The Literature of American Empire

Gone To Look For America

2010-06-23T23:35:00.011+08:00

Maybe I will look here first?

Oh, and nobody wants to waste the summer reading Norton Anthologies, but may I recommend the following?

-Toni Morrison, Beloved (novel)
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (novel)
-Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan (finance/philosophy)
-The Wire (television drama)
-Arrested Development (television comedy)

因為這裡我的招聘者會看, 所以我必須寫這個郵件使用秘密代碼. 我稱之為"中文." 妳們都太火辣和太聰明.（你們也是.）我給妳們我所有的愛和最良好的祝愿美好的生活！

Exam lowlights/highlights

2010-06-22T03:55:00.006+08:00

Note for Late Finishers: Intense deadline pressure is the biggest risk factor for plagiarism. I mention this because I have already read three answers on this exam that relied on unattributed direct quotation of internet sources. Seriously, I taught American students for six years... I'm like Sherlock Holmes for this. Don't spoil all of the goodwill from last week. If you think a source is interesting, cite it and make a comment about it.

A Happier Note: I've read about half of the exams now, and here are the two best answers so far...

Question 15: American’s cultural imperialism sells their value, perspective and attitude successfully to most countries. And it is clear that Taiwan has been severely affected by American pop culture, especially movie. Some ideas and words in Taiwanese have exactly the same meaning in America. For example, “a civilized country” should have a democratic government which cares about people’s human rights, well-developed technology and free market economy. In addition, Taiwanese tend to see the world through American’s eyes. We accept the way how American interprets the world include many kind of stereotype toward other countries. So we want to jump out from the framework that America gives us; people start to believe United States is an evil empire who wants to take all sources of petroleum under control. However, I jumped into the framework and study it in American Literature class; it’s quite interesting for me to observe Taiwanese culture through American’s viewpoint.

In this course, I found out the condition of Taiwanese aboriginal and Native American is quiet similar. However, it seems Native American is an important issue in American literature; however, aboriginal literature hasn’t been mentioned a lot in our literature class in Taiwan. It makes me start to perceive the relationship between Han groups and aboriginal who either had been forced to live in mountains or assimilated with Han groups. Taiwanese aboriginals group are very inferior because their tribes are usually small and distant after the oppression of new comer. A single tribe is hard to arouse attention, but it’s hard for them to connect together. In Taiwan’s media, the reports related to Native Taiwanese are usually about their Harvest Festival, accident caused by drunk or aboriginal athletic star. These images of aboriginal enhance our stereotype of them; and they might also fit themselves into the frame and miss other kinds of possibilities. Their distinct culture is losing; nevertheless, government assigns ministry of tourism instead of ministry of culture to provide them aid and help them promote their festival and dancing which is just the surface not the core of their culture. In the end, everyone can join their celebration ceremony and pretend that we understand aboriginal culture profoundly.

There are some aboriginal writers publish their works after Taiwanese aboriginal literature start to prevail around 1980 with the native movement. They express their feeling of double-consciousness and contradiction in their work like Native American writers. But I want to discuss how authors in Han group present aboriginal characters. Despite few authors who can point out struggle and difficulties that aboriginal face throughout the history, we can divide aboriginal characters into three types in most stories. First of all, the descriptions of Taiwanese aboriginals recorded by Han people during the Ching dynasty are usually savage and brutal as the image of American Indian in prior literature work about American frontier. Second one is similar to the concept of Emerson’s noble savage. The story, which might appear in children’s or teenager’s book, is usually related to aboriginal legend, love or friendship between Han people and aboriginals. And they live happily after in the tribe. The other one appears in novels of late 20^th century and the very beginning of 21^th century. These stories usually talk about the success of aboriginals in Han society; and the characters are usually Han-lization. They try to integrate with Han groups and totally accept and appreciate the value in Han society. I think these writers simplify the process of integration as government and create an ideal condition despite those complicated problems of aboriginals. In other words, the real life of aboriginal is not in their concerned, because they try to understand aboriginal through the aspect of Han. The difference between ethnic has been deliberately ignored in those novels, and the author just depict an imaginary perfect society of Taiwan.

In the course, I learned one event could have multiple features when you stand on different aspect. After reading essays of American minority groups, I figured out that most people in Taiwan seldom mind the problems or dilemma of aboriginals. We judge them by the impression given by the mass media and feel reluctant to face their misery which might cause by our ancestors. Fortunately, people pay more attention on the issue of preserving aboriginal culture in recent years. Aboriginals also start to speak out for themselves through writing, music or politics. Some of them or scholars try to rebuild aboriginal language system and traditional custom. Taiwanese of majority Han groups should care more about our land and other ethnic groups; or they will mournfully looking at their culture swallowing by the mainstream culture before we notice.

Question 4:

A BAND

A band is a band but not a band. No rubber, no drum, no noisy rectangle stuck in the broken palm. No color was seen. What does it want if the pride no longer necessary. A band is everything.

A MOUTHFUL OF MUSIC

White words against dark black color.

Speakers upon dusty table. A man, a woman, and a group of people.

The tenderness along the pages frightens the motion of fingers, and in the corner hides the wall that shakes the late night air in the sleepless city. How about a drink. Loneliness in plural form makes cheerful singularity, and what if imagination is a crime, what if nothing breaks the regularity. Will the jazz still be humble and will the blues still be red. Red is not a color but a jumping wide.

A piece of metal strikes. There, there is nothing neglected, not a blissful wedding more triumphant than a growing melody. Step forward step forward toward the edge where everything falls.

This is not for you, but please and please not talk to when.

This is so not this.

A SEDUCING PILLOW

A bowl is larger than a pounding fist, and it is necessary to hold onto the petals that dance like the girls in front of the pond that rains.

A mountain is shoveled with a pair of pants. To be a glass of ocean even to smell beautiful is no simple task. A quiet sleeper suffers immensely from the insomnia, a flock of sheep was kept for the volcano and the thick island is all that one can see.

GREEN TEA

Green tea means does it my dream it means temporality. A sucker and a lamp and a pair of scissors mean no more than the less it means morality, morality is sometimes that does false.

Green tea is not only green but even strong in its tenderness. A few changes have been conducted, lie to anything that is relevant and anything not meaning but changing.

OLD BOY

Violence has been beautified. If the window was not broken, if the secret was not told, if the river was dry. The scene would be less bloody and more delighted, if the climax comes lower is good, scarcely any difference. Save one bite for dinner.

A green sweater and a narrow escape from the pineapple.

Awake, as how it should be ended should be ended. Press the button, no need to be hard, but slightly touch and let out the fancy light. What lies beneath, what lies beneath is the ugly truth that stands between the CD covers that is all white, all white and blind.

Brownie is not made of cats. The boots and the scarves and the lollipops are close and close enough. Tissue is another kind of extravagance, and the color of the tongue is round and round as the most obvious icon on the table. No need to be careful.

MOBILE PHONES

Two makes none. A singing joy tumbles in front of a bed. What is called language is dear to me. The tiger speaks finer English, finer and finer English.

A TOILET

A channel, an ivory white, a dirt, a wondering mind.

EYE SHADOW

It was in the drawer, eye shadow in the drawer. Humid smell expresses a sense of responsibility. Spoil it, spoil it, and no regret until the cockroaches meet next to next to the practical money. The second best thing is to cut the decision without a piece of tragic hesitation.

No comedy provided, and a little little little good is no less less fun than a rainy dog or cat.

No nonsense is being handed that a smirk is a dandy. If a clock walks high, if a coin drops dead, if a pill book wine, then no friend will be browsing. A mustache upon sings, making a plastic machine, making a dreadful sound of it.

謝謝你們!（或謝謝妳們?)

2010-06-15T19:55:00.011+08:00

I had a wonderful time at your graduation ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday, and at the Pynchon seminar on Tuesday. I don't know how you're able to maintain your focus for exams during this (post-)celebration week, but I definitely look forward to reading them.

Also, OMG, the most interesting thing happened in my home state of South Carolina. Pynchonites will love the various conspiracy theories here; the others may consider the race-relations angle... My take on this Wikipedia rundown of possible explanations... why is it somehow the least plausible explanation of this electoral result, that black voters in a party primary for a state election their party cannot possibly win, would choose to send a message to their party's establishment candidate (who is an unpopular jerk) by going to the polls and choosing, in effect, "none of the above"? But no, I suppose it would take fictional Portuguese people to think of something like that.

Homework for Class #29 (Tuesday, 6月8日）

2010-05-26T12:36:00.012+08:00

Note: I didn't realize how many of those "urban/industrial" homework answers were written late last night or early this morning. I will make a new post to comment on them (and the pastoral homework) on Thursday. Whoomp, it shall be here!

I imagine this exam to be much like last semester's final exam. I will provide a range of possible questions with the expectation that most students will choose to answer three of them at a length of roughly 500 words each (250 minimum, 750 maximum). So the total for the exam would then be roughly 1500 words (1000 minimum, 2000 maximum).

You can begin to personalize the exam by offering possible questions to add to this list; others may want to answer them as well. Some of you also expressed interest in writing a 1500 word essay to replace the entire exam. And I have already offered to replace 1/3 of the exam (i.e. one question) for taking part in the Pynchon seminar and helping to prepare some materials for the other participants.

For all questions, please remember to reference and analyze specific authors or texts. I don't always note this below, but it's a general recommendation.

GENRES

1) Make a detailed comparison between three texts that you consider to be 'pastoral' in their genre or theme. At least two should be from the American Literature course. A large part of the question is obviously to define what you mean by 'pastoral.' And of course it would be best to choose texts that present intriguing contrasts. (Note: don't answer both #1 and #2 as they're too similar.)

2) Make a detailed comparison between three texts that you consider to be 'industrial' or 'urban' in their genre or theme. A large part of the question is obviously to define what you mean by 'industrial' or 'urban.' And of course it would be best to choose texts that present intriguing contrasts. (Note: don't answer both #1 and #2 as they're too similar.)

3) Make a "lesson plan" for the missing session on American 'gothic.' Explain what themes you would emphasize, what questions you would ask, how you would connect to previous course concepts, what exercises might be helpful, etc. (My suggested texts would be Poe's "Ligeia" and "Imp of the Perverse," Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," and David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"... but you could substitute others. Incidentally, please e-mail me and I can help you find the Wallace stories.)

4) Write a parody, imitation, or homage in the style of one of this semester's authors. (Applied to a new topic, probably.)

CROSS-HISTORICAL COMPARISONS

5) Pick a member of a certain group we studied in the first semester, then explain what he/she would think of two later (i.e. second semester) texts written by members of that same school or group. You can write in essay form or dialogue form. The most obvious examples are African-Americans and American Indians. But you could also consider using, say, Jose Marti along with Alvarez and Anzaldua. Or you could define a geographical grouping (New York city, Boston, the southeast, the west, etc.) Or a particular social class or profession. Or writers who all respond to a similar theme, or use a similar genre. Or some other type of group. (I suppose we studied most of the women in the second semester, so in that case just pick one 19th-century woman and two 20th-century women.) The one rule here is that you probably shouldn't write about Kingston, considering we gave her so much attention already.

6) Suppose you are teaching a class similar to this one. But the scope of the class is smaller (say, one semester). And the level is a bit lower (say final year of high school, or first or second year of university). How would you organize the syllabus? What texts would you choose, and why? What theme(s) would the course have? Why?

UNEXPLORED THEMES

7) An answer about literary representations of homosexuality would work; in particular I have been wondering how such representations relate to theories of American authorship, though one could ask the same for gender in general. (Note that it would be inadequate simply point out that certain authors are homosexual, and that this somehow influenced their writing.)

8) An answer about the central role that World War II plays in American literature/culture/ideology in the post-1945 era, and the different meanings it carries for different writers. It would also be possible to pose some kind of comparison to the earlier role of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Or I suppose this could be a more general answer about representations of war or military themes.

9) The influence of film on 20th/21st century American literary technique... Another version of this answer would be to explore the thematic relationship between American literature and American pop culture by citing particular texts we've analyzed.

10) Develop one of the class presentations further. The easiest way to do this would be to somehow challenge or complicate the interpretations that were presented.

11) Give a close analysis reading of one of the 'forgotten authors' or forgotten texts that were assigned for homework but never found great emphasis in our class discussion.

BROAD QUESTIONS

These are all somewhat similar, so perhaps choose just one.

12) Make a defense of American style liberalism, in response to the many questions and challenges to it raised by me as well as many of the authors we've read. It would help to cite particular authors and concepts, lest your essay fall victim to over-generalization.

13) Challenge my idea of American 'empire' somehow. Perhaps you see the pre-20th century U.S. as too decentralized to be an empire. Perhaps you see the 20th/21st century U.S. as too pluralistic or diverse to be an empire.

14) Explain the challenges of creating a national identity that is both inclusive/pluralistic and somehow unified. What about the challenge of memorializing histories of conflict between resident groups? Is such a project impossible? Is it even desirable?

15) Explain to another Taiwanese citizen what new insight your study of American literature has given you about literature/culture/politics in Taiwan. In other words, teach them how to apply what you learned. (This isn't the same as last semester's "why study it?" question. Now we assume that it's worth studying, and you need to explain more specifically how you would apply it.)

MORE TO COME!

Homework for Class #28 (Tuesday, 6月1日）

2010-05-26T12:14:00.007+08:00

Read: "Howl" (2592-2600) and Ginsberg biography (2590-92)
Read: "For the Union Dead" (2535-2537) and Lowell biography (2526-2529)
Read: "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (HTML copy here, PDF scan from the original magazine article here, and there are already several photocopies in the blue basket but the TA will make more) and Melville biography (1089-92)

And the final presentations by Lucille, Tady, and Caleigh/Letitia/Esther!

