Professor Joel Pfister

American Literature and the Americanization of Power

Adrienne Rich (1977):  “We must be acutely, disturbingly aware of the language we are using and that is using us.”    . . . but how?

Theodore Dreiser, America Is Worth Saving (1941)    . . . but from what?

[Note: each number stands for two 45-minute sessions in sequence]

WEEK ONE

1.         American Exceptionalism? Its Literary Critiques

Tuesday, March 26, 4:00-6:00 PM (Virgilio)

John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630) (scan)

Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” (1938) (scan)

Langston Hughes, “Ballad of Roosevelt” (1934) (scan)

Langston Hughes, “Ballad of the Landlord” (1940) (scan)

2.         American Exceptionalism and the Americanization of Capitalism

Wednesday, March 27, 11:00 AM-1:00 PM (Erodoto)

Benjamin Franklin, “The Way to Wealth” (1758) (scan)

Herman Melville, “Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs” (1854) (scan)

WEEK TWO

3.         Gendering and Americanization

Tuesday, April 2, 1:00-3:00 PM (Balzac)

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat” (1843) (scan)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birth-mark” (1843) (scan)

4.         Gendering and Americanization

Wednesday, April 3, 9:00-11:00 AM (Confucio)

Emily Dickinson, mid-nineteenth-century poems (selections) (scan)

WEEK THREE

5.         Movies and the Americanization of Power (International Week Lecture)

Tuesday, April 9, 12:00-2:00 PM (Shakespeare)

Movies: Straight Outta Compton (2015), I Am Not Your Negro (2017),

Reel Injun (2010)

6.         Racializing and Americanization / Class and Americanization

Wednesday, April 10, 11:00 AM-1:00 PM (Goethe)

Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1852) (scan)

David Walker, from “Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World”

(1830) (scan)

Stephen Crane, “An Experiment in Misery” and “An Experiment in Luxury”

(1894) (scan)

WEEK FOUR

7.         Americanizing the War Zone: The Interaction of Class, Race, and

Imperialism

Tuesday, April 16, 3:00-5:00 PM (Erodoto)

Mark Twain, “Quarrel in the Strong-Box” (1897) (scan)

Mark Twain, “Comments on the Moro Massacre” (1906) (scan)

8.         Americanizing the War Zone: The Interaction of Imperialism, Race, Class,

and Gender

Wednesday, April 17, 9:00-11:00 AM (Virgilio)

Ernest Hemingway, excerpts from In Our Time (1925) (scan)

WEEK FIVE

9.         Americanizing the War Zone: The Interaction of Racialization and Class

Tuesday, May 7, 1:00-3:00 PM (Virgilio)

Richard Wright, short excerpt from Twelve Million Black Voices (1941) (scan)

Langston Hughes, “Slave on the Block” (1933) (scan)

10.       American Unexceptionalism? Its Literary Critiques

Wednesday, May 8, 9:00-11:00 AM (Virgilio)

Meridel Le Sueur, “I Was Marching” (1940) (scan)

T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925) (scan)

Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” (1961) (scan)

Langston Hughes, “Harlem” (1951) (scan)

Patti Smith, “People Have the Power” (1988) (scan)