"American Mourning" - Freshman Seminar

Instructors

• Nathan David Leahy

Meeting Info

• University Hall 018 - MoWeFr 11:00AM - 11:50AM

Overview of class

• This considers the universal experience of mourning and grieving as it is represented in major works of American literature. We will be especially concerned with how the emotional labor of the grieving processwhether it is grieving over a death, grieving over a lost opportunity, or grieving over the loss of abilityis related, in these literary works, to the establishment and/or strengthening of community (national) and universalizing (transnational) feelings of affiliation, affection, solidarity, and sympathy. This will lead us to consider what various kinds of opportunities arise from the public representation of individual grief.

Teaching Method

• Discussion

Evaluation Method

• Three formal essay assignments, weekly 1-2 page response papers, regular attendance with active participation in class discussion
  
  NUMBER OF WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AND THEIR LENGTHS: three 5-6 page papers and eight weekly response papers of 1-2 pages in length

Class Materials (Required)

• Anne Bradstreet, selected poetry; Thomas Jefferson, selections from Notes on the State of Virginia; Edgar Allan Poe, selected poetry and stories; Walt Whitman, selected poetry; Sarah Orne Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night; Jack Kerouac, On the Road; Allan Ginsberg, "Howl"; Toni Morrison, Beloved

Class Notes

• Nathan Leahy is a lecturer in the English department, where he teaches and writes about 19th and 20th century American literature. Specific areas of interest include: financial panic novels, spy thrillers, utopian and dystopian writing, critical theory, and the 1920s and 1930s.

Enrollment Requirements

• Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for Freshmen and Sophomores

Current as of 05/06/13 11:39:56 AM

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