185 (Crystal). What would Walt Whitman say about "Howl"? Try to note some things he might like and some he might not like, or maybe some things that might surprise him.
186 (Joy, Teresa). Compare the poetic technique of "Howl" to the poetic technique of "For the Union Dead." Be as specific as possible.
187 (Viola, Caleigh). Compare the symbolic meaning of male homosexual love in "Song of Myself," "Howl," and "Paradise/Tartarus." (In other words, it functions as some kind of symbol in each, but its meaning differs greatly.) Given our earlier discussions about gender roles, you may consider that it relates somehow to the idea of authorship or authorial identity.
188 (Zoe, Ken). As you can see, Melville's story was first published in Harper's magazine in 1855. This magazine is still published in the U.S., so imagine you are the current editor. You need to choose one of the living authors we've read and explain how you want him/her to write an updated version; it should retain the same core themes but also reflect our lives in 2010.

Grades for the essay have now been e-mailed. I do apologize for the delay... I believe this is the longest I've ever held an essay in my 7 years of teaching! I should also confess that I find it rather strange to give essay grades as percentages. The American system uses letter grades (A, A-, B+, B, B- and so on)... the percentages perhaps give a false sense of accuracy. I believe my grades are not subjective in the sense of "arbitrary"; each essay is properly ranked within the set on a number of central criteria. I focus mainly on the ability to articulate, develop, and organize a specific thesis. (I hardly commented on English usage... if you have a specific question for how to use a certain construction, please feel free to ask.) But it is still a difficult judgment, so I think it would be more honest to admit an error range of something like 2 or 3 percent. Would that even be a "grade," so to speak? Anyhow perhaps this does not concern you, because I am told that my scale is quite high for NTHU! For this assignment the average score was about 83%. I think it was well deserved; I have been impressed all along with both your talent and your effort, and this was no exception.

Oh, and the presentations have been graded too. Except the ones going on Tuesday. The average for that has been something like 86% or 87%.

Homework for Class #27 (Tuesday, 5月25日）

2010-05-18T13:45:00.010+08:00

Read: Thoreau, Walden (the chapter I want is not in the anthology, so you can read here online... my assistant put paper copies for all of you in the basket in front of my office door)... and review his biography (825-29)
Read: Whitman, "Song of Myself" (read the following stanzas from pages pages 1011-55: 1-26, 31, 33-34, 37-39, 41-44, 48-52) and biography (991-95)

Reminder: Please make your post reviewing pastoral strategies in one previous author, as indicated in class last week.

[More Arizona turmoil]

No homework questions, but please be prepared to discuss.

Class will meet on the grassy area in front of the main auditorium... we could also sit on the steps. It depends something on the level of "pastoralism" you desire. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!

Homework for Class #26 (Tuesday, 5月18日）

2010-05-08T14:10:00.009+08:00

Read: Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine" (here for printable PDF, or here for web version)... and review the author's biography on Norton 1638-39
Read: Jewett, biography and "A White Heron" (1590-98)
Read: Cheever, biography and "The Swimmer" (2408-17). I am moving Faulkner to 6月8日 and deleting O'Connor again.
Read: Bishop, biography and "The Fish" (2398-2401)

178 (Carol). Briefly summarize what you have learned from previous classes about pastoral genres of writing, or summarize what you learned about a particular pastoral text. (I am using the term quite generally to include any kind of contemplation of natural or artificial landscapes, in poetry or prose. Or even just writing that has a rural or village setting.)
179 (Viola). Choose one of the authors from this list, and explain how and why they use a pastoral setting: Columbus, Champlain, Smith, Cooke, Crevecouer, Jefferson, Freneau, Irving, Detroit, Tecumseh, Thorpe, Emerson, Black Hawk, Zitkala Sa, Roosevelt, Stevens, Wright, Momaday, Silko, Harjo, Lee
180 (Zoe). Choose a different author from the list in #179 and answer.
181 (Joy). Like Dunbar's "Ante-Bellum Sermon," there is a kind of triple layering of irony in "The Goophered Grapevine." In the first layer, there are ignorant slaves living on a nostalgic, pre-1865 Southern plantation. In the second layer, it begins to appear that the slaves have a clever way of outwitting their master... but we could find that idea even in the racist Joel Chandler Harris "Uncle Remus" stories that formed the basis of the Disney "Song of the South" cartoon I showed you. So analyze the all-important third layer, which is the "1887" layer... how does Chesnutt depict Julius the storyteller and his transplanted Northern capitalist employer? How might this relate to Chesnutt's relationship to the (white) reading audience?
182 (Lucille). If there is a symmetry between the 'interior' and 'exterior' situation of Chesnutt's text, there is perhaps an asymmetry between the 'interior' and 'exterior' situation of Jewett's text. To give you a sense of what I mean, answer this... who do you imagine Jewett's original reading audience to be, and what do you suppose are their motivations for being interested in stories like "The White Heron"?
183 (Winnie). Based on "The Swimmer," do you agree with Norton that Cheever isn't a great writer, and that his work is "firmly resistant to ideas"? I'm of two minds - I think the metaphor of "The Swimmer" is one of the most striking and memorable in all of American Literature, but I'm not quite sure what it's a metaphor for. I always mistake "county" for "country" in the story... is this elision warranted?
184. (Meg). Bishop's poetry does not lend itself very easily to the type of analysis we've used in this class, which is mainly ideological or sociological. (I suppose the "wise" fish could suggest something about the mind's capability to incorporate experiences, even disruptive or traumatic ones, into an organic whole of memory or history? I'm not sure.) So in this question I invite you to make any observation/analysis about "The Fish" that you like, or to compare Bishop to another of our authors.

Random Ethno-Cultural Note: Someone just pointed out to me that of the 9 officers in the U.S. "supreme court," 3 are now from Jewish families and the other 6 from Catholic families. (I don't know their actual religious practices, ha ha.) This says a lot about the expansion of "white" that occurred in the past 100 years. The question is, will this category expand further? To whom? Will it cease to be meaningful? Or will it contract?

Homework for Class #25 (Tuesday, 5月11日）

2010-05-04T12:14:00.018+08:00

Speaking of Athletes and Racial Stereotypes:

Vincent sent his further analysis of character types in the American wrestling league, and I forgot to post it until now... the file is here... it's quite interesting... the black wrestlers form a group called "Crime Time" and the Japanese wrestler is "sneaky."

And Speaking of Athletes and Racial Stereotypes again:

Read this fascinating news story about the Phoenix Suns basketball team. The U.S. state of Arizona has a long history of racial discrimination (it was the last state to celebrate "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day" for instance). U.S. national immigration policy is kind of a mess... one political party generally favors open immigration and the other party generally favors closed immigration, but the issue is so controversial that they both prefer to do nothing for fear of angering voters. This leads to a lot of illegal or undocumented immigration, and related tensions, and also benefits employers who hire illegal immigrants at sub-minimum wages. (An economic analysis would be that it is difficult to loosen barriers for the flow of capital while simultaneously tightening barriers for the flow of labor.) So anyway, the Arizona legislature decided to solve the problem by giving police more freedom to arrest illegal immigrants. This is a debatable policy in other ways, but the main problem is that it may also allow police and 'Anglo' (white) citizens to categorize all Hispanics in Arizona as 'illegal' when most are legal citizens. So in other words, it may have the effect of turning a legal distinction (citizen vs. non-citizen) into a racial distinction (white and brown). As we know the relationship between Anglo and Hispanic groups in the southwestern U.S. has been tense since the Mexican-American war in the 1840s, and even hundreds of years before that. So it's interesting to see a commercial business like an NBA basketball team take such an oppositional political stance... and I don't think we can discount the fact that most NBA basketball players are black, and may have some sensitivity to the notion of racial discrimination. As one journalist writes, "This kind of political intervention by a sports team is without precedent and now every athlete and every team has an opening to stand up and be heard."

The Chinese-American Experience:

Check out this review of an art exhibit, by a 畫家 using traditional Chinese landscape styles to paint the grandiose landscapes of the western U.S.

Reading for Next Week:

We will also have presentations by Meg/Joy and Sydney/Ting.

Momaday (2702-11 -> biography & excerpt from The Way to Rainy Mountain... you can stop after the first two paragraphs of the epigraph on 2711).
Silko (2784-91 -> biography & "Lullaby")
Harjo (2805-08 -> biography & "Call It Fear")
Erdrich (2828-30 -> biography & "Dear John Wayne")
Alexie (2851-52, 2854-57 -> biography & "Do Not Go Gentle")

172 (Peggy). Analyze the shift in narrative tone/technique between Momaday's Introduction to The Way to Rainy Mountain, and the further excerpts you're given. How might this difference indicate his own multiple or complicated relationship to the Kiowa culture? (Pay special attention to shifts in pronoun reference and verb tense.)
173 (Rea). Do you feel there is a contradiction between Momaday's sense of a timeless ethnic/geographic/cultural heritage ("in [my] blood there is something inestimably old and undying" on 2704, "there, of all places, was its small definition made whole and eternal" on 2708, etc.) and his definition elsewhere of Kiowa plains culture as historically contingent ("short-lived... from about 1740... until about 1875"). In other words, how could something be both eternal/continuous/unchanging and historical/contingent/evolving? And do you think Momaday perceives this to be a contradiction?
174 (Ken). Silko's famous novel Ceremony is similar to Momaday's Rainy Mountain, in that it focuses on a young protagonist who tries to reconnect to his aboriginal heritage (and more or less succeeds). "Lullaby" is quite different because it is framed from the perspective of the older generation. Are the metaphors of the blanket and the woman who becomes mother to her husband just purely bleak/tragic (maybe similar to Zitkala Sa), or is there some element of possible redemption here, as in Rainy Mountain and Ceremony?
175 (Sharon). Analyze the manipulation of pacing/timing in "Call it Fear." What words receive stronger emphasis, and how does Harjo do it? What different meanings could "backwards" have?
176 (Letitia). Explain how "Dear John Wayne" uses metaphors that point in several directions at once (e.g. "horde," "cloud," "film," cancerous division) to define the 'Cowboys vs. Indians' movie myth as a general tendency of American civilization. Compare Erdrich to Baraka, Cisneros, or another author we've read who finds U.S. mass-media popular culture to be a sort of ideological trap.
177 (Emma). Alexie's writing strongly differs from that of the so-called 'Native American Renaissance' that began with Momaday and Silko. Use "Do Not Go Gentle" to sketch some of these points of contrast. And what do you think Baldwin would say about Alexie's metaphor of the "Chocolate Thunder" 按摩棒?

Homework for Class #24 (Tuesday, 5月4日）

2010-04-27T01:08:00.004+08:00

Read: Brooks (biography & "kitchenette building," "we real cool," "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till"), Baldwin (biography & "Going to Meet the Man"), Baraka (biography & "A Poem for Willie Best")

Homework: The following students should post a question about the text(s) by the indicated author... Ting (Brooks), Tracy (Brooks), Teresa (Baldwin), Esther (Baldwin), Joy (Baraka), Sherry (Baraka)

Homework for Class #23 (Tuesday, 4月27日）

2010-04-20T22:09:00.007+08:00

First thing... you are all assigned to create a "wrestling entertainment" character and costume for next week.

OK, just kidding about that one.

So recall that your assignment is to work with your partner(s) to produce an "extension" to one of today's homework questions (162-171). This means either: elaboration, additional evidence, new idea about the topic, comparison/application to some other text or idea, new question about the topic, disagreement/debate or alternate answer, or answer to one of my follow-up questions. Or... something! Please comment to the previous post, since this is where the original questions/answers are.

And of course... the following students have a complete first draft essay due on 4月25日: Teresa, Esther, Jane, Ted, Rea, Emma, Jenny, Joy, Meg, Peggy, Sherry, Sydney, Ting, Tracy. Carol is 4月22日, and I believe a couple of you were trying to arrange an alternate time? (Please e-mail.) I prefer that you share the essay to me on Google Docs, but .doc, .rtf, or .pdf e-mail attachment is OK too. Thanks.

Next week's texts: This is an easier week than usual, I promise... Hurston (biography & "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"), Cullen ("biography, "Incident," & "Heritage"), Wright (biography & "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"), Hughes (biography, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers, " "I Too," Song for a Dark Girl," "Note on Commercial Theatre," "Theme for English B")

Homework: The following students should post a question about the text(s) by the indicated author... Viola (Hurston), Tady (Hurston), Crystal (Cullen), Ken (Cullen), Natalie (Wright), Winnie (Wright), Qian (Hughes), Clara (Hughes)

Homework for Class #22 (Tuesday, 4月20日）

2010-04-13T13:47:00.014+08:00

Woman Warrior Greatest Hits Channel: Here is the video about Boudicca, the British warrior queen
Bonus: Jane sent this link and this one, about a dance company in Taiwan that is creating its own interpretations of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Essay Option "Launch" #1: First Draft 4月25日 (星期天) ---> Conference 4月29日 (星期四) ---> Final Draft 5月7日 (星期五)
Essay Option "Launch" #2: First Draft 5月2日 (星期天) ---> Conference 5月7日 (星期五) ---> Final Draft 5月10日 (星期一)
Other Possibilities Negotiable!

Read: 2762-71頁 (Anzaldua bio. & excerpt from "How to Tame a Wild Tongue")... Spanish translations now posted... see comments below!
Read: 2819-27頁 (Cisneros bio. & "Woman Hollering Creek")
Read: 2791-2800頁 (Alvarez bio. & excerpt from Yo!)

