Media, Culture, Narrative   

"Reading is not only an abstract operation of the intellect; it puts the body into play and is inscribed within a particular space, in a relation to the self or to others.  This is why attention should particularly be paid to ways of reading that have been obliterated in our contemporary world. . . A history of reading. . . cannot limit itself only to the genealogy of our contemporary manner of reading--in silence and by sight.  It must equally, perhaps above all, take on the task of discovering forgotten gestures and habits that have now disappeared."

                                                                                     --Roger Chartier

This course attempts to provide a seedbed of common readings and questions for graduate students interested in U.S. literary and cultural history from the 1850s to the 1930s. In general, the common readings will touch upon recent research developments in American literature and culture from this era. More specifically, will look at recent scholarship on the material and cultural placements of various media forms--news writings, popular entertainments like minstrel shows, juvenile fiction, adventure tales, pulp magazines, and so forth--adjacent to (and often constituting) what we now think of as "literary" texts. What did Americans read during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and how do we introduce readers into the study of literary and cultural history? How were various forms of media--sentimental novels, newspapers, story papers, dime novels--produced, distributed, and consumed? To what extent was reading segmented by gender, stratified by class, shaped by notions of public and private, or inflected by the politics of race, region, and empire? How did cultural newcomers, outsiders, and the oppressed partake of these forms, forge literary identities with U.S. audiences? How do we describe the cross-cultural exchanges and mediations that often occur through forms of writing and reading--exchanges that help define social boundaries and obligations, ideas of the past and futurity, pleasure and sensation? These are the kinds of questions many of our readings will address.

To explore this field, our concerns will be interdisciplinary in spirit, trying to bring together recent debates within (and against) the new historicism, ethnic studies, explorations in print and visual culture, and in American cultural and social history.  Special topics to be considered include:  American domesticity and class formation in the industrial era; the connections between gender, reading, and the public sphere; the questions raised by racial segregation in the post-Civil War decades; the generation of local color (and "the Western") in a national and hemispheric context ; the relationships between ethnicity, nation-building, and twentieth-century cultural memory; and the "pulp" variants of American modernism.

Requirements:
 

1. Class Participation  (25%)
2. One class week in which you will serve (in a group) as a "resource" person who will (a) stimulate discussion beforehand, via our list-serve on WebCT, and (b) serve as a resource and backgrounding expert on that day. (Graded only as part of your class participation.)
3. One 4-5 page essay analyzing and evaluating a critical article. (TBA). (25%)
4. Contribution of an "annotation" evaluation of an online source in American literature and culture, for a class Wiki" (10%)
   
5. A longer conference paper or teaching project, of approximately 12  pages due at the end of the semester. This paper can build on any of the shorter essays you write, including your 4-5 pp. essay. In fact, I will encourage this strategy. (40%)

Here are the course texts I have ordered; we will read a few other primary texts as well. Since our reading calendar will be a bit flexible, I would recommend not buying any of these texts until after our first class.  And it will be possible in some cases to use an e-text for your readings. This is a WEBCT course.  

• W.D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
• Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
• Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick
• Abraham Cahan,  Yekl, The Imported Bridegroom & Other Stories
  
• Charles W.  Chesnutt, Tales of Conjure and the Color Line
  
• Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
  
• Willa Cather, My Antonia
  
• and a Class Reader that contains Ned Buntline's "The Maid of Monterey"
  

CALENDAR

For this calendar, the designation "(W)" refers to material available through the WebCT listing for this course, and (R) to materials on Reserve in O'Neill Library. You'll see, however, that the syllabus itself offers some direct links to e-texts and background material as well. (These are generally "public access" versions.)

Jan. 16

Recommended:

If you'd like a good introduction to the fundamental methodologies with which we begin, you could read one or all of the following:

• the essay by Janice Radway, “American Studies, Reader Theory, and the Literary Text” (W)
• the review by Matthew P. Brown, "Book History, Sexy Knowledge, and the Challenge of the New Boredom," from American Literary History (2004), especially the first and third sections  (W);
• The essay by Barry Shank on Pierre Bourdieu (W)
  

PROLOGUE: STARTING OUT IN THE 1860S

Jan. 23

• Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills.  If you'd like to use an e-text, click here 
• Stephen Mailloux, "The Rhetorical Use and Abuse of Fiction:  Eating Books in Late 19th Century America" (W); from boundary 2 17:1 (1990):  133-57,
• the keyword files on "Media and Mediation" and "Articulation"
  

• Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers,  chapter 3 (“Novels and Novel Reading”
• Janice Radway, “American Studies, Reader Theory, and the Literary Text” (W)
• and Scott Casper on Antebellum Reading Practices (W)

Jan. 30

Required: 

• Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick If you would like to use an e-text, click here  
• Glenn Hendler, "Pandering in the Public Sphere:  Masculinity and the Market in Horatio Alger" from American Literary History (W)
• Hildegard Hoeller, "Freaks and the American Dream:  Horatio Alger, P.T. Barnum, and the Art of Humbug" (W)
• The keyword entry on "Public"
  

• Louisa May Alcott, Behind a Mask You can find an e-text by clicking here  
• Richard Brodhead on “Starting out in the 1860s,” in The Culture of Letters (R) pp. 69-89 only;
• Wai-chee Dimock, “Feminism, Historicism, and the Reader” (W)
  

Recommended:

• Karen Haltunnen, "The Domestic Dramas of Louisa May Alcott" (W)
• Melanie Dawson essay on Behind a Mask, from ATQ (W) 
• Keyword Entry on Sentimentality (W)
  
• Joanne Dobson, "Reclaiming Sentimental Literature," from American Literature 1997 June; 69(2): 263-88
• June Howard, "What is Sentimentality?" from American Literary History 1999 Spring; 11(1): 63-81
• Judith Fetterly, "Commentary: American Women Writers and the Politics of Recovery" from American Literary History (W)
  

