Information Package
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Master's of American Culture and Literature without Thesis

AMER522

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

Course Code
AMER522
Semester
-
Theory+Practice
3 + 0
ECTS
10
Course TypeElective Course
Course LevelMaster's Degree Without Thesis
Year of Study-
Semester-
ECTS10
Name of Lecturer(s) -
Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, the students;

  1. will be able to discuss the historical, political and cultural climate of the period extending roughly between 1840-1865 that gave rise to the first generation of great writers who were distinctly American,
  2. will be able to study the basic tenets of American Transcendentalism and Romanticism,
  3. will be able to establish relationships between the political and intellectual movements such as the Anti-Slavery Movement, the Utopian Movement, the Feminist Movement and the proliferation of good writers.
Mode of DeliveryFace to face
PrerequisitesNo
Recommended Optional Programme ComponentsNone
Course DescriptionThe flowering of American literature in the first half of the 19th century and its contribution to the formation of the national literary character.
Course Contents
WEEK TOPICS
1st Week General introduction: A historical, political, and socio-cultural overview; America in the post-Revolution period to the Civil War; the age of ?great transformation;? the new social, political and cultural American identity; from literary imitations in the past to a growing awareness and search for indigenous literary production; Americanism and Americanness in literature, the creation of a distinctly national literature.
2nd Week (Continued).
3rd Week Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Literary Renaisssance, Transcendentalism, American national identity (The American Scholar, Self-Reliance, The Poet, Nature, Circles, and so forth).
4th Week (Continued).
5th Week Henry David Thoreau, Ecopiety, Anti-materialism, social dissidence (Walden; Resistance to Civil Government). Student presentation.
6th Week Washington Irving, local historicism, folkloric writing, gothicism, origins of American identity. (The Sketch Book: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip van Winkle;) Student presentation.
7th Week James Fenimore Cooper, the problem of American identity, racial integration, the American Frontier, romanticism and environmetalism (The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers). Student presentation.
8th Week Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, Henry W. Longfellow, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe: Racial integration, Anti-Slavery movements: abolitionists. Student presentation.
9th Week Nathaniel Hawthorne: the colonial Puritan past and historicism, gothicism, social criticism (The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, etc.). Student presentation.
10th Week (Continued).
11th Week Herman Melville: American literary identity and authenticity, the maturity of the American novel, American mythopoecisim, class and the self, symbolism and philosophical signifieds in Melville?s fiction (Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd The Sailor, etc.). Student presentation.
12th Week (Continued).
13th Week Edgar Allan Poe: American romanticişsm and gothicism; Poetical works. Student presentation.
14th Week Wrap-up, and concluding statements.
Recommended or Required ReadingRusk, Ralph L. The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: C. Scribner?s Sons, 1949. Print.
Buell, Lawrence. Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. Print.
Buell, Lawrence. New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Print.
Howe, Irving. The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Print.
Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. Print.
Condry, William. Thoreau. New York: Philosophical Library, 1954. Print.
Harding, Walter Roy. A Thoreau Handbook. New York: New York University Press, 1959. Print.
Derleth, August William. The Concord Rebel: A Life of Henry D. Thoreau. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1962. Print.
Richardson, Robert D. Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Print.
Ruland, Richard: Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Walden: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968. Print.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and The Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 1995. Print.
Crowley, J. Donald. Nathaniel Hawthorne. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971. Print.
Reynolds, Larry J. A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.
Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961. Print.
Levin, Harry. The Power of Blackness: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1958. Print.
Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods
  • Lecture
  • Discussion
  • Presentation
  • Questions/Answers
Assessment Methods and Criteria
Quantity Percentage (%)
Mid-term 2 60
Attendance 1 15
Total(%) 75
Contribution of In-term Studies to Overall Grade(%) 75
Contribution of Final Examination to Overall Grade(%) 25
Total(%) 100
ECTS Allocated Based on Student Workload
Activities Quantity Duration (Hour) Total Workload (Hour)
Midterm exam 2 3 6
Preparation for Quiz
Individual or group work 14 5 70
Preparation for Final exam 1 40 40
Course hours 14 3 42
Preparation for Midterm exam 2 35 70
Laboratory (including preparation)
Final exam 1 3 3
Homework
Weekly Articles and Resource Research 14 5 70
Total Work Load301
Total Work Load / 30 (h)10.03
ECTS Credit of the Course10
Language of InstructionEnglish
Work Placement(s)No

Programme Qualifications / Learning Outcomes

LO1 LO2 LO3
K1 X X X
K2 X X
K3 X X X
K4 X X
K5 X X X
K6 X X X
K7 X
K8 X
K9
K10 X
K11 X X X
K12
K13