162 (Zoe). I need a brief summary of the politics of language usage in Taiwan, specifically as it pertains to education. Any comparison to Anzaldua, Cisneros, and/or Alvarez would be helpful.
163 (Lucille). Why do you suppose the Norton editors do not give translation footnotes when Anzaldua uses Spanish or related languages/dialects? You may notice, for instance, that all of the Spanish in the Cisneros story is footnoted.
164 (Teresa). I will make your task even more complicated; now I want you to compare the use of allusion (another term is "intertextuality") in Fuller vs. Rich vs. Anzaldua! The question is, what function(s) do the allusions achieve or perform? What are their criteria for which allusions they choose?
165 (Ting). The concept of mexicano or raza that Anzaldua discusses on 2770頁 is a tricky one. On the one hand, she is clear that this identity is not strictly cultural... for instance she says that one can be Mexican race even if one is born in the United States and speaks only English. On the other hand, to make the identity strictly biological would seem to contradict her tendency to critique standard narratives of 'pure' origin (e.g. she questions 'pure' biological gender roles & questions the false starting points and ending points of 'pure' national/imperial histories, and she emphasizes the positive value of hybridity/diversity by celebrating her Indian and black heritage). So this is a culture, but it isn't cultural (in the sense of being arbitrary and transparently legible - "I see you"), and this is a race, but it isn't racial. So... what is it? In other words, what does she mean when she says "being Mexican is a state of the soul?" (You may find her dilemma somewhat similar to that of Kingston.)
166 (Emma). What themes do the television soap operas in "Woman Hollering Creek" present, and what function do they perform in the lives of the story's women? (I think Norton's view is somewhat oversimplified.) Compare Taiwanese soap operas (foreign or imported), in both typical theme and cultural function.
167 (Tracy). Explain the narrative technique of "Woman Hollering Creek"; actually it would be quite helpful to have a chart of the various narrators. There seems to be a third-person narrator (roughly Cisneros) and a first-person narrator (Cleofilas... I suppose we may also call this the Cisneros-narrator-using-a-free-indirect-discourse as in Austen, Joyce, Woolf?) But there seem to be other narrators as well, particularly on 2821 and 2826. And what is the function or purpose of presenting the narrative in this way?
168 (Letitia). Compare the presentation of work and working class experience that Cisneros gives to the presentation given by some other author(s) we've read (e.g. Equiano, Douglass, Dunbar, Kingston, Crane). Would this class barrier preclude intellectual or political affiliations between Cisneros and thoroughly middle class authors like Bishop, Rich, Plath, Alvarez? (Or Adams, Fuller, Stowe, Fern, Dickinson, Gilman... if we are being imagine them to be still alive).
169 (Winnie). Some questions about empire... what evidence do you see in "Yo!" of a racial caste system on the Dominican island? What evidence do you see of U.S. American power extending into the Dominican Republic? What evidence of U.S. American power in the D.R. does Alvarez de-emphasize? (Hint: consult "Rise to Power" and "Foreign Policy" in this short biography of the dictator Trujillo.)
170 (Viola). How and why does Alvarez incorporate Spanish and 'Spanglish' into her story? Compare to Anzaldua and Cisneros.
171 (Sydney). Compare the relationship between Alvarez's narrator & Yo(landa) to the relationship between Kingston's mother & Kingston's narrator/alter-ego. What does "Yo" mean in Spanish, and why might this be important? And how is the "bear" is like the "sitting ghost"?

Homework for Class #21 (Tuesday, 4月13日）

2010-04-06T21:39:00.006+08:00

Kingston Alert!!! Is it true, as I have just read in the New York Times, that it is illegal to produce a film with a "ghost" theme in the P.R.C. unless the ghost is given a specific scientific rationale for existence? This confirms the meaning of the ghost as a repressed element returning from historical memory... though here the repression is double, ironically.

Reminder: Post your Dickinson-style poems here...

Read: 1939-51頁 (Stein bio. & excerpt from Tender Buttons)... leftover from last week
Read: 2236-39頁 (Crane bio. & "Chaplinesque," "At Melville's Tomb")... leftover from last week
Read: 頁2305-19 (Norton headnotes & timeline for Contemporary era)
Read: 2398-2401頁, 2407頁 (Bishop bio. & "The Fish,” ”One Art”)
Read: 2619-25頁 (Rich bio. & “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”)
Read: 2651-58頁 (Plath bio. & “Lady Lazarus,” “Daddy”)

[We are deleting Aimee Bender and moving Flannery O'Connor to 5月18日.]

Crystal & Viola will give a presentation on Bishop, so I will confine my questions to Rich and Plath! We will also have a presentation from Alyssa & Tracy about the representation of gender roles in the movie "Benjamin Button."

158 (Teresa). Compare Rich's allusions (to other literary authors/characters/quotations) to Fuller's allusions (to other literary authors/characters/quotations). Is their function different, or similar?

159 (Vincent). In Rich's poem, we first seem to be dealing with a domestic relationship between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, one that may remind us something of Kingston's relationship with her mother. But then the term "daughter-in-law" begins to take a broader meaning, one that may somehow be representative of the historical condition of women. How do you interpret what "daughter-in-law" means in this poem?

160 (Natalie). Compare Dickinson's figurations of male authority ("Poet," "Majority, "One," "Owner," "Master," "He," "Man," etc.) to Plath's ("Nazi," "Them," "Herr Doktor," "Herry Enemy," "Herr God," "Herr Lucifer," "Daddy," "Fascist," etc.). Do you feel they are similar? Different? To what extent do the two poets intend personal reference vs. general reference? To what extent do the poets see their poetry as challenging or reversing these structures of authority?

161 (Carol). Read this article about the "Sylvia Plath Effect," and summarize some of the debates it has created in the psychological profession. Do you feel like there is some penetration by ideology and gender expectations here (as in the 1890s diagnosis of the 'neurotic' condition), or do you think psychology is more advanced as a science now? What do you think Sylvia herself might say about this? (You can make her words, or choose her words from one of her poems.)

Homework for Class #20 (Tuesday, 4月6日）

2010-03-30T22:53:00.011+08:00

First and most importantly, here is the remainder of Peggy's video.

I also want to wish you many happy holidays... Spring break holiday, 清明節, Christian Easter holiday,
פסח (Jewish Passover holiday), and of course "April Fool's Day"!

We will begin with the Emily Dickinson poems next week and make some comparison to the more modern writers. We will also have a presentation about Dickinson by Winnie & Carol.

Read: 1682-95頁 (Gilman bio. & "Yellow Wallpaper")... I think you will really like this
Read: 1939-51頁 (Stein bio. & excerpt from Tender Buttons)... I hesitate to use the word "read" for this book... you should certainly pass your eyes over the words or better yet sound them out loud. Pick a couple of the little sections and read with closer attention. But don't expect to "understand" what you read in the conventional way.
Read: 1990-93頁, 1997-99頁 (Stevens bio. & "The Snow Man," "A High-Toned Christian Woman," "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird")
Read: 2236-39頁 (Crane bio. & "Chaplinesque," "At Melville's Tomb")

150 (Clara). The 'thesis' of "The Yellow Wallpaper," and its refutation of the medical and ideological assumptions of the so-called 'rest cure' treatment, is not well hidden (see 1684頁: "I believe that congenial work with excitement and change, would do me good"). Maybe that's why this story is commonly assigned to high school students in the U.S. Nor is Gilman particularly subtle about describing her inventive writing as an alternate form of 'work' that creates 'excitement and change' in her life and gives her a sense of autonomy (see 1694頁: "No person touches this paper but me"). That said, I think this story is quite remarkable in its technical accomplishment. So instead of explaining that the wallpaper is equivalent to writing paper, and serves as a projecting screen for the narrator's psyche, and so forth, point our attention to a few technical details that show how Gilman unfolds the narrator's psychological development. On 1688頁, Gilman writes: "I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws... that I ever heard of." So what I am saying is, explain some of the laws of design that arrange "The Yellow Wallpaper."
151 (Crystal). Read Norton's excerpt from Roosevelt's book The Strenuous Life ( 1860-63頁) and give us a brief summary. You might also remind us about the related ideas we read last semester in Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier" (1652-57頁). Finally, relate the fears of Turner and Roosevelt that American men might develop 'nervous disorders' in modern city life to the gender-based diagnosis and treatment of 'nervous disorders' depicted in Gilman's story.
152 (Emma). Describe your experience of reading Tender Buttons. Compare it to some other odd experience (related to literature/art or otherwise... just don't compare it to your experience of viewing cubist paintings, ha ha.)
153 (Caleigh). The literary experiments in Tender Buttons have many purposes and outcomes; clearly it is not 'only' a feminist project. However given that this has been our recent subject, explain how Tender Buttons could yield a feminist message. Or point to a few sentences/sections in particular that seem to do so.
154 (Sharon). Since you did this so well with Lee, make some observations about Stevens' poetic technique. How is it similar or different to other poems we've read in this class, or that you've read elsewhere?
155 (Lucille). During the 1800s, poetry became an increasingly 'feminized' activity, so far as the broader U.S. culture was concerned. How might the writing style of Stevens' poetry be an attempt to unfeminize it? (You might also answer the same question for Ezra Pound). And give us an analysis of the way male and female roles are represented in "Christian Woman," "Ice Cream," and "Blackbird."
156 (Iris). Based on your viewing of Modern Times, do you think "Chaplinesque" is a good poetic translation of Chaplin's style of acting? Why or why not? As for Crane, what qualities of Chaplin does he find compelling or identifiable?
157 (Jenny). Read the Norton biography of Herman Melville (1089-92頁) and explain why Crane would HM's his name in a poem about shipwrecks, embassies, undelivered messages, and heterodox views of religion. Furthermore, why would Crane, whose homosexuality was something of a controversy, affiliate himself with Melville? (A more obvious affiliation with the homosexual poet Walt Whitman occurs elsewhere in Crane's poetry.)

Homework for Class #19 (Tuesday 3/30)

2010-03-23T18:58:00.015+08:00

I enjoyed our discussion of Woman Warrior today. I'm happy that we opened many possible avenues for further analysis; as I said you can consider any of those questions as a potential essay topic.

Reminder: Please write your group posts from today's questions below.

Next Week's Presentations: Jane & Rea, Peggy

Next Week's Reading:
- Adams, “Remember the Ladies” letter + Norton biography on 頁300-01
- Fern, “Male Criticism” + Fresh Leaves Review + biography (頁799-803)
- Fuller, “The Great Lawsuit” + biography (頁736-47, but skip the long paragraph about Zinzendorf at the bottom of 頁743 and the section on Goethe that runs from the middle of 頁746 to the top of 頁747)
- Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (章26: “Death”) + Norton biography (頁764-67)
- Dickinson #207, #260, #348, #620, #764, #788 + biography (starts on 頁1197)

The Adams reading is here (or here for view of the original manuscript) and the Stowe reading is here. But I asked the TA to make some photocopies of these, so they might be available by tomorrow.

Bonus: This article about a "mixed ethnicity" contestant on a Chinese TV singing competition is interesting in light of our discussions about identity in Woman Warrior.

146. (Joy) Should the unpublished personal letters of someone (e.g. Adams) who can't spell properly be considered "literature"? Why or why not? The other thing you should do is make a short outline of the letter to indicate the sequence of topics Adams discusses.
147. (Ken) Why does Fern focus both the "Male Criticism" essay and the false review of Fern Leaves on ad hominem attacks? (First on the New York Times reviewer, and then on herself.) Also, what do you suppose she means by a "woman's book" or "lady book," considering that she has also indicated that neither the subject matter of a book or even the name of the author are reliable indicators of gender?
148. (Lucille) Why does Fuller insist on sexual celibacy for the 'new woman'? How does she use Emersonian vocabulary to argue this point? How does she use 'cultural tourism'?
149. (Tady) Compare the feminine power of Stowe's Little Eva to the types of feminine power discussed in Fuller's "Radical Dualism."
Q. (Teresa) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #207, "I taste a liquor never brewed."
Q. (Tracy) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #260, "I'm nobody! Who are you?"
Q. (Vincent) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #348, "I would not paint - a picture."
Q. (Viola) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #620, "Much Madness is divinest Sense."
Q. (Winnie) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #764, "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun."
Q. (Zoe) Ask a question or make a comment about Dickinson poem #788, "Publication - is the auction."

Homework for Class #18 (Tuesday 3/23)

2010-03-16T15:52:00.012+08:00

Reminder: Post answers to group questions here (by Friday)
Reminder: Finish Woman Warrior
Reminder: The following students need to post new questions to the blog (by Monday night): Alyssa, Emma, Esther, Iris, Jane, Jenny, Ken, Letitia, Lucille, Meg, Natalie, Peggy, Qian-Yu, Rea, Sherry

Presentation: Sharon (Lee's "Persimmons" and brief analysis)

As for my homework, I was finally able to offer some additional replies of my own to the Chaplin/Jolson thread and the Harte/Pound/Far/Song/Lee thread. I apologize for the delay... you should read them when you get a chance. I was inspired by some of your ideas in class discussion today; I am surprised how much the thematic material of the past few weeks has begun to cohere together. Your essays may be difficult to write, and your presentations may require warrior courage, but you definitely must admit that there are already many suitable topics floating around!

Bonus: A useful timeline of Chinese-American history.
Bonus: One of you pointed me to this musical theater production about the early Chinese-American immigrant experience. I can't remember who... I'm sorry... please claim credit so we know who to thank!
Bonus: Ken sent this great video urging Taiwanese-Americans to participate in the 2010 U.S. Census. Three thoughts. First, this is very relevant to the discussion we've been having in class about the complex ways in which social identities are generated. Second, I actually worked for the U.S. Census Bureau the last time, in 2000... I have some funny stories, but not quite this funny. Third, wow, that video reminded me of some things I love about the U.S.A. As much as I talk about racism past and present, on a relative basis there is no country more heterogeneous and very few that are so open and accepting.
Bonus: Here and here are the two most famous American movies about "ghosts." I also found the comparisons in this Wikipedia article quite helpful. Perhaps we can use Freud's theory as a general rule: a ghost is something "repressed" (psychologically, ideologically, etc.) from our ordinary experience that "returns" as a kind of obsession. Or maybe this doesn't properly describe 鬼 ?
Bonus: Some further analysis of the Texas schoolbook revisions.

