due thursday at 9pm

What is American literature? That might seem a question more appropriate for the first week of class, but now it's time to find out what you think. We have covered so many aspects of literature and American culture. This week you will be putting it all together.

Lesson Objectives
Students will be able to:

• Consider how literature reflects or does not reflect American identity

• Identify contemporary writers whose work deserves inclusion in our discussion of American literature

Specific Topics of Discussion
In this lesson, we will discuss:

• What makes a classic piece of American literature

Key Learning Concepts

The evolution of literature - How is the most recent literature different than that of the past, and how can you still see the past reflected?

This Week's Deliverables

The following activities and assessments need to be completed this week:

• Reading:

 

 

Jhumpa Lahiri: Author Bio

Jhumpa Lahiri: The Third and Final Continent

Sherman Alexie: Author Bio

Sherman Alexie: What You Pawn I Will Redeem

Sandra Cisneros: Author Bio

Sandra Cisneros: Woman Hollering Creek

Alice Walker: Author Bio

Alice Walker:Everyday Use

Cathy Song: Author Bio

Cathy Song: Picture Bride

WEEK 8: Multi-culturalism

Reading & Resources

Jhumpa Lahiri: Author Bio Jhumpa Lahiri: The Third and Final Continent Sherman Alexie: Author Bio Sherman Alexie: What You Pawn I Will Redeem Sandra Cisneros: Author Bio Sandra Cisneros: Woman Hollering Creek Alice Walker: Author Bio Alice Walker:Everyday Use Cathy Song: Author Bio Cathy Song: Picture Bride

Lesson

 

We are a nation founded by immigrants and containing an indigenous population of Native Americans. The American literary scene has always featured women writers and non-Western European voices. There has been diversity from the beginning, but women's writing was non-white male writing was not always treated as 'literature'.  That is, women's writing was often valued for revealing details about American life in diary or letter-form ( such as the diary of Mary Rowlandson), and it was popular in genre stories, such as true crime or salacious stories that were popular reads at the turn of the century, but not well-respected as worthy of study. Similarly, the work of immigrants or non-whites often did not rise to the level of being part of the 'literary establishment.' In the 1970s and 80s, educational and cultural trends changed.

 

Multi-cultural voices and women's writing began to be discussed in colleges and universities more routinely alongside the 'classic' white male writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, and Poe who dominated the literary landscape for so many years. It is not that these writers ( women and ethnic minorities) just started writing in the '70s and '80s, but rather that light was being shone on their work for the first time. This attention does seem to have encouraged and increased the involvement of women and minorities in the publishing industry. Globalization and the spread of technology and fast travel has further enabled the literary world to be more inclusive and multi-faceted.

 

The variety of American letters was enriched in the twentieth century by the immigration and settlement in the United States of major literary voices from Europe, the Far East, the Indian sub-continent, and both Central and South America. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jew from the old Warsaw, Poland, brought his Yiddish tradition and culture to New York where he carefully provided scrupulous oversight of works into English. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Like Singer, Vladimir Nabokov brought his experiences from Czarist Russia to his new American home in 1940. Czeslaw Milosz, the 1980 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, has his roots in pre-war Lithuania. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1970 and served as a poet/lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. The 1976 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saul Bellow, the son of Russian Jews who immigrated to Quebec, Canada in 1913, made his home in Chicago where he taught for years on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Chinua Achebe hailed from Nigeria and died in Boston.  Joseph Brodsky, the 1987 Nobel Prize laureate, was born in St Petersburg. Bharati Mukherjee is from Calcutta, India; Isabel Allende, was born in Lima, Peru. The list could go on, of course. Examining the author biographies in our text for this week's writers is a rich illustration of the many voices that have contributed to American literature, particularly in the last few decades.

 

 

Throughout this class, we have looked at literature throughout the years, ranging from the 1800s to the 2000s, but what literature will students be reading in 100 years. There are a number of authors who are making their mark right now, but what will make their literature stand the test of time?

 

Take a look at the 'Movement Flash Cards' at the bottom of this lecture for a quick review of what we've learned so far and to test your recall of the prominent characteristics of each major literary movement.

 

Movement Flash Cards