Pedagogical Goals | Syllabus | Tour Itinerary
Pre-Arrival Reading List | Bibliography

Syllabus

Part II: American Culture: A History of Intersections

June 27, Monday

Morning
Contact: The First Encounters
Stan Howard and Peter Hales

Imagining the New America and the New American

Readings: Christopher Columbus, "Letter" (in text packet); Olaudah Equiano, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano, American Slave,” Howard Zinn, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress," from A People's History; The Declaration of Independence (in pre-arrival reading via our website), Federalist Papers, #10; The Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights (in pre-arrival reading via our website), chapters from America’s History.

Afternoon
The Literary Creation of National Identity
Chris Messenger

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson and the American Mythic Imaginary

Readings: Hawthorne, “The Maypole of Mary Mount” (in text packet), "Roger Malvin's Burial," in Young Goodman Brown & Other Stories; Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass (stanzas 1-11), Emily Dickenson, selected poems.

June 28, Tuesday

Morning
Frederick Douglass's Narrative: Close Readings By Two Disciplines
Stan Howard and Chris Messenger

Readings: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (through Chapter 5, p.75), "The Significance of July Fourth to the Negro"

June 29, Wednesday

Expansion and the Conflict of Rights, 1830-1895
Peter Hales and Stan Howard

Morning
Exploration and Empire

Readings: "Appeal to the People of the United States: The Cherokee Nation" (1830); "An Indian's View of Indian Affairs: Chief Joseph" (1879); (in text packet); "The Homestead Act of 1862"; Frederick Jackson Turner, "On the Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893) both from Boorstin, An American Primer.

Afternoon
Close Reading: Owen Wister's The Virginian, and the birth of the American Western as genre and cultural icon.
Chris Messenger and Peter Hales

June 30, Thursday

Morning
Seminal Documents in American Geography and Literature
Peter Hales and Chris Messenger

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the election and social frontier paintings of Duncanson and George Caleb Bingham, and the Mapping of American Expansion

Readings: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Afternoon
Feedback Session (hors d'oeuvres and refreshments will be served!), followed by Bookstore Tour and Group Dinner Excursion
Neil McCarthy

July 1, Friday

The Individual and the City, 1865-1915
Peter Hales and Chris Messenger

Morning
Cities: Commerce, Industrialism and the New America, 1860-1895

Readings: Mayer and Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis, chapters 2,3; John Wanamaker, "On the Department Store." (in Boorstin, An American Primer); Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (focus on chapters 1-5); Jacob Riis, excerpts from The Battle With The Slum (in Boorstin, An American Primer)

Afternoon
American Feminisms
Sharon Holland

Readings: Frances Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper; Emma Goldman, Selected Writing (in packets) Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad (book)

July 2, Saturday

American Traditions in New American Spaces: Celebrating the Fourth of July in Homer Glen, Illinois

July 3, Sunday

FREE DAY

July 4, Monday

Celebrate July 4th: Morning Parade in Evanston, Illinois, followed by open-house for the rest of the day at the home of Director Peter Hales; fireworks and concert in downtown Chicago.

July 5, Tuesday

Morning
Redefining Unity from War to War: 1914-1945

Readings: Willa Cather, My Antonia, chapters 1-8; Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor, American Exodus

Afternoon
Women Writing the Americas
Sharon Holland

Readings: E. Pauline Johnson, “A Red Girl’s Reasoning”

July 6, Wednesday

Morning
American Internationalism: Themes, Traditions, Conflicts
Neil McCarthy

Afternoon
War/Postwar/Cold War: Cultures of Necessity, Prosperity and Fear
Stan Howard and Peter Hales

Readings: Korematsu v. United States (1944); "Shelly v. Kramer" (1948), "Brown v. Board of Education" (all in packet); Barbara Kelly, excerpts from Expanding the American Dream; look at the Levittown Web sites:
http://www.uic.edu/~pbhales/Levittown.html, also http://www.newquestcity.com/cities/NY/1825.htm and http://www.newsday.com/extras/lihistory/specsec/levmain.htm

Evening
A Public Roundtable on American Internationalism and Foreign Policy