Homework for Class #17 (Tuesday 3/16)

2010-03-09T21:31:00.010+08:00

Thanks for a good class today. I think we spent most of our time laughing, but what's better than that?

I will make some further responses to your blog posts about the movies and today's readings.

There will be no "老師" homework questions for Woman Warrior. Half of you will write "學生" questions for Tuesday's class on pages 1-108, and the other half will write questions for the 3/23 class on the remaining pages. (See today's e-mail.) We will then divide into groups and answer the best questions in class.

One further note... Sharon approached me after class with some additional thoughts about "Persimmons" and I told her she should make this the basis of her presentation (she will present on 3/23). So this shows you that your presentation can be about a new reading assignment, but also it could be a "return" to a recent assignment that you had something further to say about. The possibilities are pretty open, so let me know early if you have any ideas you want to explore.

Homework for Class #16 (Tuesday 3/9)

2010-03-04T06:04:00.005+08:00

The long reach of empire allows me to continue assigning homework from another continent!

- Harte, “Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee)” (read here) + Norton 頁1475-76
- Pound, “The River Merchant’s Wife” (頁2018-19, 2022)
- Far, “In the Land of the Free (頁1720-27)
- Song, “Lost Sister,” “Heaven” (頁2840-45)
- Lee, “Persimmons” (頁2846-47)

136 (Ken). According to the Norton editor, Harte's writing "sentimentalize[s] and stereotype[s] both settings and characters." Do you think this is true for "Plain Language from Truthful James"? If so, who or what is being sentimentalized or stereotyped?
137 (Letitia). Compare the view of Chinese-Americans in Harte's poem to the view of this minority in the illustrations that were published with the poem (view on the same website).
138(Lucille). Compare Pound's translation of "The River Merchant's Wife" to the original by 李白. You can compare them here. You don't have to compare each line/verse, but choose a few in particular and note the differences between the translation and the original, and why you think they occur.
139(Meg). Given what you know about Pound's ambitions as a poet at the start of the 20th century, why do you suppose that he wanted to translate Chinese poetry?
140(Natalie). The other Sui Sin Far story I read, when I got the wrong edition of the Norton last week, had an interesting symbolism in the choice of names. Analyze Lae Choo, Hom Hing, and the other names in "In the Land of the Free," including "Sui Sin Far." Do they have any significance?
141(Peggy). Read the Wikipedia entries for "Chinese Exclusion Act" and "United States vs. Wong Kim Ark." Use them to give a brief summary of the political/legal context of "In the Land of the Free," and give examples from the story that show Far's consideration of this context.
142(Qian Yu). Analyze the symbolism of 玉 in "Lost Sister." If indeed you read the "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" story, compare the 玉 in that story. If not, please ignore.
143(Rea). According to Norton, Song's poems show "a privacy that the poet discloses but cannot fully enter." Explain what this means and give an example. Norton also says that her poems are "too composed, too removed from the sharp impact of experience." Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
144(Sharon). We'll be analyzing Whitman and some of the older poets who helped develop the following technique, but for now... notice the arrangement of the lines/verses in "Persimmons." The lines do not stop on complete thoughts, and there is often no punctuation. And they are different lengths. The sentences often spill over onto the next line, which is called an enjambment. What kind of effect does this poetic arrangement/punctuation give? Choose a couple of particular examples in the poem and discuss them.
145 (Sherry). Do you think that Asian-American poets all feel a particular responsibility to reconcile their modern lives in the U.S. to their family history in Asia? (Like Far, Song, and Lee.) Or do you think that there is a selection bias, insofar as publishers like Norton tend to choose these authors to publish rather than other Asian-American authors who might write about exclusively modern themes. Are Asian-American writers "typecast" in other words? Or am I too cynical?

Sydney (post a question about Bierce), Tady (post a question about Pound), Ted (post a question about Far), Teresa (post a question about Song), Ting-Ju (post a question about Lee)

See you soon!

Spring has sprung

2010-02-22T02:12:00.022+08:00

Announcement: Please go to the bookstore and purchase Maxine Hong Kingston's novel Woman Warrior if it's available. I'm told that it was sold out, but perhaps they ordered more? (I have contacted the book dealer to inquire.)

Announcement: The TA (Ms. Chen) will supervise the class on Tuesday 3/2. You will watch the two movies posted below and answer the questions below for homework by posting replies to this blog entry. (Post by Friday 3/5.)

Announcement: Aaron will return to teach the class on Tuesday 3/9. The reading assignment to prepare for that session is specified here in the syllabus (Bierce/Pound/Far/Song/Lee); I will post the homework questions on Friday 3/5. If you have any complaints/suggestions about the syllabus, please post them by Monday 3/8. (I am aware of the scheduling conflict with the graduation ceremony, and am considering alterations.)

I look forward to seeing you soon!

Note: The Jazz Singer was released in 1927. It was the first full-length "talkie," or movie with synchronized sound.
Note: "Cantor" is a Jewish holy singer
Note: "Shiksa" means a non-Jewish woman
Note: "Kibbitzer" means gossiper
Note: The Bronx is the area of New York city just north of Manhattan island... it was a bit more rural at this time (especially even further to the north)... you can imagine the setting of the Jewish neighborhood in the movie being downtown Manhattan. My Jewish relatives actually moved to the south Bronx around this same time. Today the Bronx is a working class area, and downtown Manhattan is incredibly expensive. American cities tend to follow two patterns: one is a "white flight" pattern in which wealthy residents abandon the central city and commute to their professional jobs from the suburbs, the other is a "gentrification" pattern in which the central city areas become more expensive and lower-wage workers must leave them because the rent is too high. I would be interested to know which pattern prevails more in Taipei.

126 (Alyssa). Can a movie be considered a work of "American Literature"? Give arguments for both yes and no.
127 (Caleigh). I find the story of Jakie Rabinowitz / Jack Robin personally relevant because it makes me think of my grandparents' generation of Jews in New York City. Many of my students in California find it relevant because they or their parents have immigrated to the U.S. and faced the dilemmas of Americanization. What I wonder is if you find this movie identifiable or relevant? Why or why not?
128 (Carol). The Jazz Singer belongs to a category of technically innovative American movies that includes Avatar and Song of the South (remember that one? with the singing slaves and the cartoon rabbit?). Can you think of any reason why these technical innovations are accompanied in each case by an attempt to somehow consume the experience of a racial minority?
129 (Clara). It is clear what Jack's father represents (religious law, tradition). But I find his relationship to his mother quite interesting. What does it mean? How can we analyze her character?
130 (Crystal). Does the narrative of the Jazz Singer suit Roosevelt's rules for 'Americanization,' or not? Explain.

Note: Modern Times was released in 1936; it is considered the last great silent movie, although it does have some synchronized sound.
Note: "Gamin" means a street urchin, a boy. I think it should be "Gamine," which would be female. Also, I'm going to take a wild guess that most waterfront urchin girls are not strikingly beautiful.

131 (Emma). Analyze the choice of words on the title screen: "A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness."
132 (Esther). What kinds of things does Charlie Chaplin do, as an actor and as a director, to make the "Little Tramp" character so identifiable or sympathetic to his audience? Compare the Tramp to a 20th/21st century Taiwanese character who has a similar level of identifiability, or similar characteristics.
133 (Iris). Why do you think the German Nazis were convinced that the Little Tramp was Jewish? How is ethnicity/race addressed in Modern Times?
134 (Jane). Explain Chaplin's use of sound and/or silence to convey meaning. (Exclude the musical score.) Why do you think he didn't like "talkies"?
135 (Jenny). Which of our authors from last semester would like Modern Times the most? Which would like it the least? Explain.

More Avatar

2010-02-09T10:57:00.004+08:00

This review might be a nice way to practice your colloquial English over the vacation. It's kind of like a crasser version of my analysis of the movie. But pretty much equivalent.

This might also be a good summary of the movie's simplistic message of "cultural tourism."

For your amusement...

2010-01-23T14:45:00.007+08:00

This is what happens when you miss the last two weeks of Mandarin class to go home to the U.S. And also forget some things you learned previously. Be happy your final exam for American Literature didn't look like this!

But I can also say that I finally figured out how to access your student information on the NTHU online course management system... and that means I can view the identification photos they took of you when you entered four years ago. So I'm not the only one who "looks a little bit silly." Ha ha.

Mission Accomplished

2010-01-21T12:02:00.005+08:00

I have now reviewed all of the test answers. As predicted, the scores were considerably higher than the midterm (85.77 mean vs. 77.9 mean).

I will email you personalized comments for question #1 and #2, since everyone chose quite differently. For question #3, I will copy some of the major points below because you might find it interesting to see what your classmates wrote.

I will also post some sample high-scoring answers in the comment reply. The scale was the same: 30 possible points for each question and then 10 added to the total to equal 100%.

Oh, and the winner of the Avatar contest (for highest grade on the test) is Rea. You are now the proud owner of a toy from Burger King fast food restaurant.

Question #1 (28 x 25.07)
---------------------------------
Fiction (10 x 26.30)
Rhetoric/Speech/Essay/Jeremiad (8 x 23.38)
Satire (4 x 27.25)
Lyric (3 x 26.00)
Autobiography (3 x 22.67)

Twain (10), Irving (8), Chesnutt (7), Jacobs (7), Lincoln (5), Thorpe (5), Franklin (4), Marti (4), Tecumseh (4), Zitkala Sa (4), Bradstreet (3), Dunbar (3), Red Jacket (3), Cooke (2), Equiano (2), Wheatley (2), Douglass, Dubois, Edwards, Emerson, Freneau, Hawthorne, Pima, Pontiac, Roosevelt, Winnemucca

Aaron's note: It seems that the "nonfiction" genres presented more difficulty. Although they were a major focus of the class week after week, it is possible that y'all still have less practice and confidence analyzing them. Remember, even an autobiography or an essay is a piece of literature that has consciously constructed (and unconsciously constructed) features.

Question #2 (27 x 25.41)
---------------------------------
Twain C (7), Twain A (2), Twain B (1), Other Twain (3), Equiano (4), Dunbar (2), Lincoln (2), Douglass, Dubois, Jacobs, Roosevelt, Wheatley

Aaron's note: I was happy to see such a wide variety of choices. I hope to do more "microscopic" analysis next semester; we will be reading more poetry, and I also think you have a better idea of 20th century U.S. history, not to mention you now have a better grasp of the major ideological concepts.

Question #3 (28 x 25.61)
---------------------------------
Aaron's note: These answers were quite good, especially in analyzing the value of literature in general and American Literature in particular. Some even contested or reframed my use of the word "value." My one disappointment was that very few made a specific argument about Early American Literature, which in theory was part of the question.

Why literature, or why not?
+Another perspective on history, philosophy, or other fields of knowledge
+Creates a sense of shared experience
+Can give a sense of national identity (or distortions thereof)
+methods of interpretation/analysis can be applied to other ends
+certain themes/patterns repeat across nations and periods
+reduces boredom
+literary study can lead us to rethink our notion of "value"... even Aaron's question could be deemed somewhat limiting and dull
+literature is not only a reflection of society but also a force of influence
+graduate school admissions (seems like a bit of a circular argument if you ask me)
+critical thinking skills can be developed in a more enjoyable process
+to learn how to formulate and defend theories/interpretations
+can be an alternative or antidote to the shallower frame of contemporary political rhetoric
-Experience can be alienating or disconnected from experience
-Requires open thinking that some don't have the energy/capacity for
-Does not confer fiscal/vocational benefit

Why American Literature, or why not?
+Similarity to Taiwan, e.g. immigrant/creole nation
+Similarity to Taiwan, e.g. slavery ~ occupation
+similarity to Taiwan, e.g. relations/conflict between creoles and aboriginals
+can help us understand modern American media (e.g. Avatar)
+can help us interrogate stereotypes presented in modern American media
+To understand Taiwan through contrasts/differences
+its educational themes, particularly the debates about "training" can be instructive for analyzing Taiwan
+Taiwanese typically analyze U.S. economy or technology but may not analyze culture even if they consume it
+to allow an informed critique of American international policy
+to allow an informed critique of "American dream" and its influence on Taiwan
+helps us recognize that "American" is a contested concept
+may improve English (or "Amerish")
+to allow an informed critique of "city on a hill" or American perfection
+helps us understand a hybridized, multicultural, colonized/postcolonized world
+helps us understand racial/ethnic conflict in other places
+for someone who wants to study literature, may as well get the benefit of foreign language practice, and NTHU foreign language department just happens to be English-dominant
+diversity of genres and perspectives in this particular national literature
+allows you to imagine yourself in the position of various different people/situations
+because Taiwan is culturally colonized by U.S.
+helps us test whether liberal/enlightenment/"human rights" rhetoric has or has not advanced from colonial relationship
+immigration and management of natural resources are also important political issues in modern Taiwan
+because Taiwanese political system is adapted from the American one, it helps to understand its origin and the challenges it has faced within the U.S.
+this particular literature seems to remove the illusion that we can study literary forms without studying historical development (as might be possible in the study of British literature)
+suggests a reform of Taiwanese/Chinese literature curriculum, to include more periods, texts, dialects
+it might actually be easier than reading classical Chinese, and it may impart some of the same historical lessons
-does not improve English
-does not necessarily help us understand actual American people
-we do not read American literature so much as a certain version of American literature decided by a teacher and publisher

Why Early American Literature, or why not?
+narratives of colonization, empire, cultural contact
-being modern people, the further we go back in history the harder it is to relate
-some of the most valuable parts are in dialect, which is even harder to read

Exam commenting/grading is underway.

2010-01-19T14:12:00.006+08:00

The project will take several days to complete, though I've already read two of the three essay questions.

This is the best line of prose I've read so far (by Vincent): "I don’t think there will be many of us still backpacking the Norton with a magnifier in order to see each word clearly ten years after graduation."

In the meantime, hopefully you're having a wonderful vacation!

