English 10B-1 - Spring, 2016

Literatures in English II: 1700-1900

Class Information

Instructor: Menely, Tobias
CRN: 42466
Time: MWF 1:10-2:00
Location: 209 Wellman

Description

Between 1700 and 1900, Britain grew from a small island nation in the North Sea to the most geographically extensive empire in history. In 10B, we’ll ask how British and American literature during this period mediated the dislocations and relocations, the anxieties and opportunities of territorial expansion. Such mediation, we’ll discover, includes the work of justifying violence and appropriation but also of reimagining community, negotiating cross-cultural conflict and environmental change, remembering the past and envisaging the future. This literary-historical problem—the question, in short, of how we came to study English literature on the Pacific coast of North America—will inform the broader work of 10B: learning to read slowly and carefully, to read content but also form, and to use writing to develop compelling interpretive arguments.

Grading

Two Five-Page Essays 50%
Online Discussion Forum 30%
Final Exam 20%

Texts

Robinson Crusoe (Penguin), Defoe
Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (Penguin), Brockden Brown
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Oxford), Jacobs
Heart Of Darkness (Oxford), Conrad