Skip to main content
Department of English
Search
Log in
Navigation
About
Current Office Hours
Diversity Resources
English Library
Faculty Statement Archives
Internal Dept Resources
Medieval and Early Modern Studies
University Writing Program
Video Guides & Worksheets
Visit us on Facebook
Major/Minor in English
Advising
Creative Writing Application
Honors Program
Internships
Literary Magazines
Major Requirements Guide & FAQ
Minor Requirements
Study Abroad
Why Major in English?
MFA in Creative Writing
Admissions
Events, Prizes, and Resources
MFA Program Faculty
Newly Admitted Grad Students
Resources
Ph.D. in Literature
About
Admissions
Newly Admitted Grad Students
PhD Alumni Directory
Resources
Courses & Schedules
People
News & Events
Off the Syllabus Podcast
Recent News
Contests
Contest Winners
Previous Contest Winners
Newsletters
You are here
Home
»
Courses & Schedules
English 258 - Fall, 2013
American Literature: 1800 to the Civil War
Class Information
Instructor:
Freeman, Elizabeth
CRN:
53754
Time:
T 12:10-3:00
Location:
120 Voorhies
Breadth:
Earlier American
Focus:
Interdiscipline, Theory
Description
Before Sexuality
Before the hardening of the categories homosexual/heterosexual, the antebellum United States saw a plethora of gendered and sexualized social forms, some more legible than others. This course will follow the vagaries of bachelorhood, manly dietetics, celestial marriage, adhesiveness, phalanxes, spermatic economies, and other formations of the period, inquiring into the ways that literature, and sometimes literary form, limns sociability and eroticism “otherwise” than the way we know them now. We will be reading, I hope, counterintuitively: for example, tracking the sonic elements of Walden yields a very different Thoreauvian erotics than the familiar story of his celibacy; the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith can look a lot like Walt Whitman; the sensualities of spiritualism in The Bostonians are actually more interesting than the Boston marriage, and so on. Theoretically, this course will introduce students to some aspects of queer studies; methodologically, we will drag the brush of close reading against the grain of Foucault, which might involve some not-so-new and some inventively new historicisms.
Grading
TBA
*marks texts that may be on reserve, in photocopy, or available otherwise than for purchase
Texts
Walden
, Henry David Thoreau
The Bostonians
, Henry James
Leaves of Grass
, Walt Whitman
The Blithedale Romance
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ethel\'s Love-Life: A Novel*
, Margaret Sweat
A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making*
, Sylvester Graham
Reveries of a Bachelor*
, Ik Marvel
Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints*
, Joseph Smith
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
, Frederick Douglass
Poems*
, Emily Dickinson