Suggestions for Exam Question #2

2010-01-03T22:46:00.017+08:00

As I said in my last email, please feel free to choose your own short passage for this question, using the texts we read after the midterm. But you can also use one of the following selections if you like. I am still having problems accessing the Norton Anthology and the Signet edition of Connecticut Yankee, so perhaps you can confirm the page numbers by using the reply feature.

The formatting of the text is a bit strange below; I'm having some trouble with the .html editing on Blogger today.

Twain A ( middle of Chapter XXVI )

Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it... Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them; but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne—the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign—has passed away. In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.

Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on the sick"—when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano!—latest irruption—only two cents—all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greater than kings had arrived—the newsboy. But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.

Twain B ( beginning of Chapter XXXI )

I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom: the behavior—born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste—of chance passers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air—he couldn't even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for.

Twain C ( end of Chapter XXXIX )

"I name none, I challenge all! Here I stand, and dare the chivalry of England to come against me—not by individuals, but in mass!"

"What!" shouted a score of knights.

"You have heard the challenge. Take it, or I proclaim you recreant knights and vanquished, every one!"

It was a "bluff" you know. At such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call," and you rake in the chips. But just this once—well, things looked squally! In just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatched both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances and calculate chances.

Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang—bang, and I bagged two. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it. If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instant lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it. I raised both revolvers and pointed them—the halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled.

The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed institution. The march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ah, you never could imagine it.

And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left.

Equiano (from Chapter III of his autobiography, a part we probably didn't read):

While I was in this plantation the gentleman, to whom I suppose the estate belonged, being unwell, I was one day sent for to his dwelling house to fan him; when I came into the room where he was I was very much affrighted at some things I saw, and the more so as I had seen a black woman slave as I came through the house, who was cooking the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterward learned was called the iron muzzle. Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared very fine and curious. The first object that engaged my attention was a watch which hung on the chimney, and was going. I was quite surprised at the noise it made and was afraid it would tell the gentleman anything I might do amiss: and when I immediately after observed a picture hanging in the room, which appeared constantly to look at me, I was still more affrighted, having never seen such things as these before. At one time I thought it was something relative to magic; and not seeing it move I thought it might be some way the whites had to keep their great men when they died, and offer them libation as we used to do to our friendly spirits. In this state of anxiety I remained till my master awoke, when I was dismissed out of the room, to my no small satisfaction and relief; for I thought that these people were all made up of wonders...

I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent.

Wheatley: Pick a few stanzas of the "Young African Painter" poem that you find interesting.

Walker (this is from "Appeal in Four Articles," but possibly not the part we read):

But to prove farther that the condition of the Israelites was better under the Egyptians than ours is under the whites. I call upon the professing Christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the Egyptians heaped the insupportable insult upon the children of Israel, by telling them that they were not of the human family. Can the whites deny this charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of slaves under their feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of Monkeys or Orang- Outangs? O! my God! I appeal to every man of feeling--is not this insupportable? Is it not heaping the most gross insult upon our miseries, because they have got us under their feet and we cannot help ourselves? Oh! pity us we pray thee, Lord Jesus, Master.--Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to the whites, both in the endowments of our bodies and of minds? It is indeed surprising, that a man of such great learning, combined with such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains. I do not know what to compare it to, unless, like putting one wild deer in an iron cage, where it will be secured, and hold another by the side of the same, then let it go, and expect the one in the cage to run as fast as the one at liberty. So far, my brethren, were the Egyptians from heaping these insults upon their slaves, that Pharoah's daughter took Moses, a son of Israel for her own...

... In all probability, Moses would have become Prince Regent to the throne, and no doubt, in process of time but he would have been seated on the throne of Egypt. But he had rather suffer shame, with the people of God, than to enjoy pleasures with that wicked people for a season. O! that the coloured people were long since of Moses' excellent disposition, instead of courting favour with, and telling news and lies to our natural enemies, against each other--aiding them to keep their hellish chains of slavery upon us. Would we not long before this time, have been respectable men, instead of such wretched victims of oppression as we are? Would they be able to drag our mothers, our fathers, our wives, our children and ourselves, around the world in chains and hand-cuffs as they do, to dig up gold and silver for them and theirs? This question, my brethren, I leave for you to digest; and may God Almighty force it home to your hearts. Remember that unless you are united, keeping your tongues within your teeth, you will be afraid to trust your secrets to each other, and thus perpetuate our miseries under the Christians !

Jacobs (a couple of paragraphs from Chapter X... I feel like I've been punched in the stomach when I read the second one):

And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I know what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.

But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also, could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws; and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate; but all my prospects had been blighted by slavery. I wanted to keep myself pure; and, under the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and the monster proved too strong for me. I felt as if I was forsaken by God and man; as if all my efforts must be frustrated; and I became reckless in my despair.

... I went to my grandmother. My lips moved to make confession, but the words stuck in my throat. I sat down in the shade of a tree at her door and began to sew. I think she saw something unusual was the matter with me. The mother of slaves is very watchful. She knows there is no security for her children. After they have entered their teens she lives in daily expectation of trouble. This leads to many questions. If the girl is of a sensitive nature, timidity keeps her from answering truthfully, and this well-meant course has a tendency to drive her from maternal counsels. Presently, in came my mistress, like a mad woman, and accused me concerning her husband. My grandmother, whose suspicions had been previously awakened, believed what she said. She exclaimed, "O Linda! has it come to this? I had rather see you dead than to see you as you now are. You are a disgrace to your dead mother." She tore from my fingers my mother's wedding ring and her silver thimble. "Go away!" she exclaimed, "and never come to my house, again." Her reproaches fell so hot and heavy, that they left me no chance to answer. Bitter tears, such as the eyes never shed but once, were my only answer. I rose from my seat, but fell back again, sobbing. She did not speak to me; but the tears were running down her furrowed cheeks, and they scorched me like fire. She had always been so kind to me! So kind! How I longed to throw myself at her feet, and tell her all the truth! But she had ordered me to go, and never to come there again. After a few minutes, I mustered strength, and started to obey her. With what feelings did I now close that little gate, which I used to open with such an eager hand in my childhood! It closed upon me with a sound I never heard before.

Douglass (from the ending of "Heroic Slave"):

The name of this man, strange to say, (ominous of greatness,) was MADISON WASHINGTON. In the short time he had been on board, he had secured the confidence of every officer. The negroes fairly worshipped him. His manner and bearing were such, that no one could suspect him of a murderous purpose. The only feeling with which we regarded him was, that he was a powerful, good-disposed negro. He seldom spake to anyone, and when he did speak, it was with the utmost propriety. His words were well chosen, and his pronunciation equal to that of any schoolmaster...

"The attack began just about twilight in the evening... turning suddenly around, the very deck seemed covered with fiends from the pit... When I came to myself... there was not a white man on deck. The sailors were all aloft in the rigging, and dared not come down. Captain Clarke and Mr. Jameson lay stretched on the quarter-deck,--both dying,--while Madison himself stood at the helm unhurt.

"I was completely weakened by the loss of blood, and had not recovered from the stunning blow which felled me to the deck; but it was a little too much for me, even in my prostrate condition, to see our good brig commanded by a black murderer. So I called out to the men to come down and take the ship, or die in the attempt. Suiting the action to the word, I started aft. 'You murderous villain,' said I, to the imp at the helm, and rushed upon him to deal him a blow, when he pushed me back with his strong, black arm, as though I had been a boy of twelve. I looked around for the men. They were still in the rigging. Not one had come down. I started towards Madison again. The rascal now told me to stand back. 'Sir,' said he, 'your life is in my hands. I could have killed you a dozen times over during this last half hour, and could kill you now. You call me a black murderer. I am not a murderer. God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is the motive for this night's work. I have done no more to those dead men yonder, than they would have done to me in like circumstances. We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man's heart be in you, you win honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so were they.'

"I felt little disposition to reply to this impudent speech. By heaven, it disarmed me. The fellow loomed up before me. I forgot his blackness in the dignity of his manner, and the eloquence of his speech. It seemed as if the souls of both the great dead (whose names he bore) had entered him. To the sailors in the rigging he said: 'Men! the battle is over,--your captain is dead. I have complete command of this vessel. All resistance to my authority will be in vain. My men have won their liberty, with no other weapons but their OWN BROKEN FETTERS. We are nineteen in number. We do not thirst for your blood, we demand only our rightful freedom. Do not flatter yourselves that I am ignorant of chart or compass. I know both. We are now only about sixty miles from Nassau. Come down, and do your duty. Land us in Nassau, and not a hair of your heads shall be hurt.'

Lincoln (from "Second Inaugural Address"):

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Chesnutt: Skip. As I've said, I find "Wife of His Youth" rather simplistic. We'll read something better by Chesnutt next semester!

Dunbar: Pick a few stanzas of the "Frederick Douglass" poem that you find interesting.

Dubois (I think maybe we didn't read this part of "Souls of Black Folk," but you can still analyze it):

This is certain, no secure civilization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat. Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world. By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you not rather transfer their leading from the hands of men taught to think to the hands of untrained demagogues? We ought not to forget that despite the pressure of poverty, and despite the active discouragement and even ridicule of friends, the demand for higher training steadily increases among Negro youth: there were, in the years from 1875 to 1880, 22 Negro graduates from Northern colleges; from 1885 to 1890 there were 43, and from 1895 to 1900, nearly 100 graduates. From Southern Negro colleges there were, in the same three periods, 143, 413, and over 500 graduates. Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this Talented Tenth the key to knowledge, can any sane man imagine that they will lightly lay aside their yearning and contentedly become hewers of wood and drawers of water?

No. The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot he spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortions; that color and race are not crimes, and yet it is they which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.

I will not say such arguments are wholly justified, -- I will not insist that there is no other side to the shield; but I do say that of the nine millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one out of the cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves in the guise of terrible truth.

Roosevelt (I'm pretty sure this is in the Norton selection of "American Ideals")

The immigrant of to-day can learn much from the experience of the immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. We were then already, what we are now, a people of mixed blood. Many of our most illustrious Revolutionary names were borne by men of Huguenot blood—Jay, Sevier, Marion, Laurens. But the Huguenots were, on the whole, the best immigrants we have ever received; sooner than any other, and more completely, they became American in speech, conviction, and thought. The Hollanders took longer than the Huguenots to become completely assimilated; nevertheless they in the end became so, immensely to their own advantage. One of the leading Revolutionary generals, Schuyler, and one of the Presidents of the United States, Van Buren, were of Dutch blood; but they rose to their positions, the highest in the land, because they had become Americans and had ceased being Hollanders. If they had remained members of an alien body, cut off by their speech and customs and belief from the rest of the American community, Schuyler would have lived his life as a boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren would have ended his days a small tavernkeeper. So it is with the Germans of Pennsylvania. Those of them who became Americanized have furnished to our history a multitude of honorable names from the days of the Muhlenbergs onward; but those who did not become Americanized form to the present day an unimportant body, of no significance in American existence. So it is with the Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such names as Carroll and Sullivan, and to the Civil War men like Sheridan—men who were Americans and nothing else: while the Irish who remain such, and busy themselves solely with alien politics, can have only an unhealthy influence upon American life, and can never rise as do their compatriots who become straightout Americans. Thus it has ever been with all people who have come hither, of whatever stock or blood. The same thing is true of the churches. A church which remains foreign, in language or spirit, is doomed.

Marti (sorry if this Spanish->English translation is a bit different... I'm also not sure if this selection from "Our America" is actually in the Norton!):

What a vision we were: the chest of an athlete, the hands of a dandy, and the forehead of a child. We were a whole fancy dress ball, in English trousers, a Parisian waistcoat, a North American overcoat, and a Spanish bullfighter's hat. The Indian circled about us, mute, and went to the mountaintop to christen his children. The black, pursued from afar, alone and unknown, sang his heart's music in the night, between waves and wild beasts. The campesinos, the men of the land, the creators, rose up in blind indignation against the disdainful city, their own creation. We wore epaulets and judge's robes, in countries that came into the world wearing rope sandals and Indian headbands. The wise thing would have been to pair, with charitable hearts and the audacity of our founders, the Indian headband and the judicial robe, to undam the Indian, make a place for the able black, and tailor liberty to the bodies of those who rose up and triumphed in its name. What we had was the judge, the general, the man of letters, and the cleric. Our angelic youth, as if struggling from the arms of an octopus, cast their heads into the heavens and fell back with sterile glory, crowned with clouds. The natural people, driven by instinct, blind with triumph, overwhelmed their gilded rulers. No Yankee or European book could furnish the key to the Hispanoamerican enigma. So the people tried hatred instead, and our countries amounted to less and less each year. Weary of useless hatred, of the struggle of book against sword, reason against the monk's taper, city against countryside, the impossible empire of the quarreling urban castes against the tempestuous or inert natural nation, we are beginning, almost unknowingly, to try love.

The shortest day of the year is somehow my longest

2009-12-23T03:39:00.010+08:00

-6:45 a.m. Final exam. Please post any corrections/questions below, or email me.

-9:45 a.m. Spring syllabus. Of course we may revise this later. To the students applying for M.A. study... Use this as a guideline if you like; unfortunately I can't read the mind of the person composing your entrance examination, so I don't know if she is more or less "up-to-date" than me, or if her taste is just different. I will try to send some additional recommendations, but the one thing that should be obvious is that the Part II of our course contains no theatrical texts. In our edition of the Norton, you have your choice of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill. So be sure to read at least one of those plays.

-??? a.m. Ponder implications of the Vazquez/Cabrera trade. Then strategize how we can trade Cabeza de Vaca to acquire one of them in a second trade.

Class #15.1

2009-12-22T18:39:00.006+08:00

So I think the party today was a success, but perhaps the lesson was not. Hopefully I can try to repair the situation a bit here. This is maybe the fourth time I've said this now, but I cannot thank you enough for making this a wonderful semester. You all make me want to sing, "Zippity Doo Dah."

