Course Readings Week by Week Schedule
Note: this is not a schedule of our full activities but a schedule of our weekly readings.
Week 1: Course Introduction
- Course reading schedule, syllabi, policies etc.
- Introduction from A Survey of American Literature in a Thematic Trinity
- The three themes from A Survey of American Literature in a Thematic Trinity
Week 2: Brave New World part 1
- 1995 12 Monkeys (film)
- 2005 The New World (film)
- 2022 Prey (film)
Week 3: Mestizo, Miscegenation & Metamorphoses
- 1648 The Miraculous Vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe 1531 (transcription of oral history)
- 1931 The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft (short story)
- 1986 The Winter Market by William Gibson (short story)
Week 4: Brave New World part 2
- 1920 Fire and Ice by Robert Frost (poem)
- 1693 Excerpt from “The Wonders of the Invisible World” by Cotton Mather (book excerpt)
- 1962 A Fable for Tomorrow by Rachel Carson (excerpt from Silent Spring)
Week 5: Yellow Fever
- 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (short story)
- 1895 "Rue Baree" from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (short story)
- 1890 In the Land of the Free by Sui Sin Far (short story)
- 1892 Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin (short story)
Weeks 6 & 7: Revolution, Liberty, and Justice Part 1
- 1776 Excerpt from the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson (political manifesto)
- 1787 Address to the Constitutional convention by Benjamin Franklin (speech)
- 1791 To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Banneker, 19 August 1791 (personal letter)
- 1792 A Charge Delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge by Prince Hall (speech to the first AfA Lodge)
- 1814 Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key (anthem set to c. 1773 tune)
- 1826 Letter to Roger C. Weightman, by Thomas Jefferson (personal letter)
Week 8: Major Group Project Novel Selection & Self Selection into Group on D2L
Week 9: American Humor
- 1730 The Witch Trials at Mount Holly by Benjamin Franklin (satirical essay)
- 1820 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (short story)
- 1897 How to Tell a Story, by Mark Twain (satirical essay)
- 1865 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (short story)
Week 10: Haunted—The American Gothic
- 1805 Somnambulism, A Fragment by Charles Brockden Brown (short story)
- 1836 The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe ( short story)
Week 11: Work on Group Project
Week 12: Testimony and Transcendence
- 1734 Excerpt from A Personal Narrative by Jonathan Edwards (memoir)
- 1845 Chapter 5 from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass (autobiography)
- 1854 Excerpt from Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau (memoir)
Week 13: Deep Like a River
- 1903 Excerpt from The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois (ethnography study)
- 1921 The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes (poem)
- 2017 The Shape of Water by Guillermo Del Toro (film)
Week 14: Mortality and Resurrection
- 1817 Thanatopsis by William Cullum Bryant (poem)
- 1950 Dem Bones by The Delta Rhythm Boys (spiritual song)
- 1863 Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickenson (poem)
- 2020 Mushrooms in a Tennessee Graveyard by Greg Emilio (poem)
- 1939 Strange Fruit written by Abel Meeropol and sung by Billie Holiday ((jazz/blues song)
Week 15: Revolution, Liberty, and Justice Part 2
- 1863 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln (dedication speech)
- 1862 Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe (song lyrics set to American folk tune)
- 1865 O Captain, My Captain by Walt Whitman (elegy)
- 1992 Democracy by Leonard Cohen (song)
Final Individual Essay