8:154 Literature of the American Midwest

7-8:15 p. m. MW 8 EB
http://english.uiowa.edu/courses/boos/midwest09
Instructor: Florence Boos florence-boos@uiowa.edu
Office: 319 EPB, office phone 335-0434 (answering machine)
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00-5:15 p. m.

Textbooks at IMU:

Garland, Hamlin, Main Travelled Roads
Anderson, Sherman, Winesburg, Ohio
Glaspell, Susan, Four Plays
Rolvaag, Ole Edwart, Giants in the Earth
Suckow, Ruth, Ruth Suckow Omnibus
Masters, Edgar Lee, Spoon River Anthology
Twain, Mark, The War Prayer
Hughes, Langston, Not Without Laughter
Guendolyn Brooks, Collected Poems
Smiley, Jane, A Thousand Acres
Morrison, Tony, Beloved

Other material:

La Duke, Winona, Last Standing Woman (you must order this from Amazon)
Lindsay, Vachel, Carl Sandburg, Paul Laurence Dunbar, handouts
Sandburg, Carl, handout
Glaspell, Susan, “A Jury of Her Peers,” handout (short story)
Theodore Dreiser, short story handout
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (on-line, Gutenberg)
Mark Twain, essays and fable, handout
Fenton Johnson, Rita Dove, Robert Hayden, Louise Erdrich, poetry handouts
readings from The American Midwest: A Regional History, ed. Andrew Cayton and Susan Gray

Exam: (take home essay) May 11th, 2009 at 7 p. m.
Assignments:

• come prepared to class each session and contribute to class discussion; sometimes I will ask you to bring in questions for discussion;
• past 7 short essays/reading responses to ICON on the texts we have read; these should be the equivalent of about two typed pages (and please number postings);
• present to the class biographical/publication-reception information on two or more authors we read;
• submit 2 6+ page essays on topics of your choice, the first due March 4th and the second due at the end of exam period. If you give me drafts the week before these are due, I will return them with suggestions. For this you are expected to read a book by the author you discuss not studied in class, and to use several critical/historical sources (including several not available on the internet).
• present your final paper to the class during exam week.

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8:154 Literature of the American Midwest , Final Paper/Exam:
To be handed in at our final session, held  Monday May 11th, 2009 at 7 p. m. 

You should write a six page essay contrasting some aspect of the works of two authors  we have studied to show how they represent an important feature of Midwestern culture, values or sensibility, or alternately, different responses to literary fashions and concerns of their periods. If the authors you discuss are from different periods, you should consider whether their contrasting  choices reflect shifts in literary taste or social concerns as the century progressed. Your essay, in other words, should comment not only on the works themselves but how they express contrasting the thematic concerns or stylistic tastes of their respective periods.
Your essay should include comments on formal features of the writings you discuss: for poetry, style, stanzaic form, rhythm, meter and diction; for prose, narrative structure and organization, use of metaphor and language, narrative voice(s) and speech.
Writers we have studied have included Hamlin Garland, Ole E. Rolvaag, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Fenton Johnson, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, Susan Glaspell, Ruth Sukow, Winona LaDuke, Mark Twain, Guendolyn Brooks, Jane Smiley, Toni Morrison, Edgar Lee Masters, and Jane Addams.

Topics you might consider for contrast include:

the pioneer experience/shifting American ideals
themes of democracy and repression
use of landscape; themes of nature and the environment
the sense of place and region; values ascribed to the midwest
use of compound protatonists/poetic or narrative sequences
rural vs. urban life
immigration, multiple ethnicities/old world cultures vs. assimilation
issues of gender/ sexuality
racial relations/relations with native peoples
crime and violence
issues of belief and religion
isolation/atomization vs. community
family relationships/marriage/parent child relations
issues of fate/social determination
war and conflict
the uses of history; the sense of a future
evocation of regional differences
social hierarchy/issues of class and marginalization
fellowship/alternative societies or ideals