120081 PS Literature: Proseminar = Introductory Seminar (2011S)

Anne Bradstreet, "The Author to Her Book" (1678)*; Mary Rowlandson, "Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration" (1682)*; Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought From Africa to America" (1773)*; Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok (1824)*; Frances Sargent Osgood, "Echo-Song" (1845); Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (1862); Emily Dickinson, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" (1863); Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868); Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883); Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" (1886); Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, "A New England Nun" (1891); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892); Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899); Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1916); Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Love is not Blind" (1923); Katherine Anne Porter, "Old Mortality" (1938); Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (1962); Joyce Carol Oates, "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again" (1969); Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987); and Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002). The assigned texts will be discussed in the given, chronological order. Students who plan to attend this class should make sure they have read the texts marked with an asterisk before the beginning of the term. For Child's Hobomok, please use the American Women Writers edition, edited by Carolyn L. Karcher for Rutgers University Press, entitled Hobomok & Other Writings on Indians. For Alcott's Little Women, please use the Penguin Classics edition, edited by Elaine Showalter. You may use any available editions of the novels Beloved and The Lovely Bones. Chopin's The Awakening, Glaspell's Trifles, and most of the short stories and poems can be found in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. (2 vols.) Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (New York: Norton, 32007); The Norton Anthology of American Literature. (5 vols.) Ed. Nina Baym et al. (New York: Norton, 72007); and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill (New York: Norton, 72006). Osgood's, Howe's and Millay's poems can be found online.