Links: Speaking of that song, here is Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit, from Disney's Song of the South. I gave different interpretations of this in Lesson #14... in addition to this being an example of the long-lasting "plantation nostalgia genre," it's also an example of a new cultural idea about African-Americans that the white majority begin to develop in the 20th century. It will remind you of previous attitudes about American Indians... the idea is that blacks are somehow more magical or spiritual than whites. They live a more authentic life, in other words. Wait, what? Don't they live a life of alienated double consciousness? Well if you know any Marx or Hegel, you may recognize the idea here that the master himself is alienated because he does not do any work. Spiritual life is actually, in this theory, a sort of consequence of physical suffering; this is why the first modern musical genre that develops from slave spirituals is called "the blues." This article makes the analysis very well, and very concisely; look for the (surprising (to me)) comparison to Song Dynasty China!

Finally, Birth of a Nation. I showed you the movie's introduction, but you may also watch later scenes, as it seems the entire thing is on YouTube. Look for the later scenes of the white woman being sexually assaulted by the black slave man, and also the black Senators behaving idiotically and eating in a messy way during a legislative session. I stress that this is not historically accurate, but it is true there were black Senators from 1865-76. The next one was in 1969... almost a hundred years later (!), unless you count this baseball team. Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in 2005, making him only the third African-American Senator since the failure of "Reconstruction" (!). I remind you that this "black" or "African-American" group represents 36 million people, or 13% of the total U.S. population. Oh, and also I remembered why I showed you the Birth of a Nation video. It wasn't the idea of the political struggles over historical memory, or the idea of (white) American anxieties about "invasion"; these are just others I "discovered" through improvisation. My main point was supposed to be that Birth of a Nation disagrees with Twain's/Yankee's theory of training. We will discuss this in more detail next semester.

Homework Count: Has been updated. If you think I am wrong, just provide evidence by "copying and pasting" all of your posts into an email to me.

More Missing/Botched Lessons from Today:
-I did discuss Lucille's excellent answer to 120, wherein she compares Twain to Dubois as theorists of ideological "training" or "retraining." I mentioned that we will find this point explored elsewhere in Twain's work; for instance in Pudd'nhead Wilson he gives a demonstration that racial identities are cultural rather than genetic (see 2.2 and 2.3 here), and in "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" he questions whether "Americanization" training is effective, worthwhile, or even good at all. Then I think I lost myself when I began the movie clip. What I meant to say is that this is a major question in Early American Literature, as well as an open question for scientists and humanists today: what part of a personality is genetically determined, and what is culturally determined? Are we like "blank paper," or not? Of course the true answer is that it's the interaction of genetic and cultural determinants that makes a person, an idea that is developed quite well in the ancient world by both 孟子(Mencius) and Ἀριστοτέλης (Aristotle). This would certainly be a suitable topic for your final exam... either a "big essay" to replace the exam (on both the philosophical issue and its relevance to E.A.L.), or a "small essay" to replace one third of the exam (focusing more closely on its relevance to E.A.L.).
-I won't discuss 121. Hopefully Alyssa will give her answer, and you will consider other possibilities for the exam. You can see my idea just from the question; my idea is that Yankee≠Twain. And yet also sometimes, Yankee=Twain. So I suppose we can say that Yankee≈Twain?
-Tady's answer to 122 shows me that I wrote the question badly. Tady provides the cause of the war, which is the Church's desire to regain power from the Yankee; he then goes on to analyze the Church's anti-democratic and anti-technological orientation. But what I really meant to ask is what is the "catalyst" of the war? Tady describes the dry tinder, but let us also describe the match that lights it, and then we will truly understand the fire. Well, the catalyst is a financial panic, of a very modern sort. So Twain reminds us that warfare is not only "barbaric" or "ancient," but also modern. And indeed more common, more violent, and larger in scale in the modern era.
-I will await Zoe's answer to 123, because I sure as hell don't know how to answer it.

And even more:
-We discussed Letitia's answer to 124 about the connection between Reconstruction in the southern states from 1865-76 and the Yankee's "Man Factory." Let me also introduce some terminology. The white landlords in the south called the northern merchants and capitalists who came down with the army to try to modernize the southern economy by the name of "carpet-baggers," because they often carried their personal possessions in a certain kind of bag. They called people who helped the blacks and carpet-baggers by the name "scalawags." This was a terrible insult. One complicating factor is that there is an entire group of people we never discussed... what about poor white people living in the south who were not rich landowners/slavemasters? Well, the wealthy men used these insults like "scalawag" and "nigger-lover" insult to force their cooperation. In other words, they used racial affiliation and regional affiliation to overcome economic class alienation. This entire dynamic is captured quite well in Yankee, where we see that the carpet-bagger himself is not a perfect Man.
-Teresa's answer to 124 discusses the carpet-bagger concept more closely, although she does not use this name. She considers Hank Morgan to be the typical man of his era. Meaning a practical, resourceful, self-reliant man for a new industrial age. Sometimes historians call this age of American history "The Gilded Age," because there was great wealth (like gold), but the wealth was not solid, only an outer coating of gold. Why? Well they refer either to the era's recurring series of financial crises, or to the fact that only a very small number of people controlled the wealth despite American political rhetoric about equality and so forth. So many political critics in the U.S.A. now refer to our time as the "New Gilded Age."
-Winnie's answer to 125 discusses the Yankee's "duty to educate," and raises some suspicion of this idea. Let it be enough to say that the name of this duty, according to British writer Rudyard Kipling, was "the white man's burden." She also makes a smart comparison to early European imperialists like Columbus, Champlain, Williams, and so on, who spoke in similar terms. I would say, however, to be perfectly clear, that European imperialism in the 1500s-1600s is really quite different from European imperialism in the 1800s and 1900s. The sophistication, the scale of organization and impact, are quite bigger in the later case. The imperial network becomes much stronger. We saw this clearly in the sorrows of Cabeza de Vaca. So if Twain is making some comparison, he's probably comparing to European activities in Africa during the 1880s. (Example: Did you know that the most prestigious university scholarship for American students, which pays them to attend Oxford University in the U.K., is named for this horrible, horrible man.)
-Meg's answer to 125 is quite different. She discusses how the idea of something foreign presents an attraction, sexual and otherwise (很辣!), but that the "Pocohontas" myth is a false one because such relationships always feature inequities of power. The connection is that Twain shows this in the novel by means of the Yankee's love affair with Sandy. Hey, maybe this is also the answer to 123? Hello, Central!!!

And still more:
-On to your questions.
-Carol asks if Twain's novel is historically accurate, as we might expect from a writer associated with the development of "realism." Not, it's not. However, his main goal seems to be to destroy the idea that the original King Arthur stories themselves are historically accurate. So we may say that his depiction of England in the 500s is more accurate. He hasn't done any serious research; he's just pretty sure that the King Arthur mythology is 屁 and in this he is certainly correct.
-Clara asks a question related to genres. Can we say Twain is making a "satire" of the 6th century, or only that he is making a "satire" of the 19th century? Well this depends on how we want to use the term, but I tend to think that satire should be a fresh joke. In this case, not fresh to you and me, but fresh to Twain. So to write in the 1880s about medieval life is not really satire. Unless you are secretly making a commentary on modern life, and that would be satire. Twain helped to make the following idiom popular to describe social criticisms that are not fresh: "flogging a dead horse." Always be careful of someone flogging a dead horse, especially politicians; usually this means they are sneaking into your farm at night and flogging your live horse when you're not paying attention.
-Crystal asks if Twain has any interest in time-travel as a scientific concept. Well... he was certainly a scientific enthusiast, just like the Yankee. But I think the easier answer is that this is one of many similar novels in the industrializing Western nations in the 1880-90s, although probably the only funny one. Most of these novels imply that the modern, industrial world is better than the ancient, pre-industrial world. Oh, also this one. Twain's analysis is more complex than that, of course. In a related question, Zoe asked why the Yankee himself never tries to analyze why his time travel has occurred. You may consider this just a clumsy plot device for Twain, but perhaps it shows us the Yankee's pragmatic or practical character. He's more interested to "fix" a problem than to consider how it came to be.

There couldn't possibly... yes, there's more:
-Now the two most difficult questions.
-Qian-Yu asks how Americans felt about Catholicism in the 1880s. Well of course some of them were Catholics who immigrated from Ireland, Italy, Hungary, and so forth. So I guess they felt pretty good about Catholicism unless they had double consciousness (like O'Sullivan maybe?). But the majority were Protestants, and to consider Theodore Roosevelt's idea, Catholicism was the sort of belief you certainly had to 'wash yourself clean from' when Americanizing from Europe. In particular because Catholics believed the Pope in Rome was the central authority of their church. So American anti-Catholicism derives from British anti-Catholicism, but it's even stronger because Americans had no state-sponsored religion, and because they were supposed to be "self-reliant" instead of reliant on some distant Merlin. Certainly Twain is tapping this common anti-Catholic feeling in his book. But I also think that his satire isn't really against Catholicism, more like against Merlin in all forms, even perhaps the Yankee form of Merlin. Anti-Catholic literature is something we don't have much time for in our course. Here is a nice cartoon sample. Consider also our greatest U.S. president, Lincoln. He is famous for freeing the slaves, but less famous for suspending all of our laws and for being elected in large part by people who were strongly anti-Catholic. The first Catholic president of the U.S. was Kennedy (Irish family), much later, in 1960. But many people think he had the help of the Italian-American mafia to engineer the election. I find history disappointing sometimes. I look for 俠 and I find only 眩人.
-Zoe asks what the origin of the term "Yankee" is. I don't think there is any accurate information for its origin. At some point during the revolutionary era it comes to mean the American who opposes the British, so in this sense it is specifically anti-imperial. Consider the song "Yankee Doodle," about a humorous rural man who joins the army, wearing a feather in his cap to make fun of what he considers to be the ridiculous nature of army uniforms. Apparently the British-Americans first sang this song during the "French and Indian War" of the 1760s. Then the Americans sang it in the anti-British meaning in the 1770s. Later "Yankee" came to refer specifically to the "New England" area of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, etc. - the small states northeast of New York. It's one of the (nicer) words that people from the South use to describe people from the North; it's what they called my family, for instance, when we moved from New York to the "Carolinas" in 1985. I think this is where "New York Yankee" comes from when they named the team in 1913. Then of course there is the global meaning of Yankee, which refers to all U.S. Americans. What Marti might call "Your America." This meaning is also a kind of insult, I think. Certainly an insult if you're traveling around in South America. The basis of this insult, then, is the irony that the Yankee believes himself to be an anti-imperialist whereas he acts rather like an imperialist. A friend of Twain named Ernest Crosby wrote a novel that has one interesting scene in which a Chinese professor reverses a common stereotype, by accusing Americans of having no "sense of humor." His evidence? That they cannot perceive this irony in the meaning of their national song "Yankee Doodle."

Class #15 (Homework for 12/22)

2009-12-15T19:16:00.009+08:00

Reminder: Mainly to myself... four students will meet in Aaron's office on 12/22 from 14:00-15:20 to make up Class #14.

Reading:
-Yankee, top of page 94 to middle of page 121
-Yankee, top of 132 to middle of 140
-Yankee, top of 157 to middle of 158
-Yankee, top of 180 to bottom of 183
-Yankee, middle of 196 to bottom of 201
-Yankee, top of 232 to top of 233
-Yankee, 291 to 343

Questions: Viola, Carol, Clara, Crystal, Qian-Yu

Answers:
Lucille (120). Analyze Twain's theory of "training" on page 119 and compare to a previous American author of your choice. Is it similar? Different? How? Please write an answer of double the usual length as this will count for two homework points instead of one.
Alyssa (121). In the previous question I gave an instance of Twain using the Yankee as a "spokesman" for his genuine views. Find an instance of narrative irony and analyze it. In other words, find at least one commentary that the Yankee gives in the novel that you do not think to be the genuine opinion of Twain himself, and analyze what Twain may really think, and why he is using the narrator in this contradictory way. One possibility might be page 183. Please write an answer of double the usual length as this will count for two homework points instead of one.
Tady (122). What causes the catastrophic civil war that begins on page 315? What kind of commentary do you think Twain is making by choosing this as the cause?
Zoe (123). This is probably the most difficult question I have assigned for the entire course. Develop a theory to explain why Twain makes the Yankee call his assistants "as pretty as girls" on page 330.
Letitia & Teresa (124). Many critics have argued that Connecticut Yankee is an allegory to describe the Reconstruction period. Explain why this theory makes pretty good sense. You can answer together by exchanging emails, or just answer separately.
Winnie & Meg (125). Many critics have argued that Connecticut Yankee is an allegory to describe U.S. imperialism in Western North America and Hawaii. Explain why this theory makes pretty good sense. You can answer together by exchanging emails, or just answer separately.

Class #14 (Homework for 12/17 or 12/18)

2009-12-09T22:49:00.017+08:00

Reminder: Class will meet in two sessions, 12/17 from 10:15-10:45 or 12/18 from 10:15-10:45. Please attend one unless you have arranged with me otherwise.

Please note the new features on the blog: On the right you will now see a search bar; I'm glad Google added this as you may find it useful in preparing for your final exam. Below that one, the active poll, and my picture, you will see a list of completed homework for each student. This should assure you that I'm not just assigning the questions at random. I should have thought of this earlier. Please provide evidence if I've made a mistake, and I will change your count.

