Syllabus 2017-18
Term 1
Week 1: Introduction
Thomas Jefferson 鈥淒eclaration of Independence鈥� (1776)
Alexis de Tocqueville 鈥淭he Principle of the Sovereignty of the People of America鈥� (1835)
Frederick Douglass, "What to a slave is the Fourth of July?" (1852)
Thomas Jefferson 鈥淣otes on the State of Virginia鈥� (excerpt 1785)
Washington Irving 鈥淩ip Van Winkle鈥� (1819)
Unit 1: Haiti and the Ocean
Week 2: Leonora Sansay Secret History or the Horrors of St Domingo (1808)
Week 3: Herman Melville, 鈥淏enito Cereno鈥� (1855)
*Susan Buck Morss 鈥淗egel and Haiti鈥� (2000)
Unit 2: The Frontier
Week 4: Charles Brockden Brown Edgar Huntly (1798)
*Stephen Shapiro and Philip Barnard (introduction to the Hackett edition)
Week 5: John Rollin Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaqu铆n Murieta (1854)
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7: Mark Twain, Pudd鈥檔head Wilson (1894)
Unit 3: The Plantation and After
Week 8: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
*Sojurner Truth 鈥淎in鈥檛 I a Woman?鈥� (1851)
Week 9: Paul Laurence Dunbar, 鈥楾he Lynching of Jube Benson鈥� (1904); Thomas Nelson Page, 鈥�No Haid Pawn鈥� (1887) Charles Chesnut 鈥淧o Sandy鈥� (1899)
*Booker T Washington 鈥淎tlanta Compromise Speech" (1895)
*Ida B Wells 鈥淟ynch Law in America鈥� (1900)
*Strongly Recommended but not mandatory WEB DuBois "Counter-Revolution of Property"Counter-Revolution of Property" Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (1935)
Week 10: Pauline Hopkins 鈥淭alma Gordon鈥� (1900)
*WEB Du Bois 鈥淭o the Nations of the World鈥� (1900)
Term 2
Unit 4: The Factory
Week 1: Rebecca Harding Davis, 'Life in the Iron Mills' (1861)
* Karl Marx et al.
鈥�Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham
* Henry David Thoreau 鈥淓肠辞苍辞尘测鈥� Walden (1854, excerpt)
Week 2: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)
Unit 5: Europe and the Empire of Ruins
Week 3: Henry James Daisy Miller (1879)
Optional: Edgar Allan Poe, 鈥楾he Fall of the House of Usher鈥� (1839)
Optional: Edgar Allan Poe, 鈥楾he Fall of the House of Usher鈥� (1839)
Unit 6: The Roots of Urban Crisis
Week 4: Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick (1867)
*Photos from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives: Here and (1890)
Week 5: Charles Chesnutt of The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
*Strongly Recommended but not mandatory WEB DuBois "Back Towards Slavery" Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (1935)
Week 6: READING WEEK
Unit 7: Utopias and A Space of Our Own
Week 7: Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)
Week 8: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)
Week 9: Sutton E Griggs Imperium in Imperio (1899)
* Martin Delany 鈥淧olitical Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent鈥� (1854)
Week 10: TBD
