Student A ______
Music____Student B _____
Text ____Student C ________
Week 15 M 4/18 Readings to be selected from LC/DJ Texts
Dialogue Journal Presentations
FINALS F 4/22 Z Version Critical Inquiry and Abstracts by 7pm
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