Reading: Yankee pages 5-76

Questions: Caleigh, Esther, Jenny, Tady, Zoe

Answers:
Viola (114). Why do you suppose Twain's novel about medieval England begins with a labor dispute in an industrial factory in the modern United States (page 9)? What does this tell us about the Yankee? What does it tell us about the scope of Twain's satire?
Emma (115). Briefly compare the themes and technique of Connecticut Yankee to those of Importance of Being Earnest.
Iris (116). How do you interpret the Yankee's speech about knowing Merlin "thirteen times" previously (page 34)? Obviously he's trying to manipulate the crowd, but what might be the meaning here for Twain's satire?
Rea (117). Who has power in King Arthur's England? How do they get it? How do they keep it?
Sherry (118). One interesting thing about Connecticut Yankee is that Twain, who is a satirist-humorist-comedian, or whatever you want to call it, comments many times on the theory and practice of humor. Analyze one of these instances and relate it to his broader theory of human nature; I'd suggest page 62 but you may find another that works.
Peggy (119). I have two feelings about Connecticut Yankee. First, I feel that it is maybe the most important novel ever for understanding the complexities of American ideology. Second, I feel that it is maybe not a very good novel. Provide arguments to support both theories.

Like I said, first they show you their cartoons, then they won't ever leave:
I apologize for doing the usual 3 hours today instead of 2, as we scheduled. I completely forgot. This explains to me why Ken asked when the class was going to end as we were leaving the bathroom. It seemed like an odd question, but now I see its point. So... I suppose we must leave the next session (Thursday/Friday) to be 1.5 hours, and then make our final session on Tuesday only 2 hours. Poor Twain! Well he shouldn't feel bad; he will have a starring role on the final exam, and what else could a savage and auntie like him ask for? This gives me an idea however. We should have a party for the third hour on Tuesday, 嗎 ? Don't trust him! He will try to use entertainment to colonize you and do more teaching with his Uncle Sam school! - Jose Marti Hmmm that was weird. Well, moving on... Even his humor is a weapon and a trap! He's like Franklin! He wants you to forget what his goals are. Even right now he is secretly making a thesis about the Connecticut Yankee! Ahem, anyway as I was saying, how about a party for the third hour of Tuesday, after our discussion of Twain is concluded? I will contribute a budget of... how about 1500 NTD? What can we buy for that? Maybe the easiest thing is to talk to the cafe next door and pre-order some drinks and snacks? What would you want? Now he's trying to buy your affection with his capital... careful, comrades!

That cartoon slideshow, if you missed class today: Here. Just use the pause key if it goes too fast for you. However I fear this link may only work on Apple computers.

Speaking of comrades:
First, Marti isn't really a socialist. He's actually rather more of a capitalist liberal. I am just pointing out the broader similarity to later Cuban revolutionary rhetoric. Anyway, following from my mention of Japan's proposal that it would make an anti-racist Pacific empire (a half success at best), we should also remember that both Soviet Russia and PRC under Mao deliberately included anti-racist ideas in their political rhetoric (so too Ho-Chi Minh in Vietnam). In point of fact they were not really anti-racist. But the ideology is important because they were indicating a flaw in Western liberal capitalism, which claims to be non-racist in theory but always seems to be racist somehow in practice. Consequences... there are Soviet propaganda films that propose an alliance with African-Americans! It's quite funny in a way since it was pure ideology and never took place. But you can be sure that racist opponents of Dubois, King, X, etc. accused them of being Communist spies, especially when they began using language with an internationalist and anti-capitalist flavor in the late 1960s. That's what really got King and X assassinated, perhaps. King was assassinated twice, in a sense, because everyone forgot about those ideas and came to see him as a safe radical (if this phrase makes sense) because his demands were "domestic" or "national," and phrased mainly in Jeffersonian and Christian vocabulary. All this ought to remind us of... the threat of the slave rebellion in Haiti! Remember, Thoreau and Emerson and so forth can talk revolution until they're "blue in the face." So long as they're not black in the face!

The ones that got away:
Great class today, I thought. You guys were really involved. Well except for when you were asleep. (This is too be expected at this phase of the term, ha ha.) Here are the missing questions. It appears that #110, about Dubois' views of the exact nature of "race," has now gone unanswered by me and Sherry both. Consider it an unsolved mystery. Sydney's answer to #111 is excellent, and quite sufficient. She says that Dubois uses poetry and music in his epigraphs because they have "higher" intellectual authority, but that this becomes more clever when we see that the music is actually a "lower" form, the black spiritual, and that this technique may then represent a theory of hybridization between intellectual modes, thus a theory of social integration. This analysis would also fit well with Dunbar and Chesnutt. Winnie asked a related question and added, why Byron of all poets? I think the answer is that Byron was known as an emotionally vibrant poet, and also because his politics were revolutionary and anti-imperial; he helped start the Greek revolution against the Ottomans, for instance. Ask Letitia about that; she is apparently doing translations of Ottoman legal history.

Ted explains in his answer to #112 that we shouldn't expect consistency from Teddy Roosevelt; he's a politician! But likewise I might say that American ideology itself is somewhat confused at that point in time; it seems like T.R. himself struggled to answer the question of who could be "Americanized." Here is the short essay I mentioned, in which an Irish-American named Finley Peter Dunne ridicules T.R.'s "Anglo-Saxon" theory; believe it or not they soon became friends. Finally, Teresa asked how American Indians felt about T.R.; clearly they are one of the excluded groups in his concept of the "American," which should make it clear that "His America" is 0% a geographic concept, rather 10% an ideological one and 90% a racial one. I had to look up the answer... apparently T.R. paid closer attention to the Indians' situation than some other Presidents of his time, and was considered as a kind of friend by some tribes, as this very old video shows. On the other hand his update of the "frontier" concept clearly takes the metaphor of "Indian hunting" and extends it to Cuba and the Philippines, etc. And he seemed to push much harder for the "preservation" of U.S. national parkland than the "reservation" of Indians who had previously lived on that land. But in this he's no worse than any other president before 1975, or possibly thereafter.

Extended thoughts on the philosophy of sunflower seeds: I realized that I didn't make a complete presentation of my case today. You see, the technique I was using to chew the seeds in class is not the true American technique. There was the complication of spitting into the bottle, which has a narrow opening. So I could only spit one shell at once; this is so unimpressive that even a dog can do it. Ordinarily, I would keep about 10 seeds (with the shell on) in my left cheek, then one by one use my back right teeth to crack them open and use my tongue to shift the empty shells to the front of my mouth just under my upper lip. Then the back right teeth chew the seed and the tongue sends it down my throat. Meanwhile, you see, the empty shells are accumulating under my upper lift. Once the entire magazine has been emptied, then I would spit ALL of those seeds simultaneously onto the ground in a big spray, and then reload. Also I can reverse the sides entirely; let's see the dog do that.

In addition to this technical point, I must also make an aesthetic one. I fail to see how the method that Zoe showed me, to crack the shell gingerly with your teeth and then take it out of your mouth to separate with your fingers, whereupon then reintroducing the shell-less seed into your mouth to chew (either one by one or several in a row)... I fail to see how this method takes advantage of the modern type of salted or otherwise flavored sunflower seeds. Because the flavor is all on the exterior of the shell. So in your method you are just eating the flavorless seeds, whereas in my method I get both the seeds and whatever zesty accompaniment they have. Indeed I find the flavor of the sunflower seeds at RT Mart (Da Ren Fa) to be outstanding. It has just a hint of sweet taste, and also salty. But not too salty; sometimes American sunflower seeds are much too salty, to the point that it burns your mouth. Also American seeds will sometimes have weird flavors like "barbecue." So in conclusion, I believe the combination of the Taiwanese sunflower seeds and the American style of chewing creates the best possible enjoyment. (This concludes my speech to the United Nations.)

Class #13 (Homework for 12/15)

2009-12-08T18:31:00.007+08:00

Reading:
-Norton biographical note on Booker T. Washington (1628-30)... you can't understand Dubois without this
-Dubois biographical note & The Souls of Black Folk (1727-44)
-Norton headnote, "Debates over Americanization" (1851-52)
-Roosevelt biographical note & American Ideals (1857-60)
-Marti biographical note & "Our America" (1868-70)

Questions: Letitia, Meg, Teresa, Ting Ju, Tracy, Viola, Winnie

Answers:
Jane (107). How might the growth of an African-American reading audience as described at the bottom of page 1728 affect the styles and themes of African-American authors? How might this provide a solution to Emma's question about why 1890s authors like Dunbar and Chesnutt were criticized by black intellectuals in the 1920s?
Ken (108). Give at least two additional examples of a person or group who has experienced "double consciousness," and explain why you think the term is applicable.
Sharon (109). Explain how Chesnutt and Dunbar represent themes similar to Dubois' theory of "double consciousness" in their writing. Give examples.
Sherry (110). I am perturbed by Dubois' phrase "corruption from white adulterers" on 1733. Does he refer to sexual or moral corruption? Or does he refer to a kind of racial or biological corruption? I mean, does Dubois accept a theory of "race" even as he rejects a theory of racial superiority/inferiority? If so, does he accept it as a scientific fact, or as a sociological one (see 1734)?
Sydney (111). Why do you think Dubois starts each chapter of The Souls of Black Folk with a pairing of poetry and musical notes? And why does he make these specific choices of poetry and music?
Ted (112). Roosevelt is a fascinating figure to study, because his writing and political activity produce so many contradictions. For instance, he seems to have at least three contradictory attitudes about race. First, he often argued for the superiority of the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" race, similarly to O'Sullivan. Second, American Ideals seems to broaden the idea of a superior race to include a "mix" of Anglo-Saxons and other Europeans, most notably the Irish. And yet it is not all-inclusive; apparently those of African, Hispanic, Chinese, or aboriginal ancestry, etc. "do not assimilate readily" (1858) and therefore cannot be "Americanized." Third, Roosevelt sometimes acted as a supporter of African-Americans... even courting political controversy by dining with Booker T. Washington at the White House! Is there any way to reconcile these contradictory views?
Natalie (113). What does Marti mean by "America"? How is it different than what Roosevelt means? How is it similar? Finally, interpret Marti's metaphor "like silver in the veins of the Andes" (1869).

Bonus:
A few clips from the movie Bamboozled, in which the famous African-American filmmaker Spike Lee criticizes contemporary black entertainers and their white employers for perpetuating harmful stereotypes. The movie begins with this montage of stereotypes in U.S. popular entertainment from around 1920-1950. What we see there is a failure to control the means of representation, as white musicians, actors, and cartoonists ridicule not only the physical appearance or intellectual ability of African-Americans, but also ridicule their musical and religious traditions. (We may consider the early period of Disney cartoons in the same manner.) Later in the movie, Lee shows how even with all the political gains of blacks, they still have the same problem with controlling cultural representation. So there's this video, which makes fun of the marketing of the clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger; listen for the use of the word "authentic." And then this video, which makes fun of the use of the "gangster" image in hip-hop music and in liquor marketing.

The one that got away:
There's always one! I didn't answer Emma's question about why later black writers (the Harlem Renaissance school of the 1920s) criticized Dunbar (and Chesnutt) for "selling out" to the white majority audience. I think partly this expresses a generational conflict, as we see in all communities, but particularly in artistic/literary ones. It could be a class conflict insofar as Dunbar's family was quite poor whereas these new intellectuals were a highly educated "talented tenth." It's also possible that they just didn't see the subversive side of Dunbar's poetry or Chesnutt's stories that I discussed. To me, when we evaluate an artist, we must allow for his/her situation... in some situations it is easier to control the means of representation, and in some situations it is more difficult. The challenge of Dunbar in the 1890s is different from that of Hughes or Hurston in the 1920s, different from Baldwin, Wright, or Ellison in the 1950s, different from that of Morrison in the 1990s, different from that of Equiano in the 1780s, from Jacobs and Douglass in the 1850s, etc. etc. Oh, and here's Emma's link from the last blog post... "Malindy" read aloud in African-American dialect, and then in standard American English.

The other one that got away:
Clara discussed reunion scenes in African-American fiction and autobiography. Her post gave a good explanation of how this device refers to the separation of black families during slavery, their fleeting reunions, and their possibility to be reunified in freedom. The one thing I'd like to add about Chesnutt is that the reunion in "Wife of His Youth" is actually somewhat different. The danger here is not from slavery or exploitation by whites, but rather that of internal differences splitting the African-American community. You may compare it in some sense to the "jeremiads" of Bradford or Thoreau... warnings that a community has lost its values, or is in danger of losing them.

Class #12 (Homework for 12/8)

2009-11-24T19:12:00.018+08:00

Reading:
-------------
-Norton headnotes, bottom 1263-66 (the timeline on 1267-69 is also 看头)
-Lincoln biography, "Gettysburg Address," and "Second Inaugural" (732-36)
-Chesnutt, "The Wife of His Youth" (1638-48)
-Dunbar biography, "When Malindy Sings," "Antebellum Sermon," "Sympathy," "We Wear the Mask," "Frederick Douglass" (1817-24)

Questions:
---------------
Natalie, Tady, Sherry, Rea, Peggy, Iris, Emma

Answers:
-------------
Qian Yu 100. How does Lincoln's explanation of the Civil War evolve from the "Gettysburg Address" to the "Second Inaugural Address"? I mean not only the types of arguments he makes, but the kind of language he uses.
Joy 101. I cancelled the reading of Martin Delany's Political Destiny of the Colored Race because it's kind of boring but I can summarize it for you - Delany was a separatist who believed the best course for African-Americans was to emigrate from the U.S., either "back to Africa" or to the black-controlled island of Haiti. Despite his story about "The Heroic Slave" who leads an escape to the Caribbean, Frederick Douglass committed his career to improving the situation of blacks in the U.S. by trying to radicalize American politics in the spirit of the "Declaration of Independence." I want you to write a dialogue between Delany and Frederick Douglass, in other words between the separatist/emigrationist position and the assimiliationist/reform position.
Crystal 102. Should we group Dunbar and Chesnutt with the "local color" or "regional realism" genres discussed on Norton 1263-65. Why or why not?
Clara 103. Compare the scene of reunion with friends or family that you see in various African-American authors we've read (e.g. Equiano pg. 361) to the reunion between Mr. Ryder and "The Wife of His Youth." Why do you think this kind of scene is so common in African-American literature before 1875? How does Chesnutt modify it for new meaning in 1898?
Carol 104. A famous American author and literary critic named William Dean Howells wrote the editor's introduction to Lyrics of Lowly Life. Howells said that Dunbar's poems in"literary English" were "more than very good" but that "several [other] people might have written them," whereas the poems in African-American dialect were "distinctively his contribution to the body of American poetry" and that "[no] one else could quite have written [them]." Do you agree with Howells that the dialect poems are better? Why or why not?
Vincent 105. Analyze the poetic meter of "Malindy." I know we haven't practiced this much, so just try your best to count the stressed and unstressed sounds. Then discuss the contrast the poem makes between a technical approach to singing ("lines and dots" - 18) and a spiritual approach to singing ("real melojious music" - 21). Which of the two do you think "Malindy" itself is?
Zoe 106. Why does the preacher of Dunbar's "Antebellum Sermon" insist that he "ain't talkin' bout today," and that the type of freedom he refers to is only "Bibleistic"? Then suppose that it's Dunbar himself making those disclaimers - how would that change the meaning of the poem? How would it help better explain line 87?