PENS AND POWER:  THE ECOLOGY OF REALISM

Feb. 13

• William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
• Wai-Chee Dimock essay on RSL (W)

• The Keyword entries on "Market" and "Literature" (W)
  
• Fred See, "The Demystification of Style:  Metaphoric and Metonymic Language in A Modern Instance," Nineteenth Century Fiction 1974 Mar; 28(4):  379-403.
• Amy Kaplan, "The Mass-Mediated Realism of William Dean Howells," in The Social Construction of American Realism (R)
• Peter Gay, "The Discreet Pleasure of the Bourgeoisie," from The American Scholar (W)
• Kristen Boudreau, “’A Barnum Monstrosity’:  Alice James and the Spectacle of Sympathy” from American Literature (W)

Required:  

• Charles W. Chesnutt, from Tales of Conjure and the Color Line: "The Goopher'd Grapevine," "Po' Sandy," "Mars Jeems's Nightmare," "The Passing of Grandison,"  This last story is also in the anthology of American Literature put together by Prentice-Hall.   For e-texts of Chesnutt’s works, click here  
• Charles W. Chesnutt, "What is a White Man?" (Handout)

Recommended:

• William Andrews, "William Dean Howells and Charles W. Chesnutt:  Criticism and Race Fiction in the Age of Booker T. Washington," (W), from American Literature 48 (1976): 327-39.
• Howells review of Chesnutt's fiction (W)
  
• Paul Petrie, "Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman, and the Racial Limits of Mediation" (W)
• Stephen Knadler, "Untragic Mulatto: Charles Chesnutt and the Discourse of Whiteness," American Literary History 1996 Fall; 8(3): 426-44
• Kate Chopin, "Desiree's Baby"
• Richard Brodhead, "Why Could Not a Colored Man?': Chesnutt and the Transaction of Authorship,"" in Cultures of Letters, (R) 177-210

READING SENSATIONALLY / READING THE WEST

Feb. 27

Required: 

• Ned Buntline, The Maid of Monterey (Class Reader)
• Shelley Streeby, "American Sensations:  Empire, Amnesia, and the U.S.-Mexican War" (W)
  

• The keyword entry on "West"
• Michael Denning, chapters 3 and 8 from Mechanic Accents (W)
• Edward Wheeler, Deadwood Dick, Prince of the Road (W)
• and Richard Slotkin, Chapter 4 in Gunfighter Nation (R)

March 12  

• Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don (please also read the introductory material in our paperback)
  

• Jose David Saldivar, "Nuestra America's Borders:  Remapping American Cultural Studies" (W)
• Jose F. Aranda, "Contradictory Impulses:  Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicano Studies," American Literature 70 (Sept. 1998):  551-579.
  
• Priscilla Wald, "Terms of Assimiliation: Legislating Subjectivity in the Emerging Nation," in Kaplan and Pease, The Cultures of United States Imperialism  
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, pp. 1-91, 137-70, 202-22
• The Keyword entry on "Nation"
  

LOCAL COLORS/ IMMIGRANT FICTIONS/ NATIONAL MEMORIES

March 19

• Abraham Cahan, Yekl   For an e-text, click here   
• Sabine Haenni, "Visual and Theatrical Culture, Tenement Fiction, and the Immigrant Subject in Abraham Cahan's Yekl"  from American Literature 71.3 (1999) 493-527
  
• and W.D. Howells, "New York Low Life in Fiction" (W)
  

• Stephen Crane, "An Experiment in Misery"
• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, chapters 4, 6, 9, 10
  

• Willa Cather, My Antonia
• Jean Schwind on the Benda Illustrations to My Antonia (W)
  

• Dorothy Parker short fiction:  "You Were Perfectly Fine,"  "Arrangement in Black and White," "A Telephone Call," "Big Blonde," "The Cost of Living"
  
• "Her Morning After," from True Confessions Magazine in the 1920s (W)
• "College Kisses Lie," from True Confessions (W)
• Jessica Burstein, "A Few Words about Dubuque:  Modernism, Sentimentalism, and the Blasé," American Literary History 14 (2002):  227-254. 

• R.M. Mandziuk on the Discourse of "True Story" magazines (W)
• Kathleen M. Helal, "Celebrity, Feminity, Lingerie: Dorothy Parker's Autobiographical Monologues," Women's Studies 33 (2004):  77-102.
  
• Ann Fabian on Bernarr McFadden , the editor of True Story (W)
• Jean Marie Lutes on Sob Sister journalism (W)
• Wendy Simons on Maternal Grief in True Story (W)
• Regina Kunzel on Postwar Pulp Heroines (W)

Useful Links in American Cultural Study: Some Sample Starting Places for your Wiki Project

• American Memory Project at the Smithsonian/ Library of Congress
• Electronic Archives for Teaching American Literature
• Voice of the Shuttle: Humanities Research
• Wright American Fiction Database
• Stanford Dime Novel Collection
• American Women's Dime Novel Project
  
• American Literature Resources on the Web
• Cultural Theory on the Web
• Hypertexts in American Literature/ University of Virginia
• Ethnicities, Multicultural Resources
• Making of American WWW Site: Primary Documents in American Social History
• Native American Resources
• Guide to American History WWW Sites
• Fine Arts on the Web (Courtesy of Jeff Howe, Fine Arts Department
• Hypertext version of How the Other Half Lives
• A Hypertext Article on the Spanish American War and US Media Culture
• Link to Mark Twain Speech on the "Sandwich Islands"

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  If you have any comments on this page, please send them to: wilsonc@bc.edu You can see my home page by clicking here:Christopher P. Wilson
     
  
  
  

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