2010-2011 Academic Catalog

Feb 10, 2025

2010-2011 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 281 - American Literary Renaissance

Type of Course: Seminar

Special topics in 19th-century literature through the Civil War invite in-depth consideration of how extraordinary cultural, political and technological changes made this one of the most vibrant and studied periods of the American literature. If taken at the undergraduate level, prerequisite: Major American Writers I or permission of the instructor. For undergraduate English majors this course satisfies the Period (C-2) requirement. Ms. Neuman/Offered 2009-2010 Special Topic for Spring ‘10: SCRIBBLERS AND OTHER NOVELISTS When Nathaniel Hawthorne referred in a private letter to “that damned mob of scribbling women” he unknowingly created a focal point for recent literary scholarship on the antebellum novel. Hawthorne’s now infamous phrase evokes obvious gender issues, but the context of his comment demonstrates that market competition between authors drove biases, assumptions and even canon itself. In this course we will read many novels by “scribbling women” and by a range of other writers (male and female, popular and “elite,” familiar and unfamiliar) with whom they were in economic as well as literary competition. At issue throughout will be questions of gender and class, tensions between popular and elite cultural production, the role of politics in literature, and canon formation.

Prerequisites: Major American Writers I or permission of the instructor. For undergraduate English majors this course satisfies the Period (C-2) requirement.

Cross Listed: ENG 381

Instructor: Ms. Neuman

When Offered: Offered 2009-2010

Faculty: Meredith Neuman, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor of English