Additional Note:
-----------------------
I forgot to address question 93 in the last class. Apologies! Alyssa gave a very good answer in her blog post. She said that Douglass would consider slave spirituals like "Moses" and "Sweet Chariot" to be a form of political resistance, likening the condition of the biblical jews in Egypt to that of the blacks in the 1800's United States. Note however that Douglass never discussed this in his books or speeches... you may consider that he is preserving the secrecy of the 'code.' Alyssa also theorized that Jefferson might link Moses to U.S. independence... yes, this was often done in fact with General/President George Washington! However, I think Jefferson would never have considered that the 'stupid' slaves would be capable of forming such a political metaphor themselves. ~ Jane also posted a very difficult about American identity that I would prefer to ~~meekly avoid~~ save for future weeks of the course.

*New* - Pictures from the "Underground Railroad" Museum in Cincinnati:
-----------------------
Because her wayward son is in Taiwan, 我媽媽 went to visit the family of 我堂姐 for the Thanksgiving holiday. She lives in Cincinnati, which is a city in the state of Ohio that borders across the Ohio River with the state of Kentucky. The relevance to our course is that this was the most common crossing for fugitive slaves from the 南 U.S. to the 北 U.S. This is where the fictional slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin cross, for example. Nowadays there is a museum on this site to document the history of slavery, particularly the "Underground Railroad," which was the secret network of blacks and white anti-slavery collaborators that helped the fugitives escape. So I asked 媽媽 to take some photos for you. Click the numbers to view... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Midterm Exam: The Fine Print

2009-11-24T18:27:00.012+08:00

I don't want to think I am running away from you after giving the midterm grades, so I will post my availability here as soon as I know it. My wife and I are going to tour some of the tea farms this week (she's a journalist and she's writing a report about them). If you are interested to meet at one of the times below, please email me to arrange an appointment. I'm not just going to wait around in the office for the possibility of someone entering. Then again, you can always try to see if I'm there. You can also email to arrange an appointment at a different time and I'll see what I can do.

***Thursday 11/26, 3:30-7:00***
***Wednesday 12/2, 5:30-8:30***
***Thursday 12/3, 3:30-6:30***
***Tuesday 12/8, 12:00-2:00, 6:30-8:30***

Now some details about the midterm. As I stated today, the average total grade was 77.9%, which is in the range that Kim and Beauregard recommended, but is likely (not guaranteed!) to be lower than your final semester grade. Individual answers were graded on a 30 point scale. Your three scores were then combined to make a 90 point scale, and finally I added 10 to make a 100 point percentile scale. On the whole, I was very pleased with the exams and enjoyed reading them. I can tell that you are understanding my concepts and synthesizing, extending, and revising them to suit your own interests.

In general, answers that were able to develop a complex and unified central thesis scored higher. Answers that were able to give detailed examples from the chosen texts and relate them together scored higher. Sometimes there was a mismatch of sorts between the thesis and the examples, which scored lower. Confusingly organized essays scored lower. Precision of spelling and grammar wasn't really a factor because I was able to understand almost everything you wrote. As I said, I am eager to have your input on the final exam. I am considering the following formats: 1) essay option for your own topic, developed with my guidance, 2) exam option in three parts: a. two or three small questions like the midterm questions, from several choices, b. one big question, from several choices, c. "close analysis" of a paragraph or page of a certain text, from several choices. One certainty is that you cannot avoid discussing Connecticut Yankee on the final exam.

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Savage (19 answers x 23.00 average)

Jefferson (10), Franklin (9), Winnemucca (7), Tecumseh (4), Boudinot (3), Bradford (3), Emerson (3), Freneau (3), Red Jacket (3), Black Hawk (2), Cabeza de Vaca (2), Smith (2), Thorpe (2), Bradstreet, Champlain, Cooke, Turner, the specific combination of Franklin-Jefferson-Winnemucca (4)

The starting point was the idea that "savage" is more an ideological category than a factually descriptive one. Some successful answers discussed it as a term used by Europeans to express or rationalize their superiority across multiple axes or dimensions. Others discussed ways that various authors contested or reversed the term. I was intrigued by one answer that distinguished cultural and biological categories of savagery, and another that considered "savage" as a term for something exotic or strange that increased in vehemence or urgency with closer proximity. Some of you had trouble establishing differences between Jefferson, Franklin, and Emerson. If you find yourself in this dilemma on the final exam, I'd suggest you just change your choices. Click the comment reply below for two complete high-scoring anonymous sample answers.

Nature (16 answers x 22.00 average)

Smith (12), Emerson (7), Thoreau (5), Pima (4), Black Hawk (3), Iroquois (3), Pontiac (3), Freneau (2), Zitkala Sa (2), Bradstreet, Columbus, Crevecouer, Jefferson, Red Jacket, Thorpe, Winthrop

You were quite creative with these answers... there were many interesting plays on the idea of nature as a "resource." I also found some of the author choices surprising, by which I mean delightfully surprising. One problem was aligning American Indian writers with nature in some vague way without giving any analysis or support - at least you're in good company there with Freneau, ha ha. Another problem was the many implied allusions to Thoreau's "Walden." One student specifically asked to write on "Walden" because she read it in another course, and that was fine. But if you're going to do that, you at least need to announce it in your essay. I found no connection whatsoever to "Civil Disobedience" in many of these Thoreau answers, and even if I decode that you are referring instead to "Walden," the references tended to be quite vague. Click the comment reply below for two complete high-scoring anonymous sample answers.

Education (13 answers x 23.00 average )

Occam (10), Emerson (9), Williams (8), Franklin (3), Hamilton (2), Paine (2), Zitkala Sa (2), Boudinot, Winthrop, the specific combination of Williams-Emerson-Occam (6)

I will be honest and say that this is the only part of the exam where I sometimes felt frustrated. I wonder why 你們 so easily perceive the argument that a term like "nature," "contract," or "savage" may not have a simple universal meaning, but rather may depend on the context of its use, and that the context of its use by Europeans has generally been a 'false universal' leveraged to justify various forms of inequity. Yet when I present a similar question about education, 你們 just assume that there is one simple universal hierarchy that makes some educated and some not. In other words, why do you accept the Enlightenment category of "education" without any hesitation when you are so eager to submit related Enlightenment categories to a post-colonial critique? Especially given that most of the examples concern linguistic or cultural education rather than something in the natural sciences - many of you agreed enthusiastically in previous classes when I proposed that language is a false universal. I believe there are powerful arguments for the notion of a universal Enlightenment or universal human subject, but at the very least we need to expose all of its possible limitations or distortions, no? Click the comment reply below for two complete high-scoring anonymous sample answers.

America/n (13 answers x 24.08 average)

Crevecouer (8), Red Jacket (4), Black Hawk (3), Winthrop (3), Paine (3), Apess (2), Hawthorne (2), Irving (2), O'Sullivan (2), Jefferson, Pontiac, Smith, Tecumseh, Thorpe, Turner, Winnemucca, Zitkala Sa

This question received the highest average score on the test; it seems to have inspired some very deep thinking. I did notice however that some essays had difficulty incorporating the third author (American Indian). The question is then, can the Indian be considered American? If America is only a geographical place, then yes. This makes them "Native Americans" before all the immigrants from Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. But if America is only an ideological concept, then perhaps Indians are excluded by that concept, which seems to refer specifically to creoles. Then you must consider whether Indians wish to fight that exclusion, or to radicalize it in the creation of a new anti-American identity; we are now asking this same question of the various black activists. As we move forward in history, we will encounter a new concept... the idea that "America" can be plural or multiple, not only in historical sequence but at one and the same time. We shall have to consider what we think of this idea. Click the comment reply below for two complete high-scoring anonymous sample answers.

Frontier (6 answers x 21.50 average)

Turner (5), Red Jacket (3), Black Hawk (2), Crevecouer (2), Smith (2), Boudinot, Irving

This question probably lost popularity because it was similar to "nature" or "savage." The better answers established that the frontier is less a physical place than a psychological condition, a boundary of knowledge, or a cultural contact zone. Some of the weaker ones had difficulty establishing differences between Crevecouer, Smith, and Turner.

Liberty (5 answers x 20.40 average)

Emerson (3), Apess (2), Winthrop (2), Black Hawk, Crevecouer, Edwards, Franklin, Jefferson, Thoreau, Winnemucca, Zitkala Sa

I was surprised that this question was unpopular, but maybe it lost out to "America/n" and had to share with "empire." Many of the answers had an easy time pairing a post-revolutionary creole with an Indian, but then had difficulty establishing a further comparison to a pre-revolutionary creole. This led to the solution of using both Jefferson and Crevecouer, who were probably too similar. (Look at the dates - "American Farmer" was published six years after "The Declaration of Independence." This was the one ambiguity in my A, B, C categories.) A few of you tried Winthrop or Edwards, which was a difficult task, but a well chosen one; we must consider that the modern secular idea of "liberty" emerges in the U.S.A. from the Protestant religious tradition, just as it does on the European continent through Luther, Calvin, etc. This may seem odd given that the radical Protestants were often quite restrictive and xenophobic. But the idea of an individual relationship with the divine may be seen as the foundation of the idea of the individual political subject. One of the clear signals of this point was given by Jefferson, who continued to use the Christian bible but also 'conveniently' crossed out large sections that he found to be ethically dubious or logically clumsy.

Laughter (5 answers x 21.20 average)

Zitkala Sa (3), Apess (2), Edwards (2), Franklin (2), Thorpe (2), Cooke, Hawthorne, Irving, Jefferson

Your answers connected laughter to a range of concepts including disillusionment, happiness, superiority, satire, and socialization. I can't even tell you how shocked I was to see Edwards appear in this question! But as I read, actually I began to see that it makes sense.

Trust/Contract (3 answers x 26.00 average)

Emerson (2), Franklin, Winthrop (2), Black Hawk, Boudinot, Jefferson, Tecumseh

I don't know why, but this question was one of the most productive of strong answers. Click the comment reply below for a complete high-scoring anonymous sample answer.

Empire (3 answers x 23.00 average)

Tecumseh (2), Columbus, Crevecouer, Hamilton, Jefferson, Red Jacket, Smith, Thoreau

Either 你們 find this topic boring, or 你們 feel like it is my possession and you should leave it alone! Which makes me the emperor of the empire topic. How odd.

Equality (2 answers x 22.50 average)

Black Hawk, Boudinot, Cabeza de Vaca, Crevecouer, Emerson, Jefferson

Perhaps I'm remembering wrong, but wasn't this a student-generated topic? Answers were similar to "liberty," not surprisingly. Although I still think they're different concepts. Liberty carries the implication of "liberty to X" or "liberty from Y." And it does not imply equality by itself, unless you extend liberty to X or from Y to all people.

Literature (2 answers x 18.00 average)

Black Hawk, Bradstreet, Columbus, Freneau, Iroquois, Thoreau

This was the one topic on the exam that I would call unsuccessful. We have repeatedly made connections between literary form (poetic form, narrative form, certain metaphors, certain rhetorical constructions) and our broader political/cultural issues. But perhaps it was too difficult to address all this in the short space!

Territory/Alienation/Women (3 answers, 23.67 average)

Winthrop (2), Black Hawk, Bradstreet, Emerson, Irving, Jefferson, Winnemucca, Zitkala Sa

Three student-generated topics, all fairly successful. I'm particularly glad for "Women," because the student found an area I had unfairly ignored in the course and used her "self-reliance" to address it on the exam; click the comment reply below for a complete high-scoring anonymous sample answer. But even so I must say that the most witty remark on the entire exam came in the "Territory" essay, which had as its secondary title, ""I take it, you go bye bye."

Class #11 (Homework for 11/24)

2009-11-20T12:10:00.009+08:00

Class will meet as usual, from 15:20-18:10. No weird scheduling!

Follow-up:

-You can watch the Obama/Wright video here. I forgot to mention the politics of Obama's name when we were speaking of Equiano. Of course "Barack Obama" is controversial for some (white) Americans, not because it sounds African (like his Kenyan father), but because it sounds Arabic (which it is). Or I guess more specifically because it sounds like "Osama." So guess what Obama called himself for the first 30 or 40 years of his life? "Barry" Obama, which is a more English-sounding first name. Later he considered it to be a personal truth to be Barack, even though it was probably a political disadvantage.
-Carol asked for some additional internet resources about slave life. This one has some good illustrations.
-Lucille pointed my attention to this book from the 1970s which documents the experience of African-American slaves. It was later made into a famous U.S. television show. I also want to tell you about Toni Morrison, who is probably the greatest African-American novelist, and has written books about black experience that span in setting from 1500s-1900s. Indeed many argue that she is the greatest of all U.S. novelists... I think certainly one of the best five. You can read her Nobel Prize acceptance speech here. Unfortunately we may not read Morrison in the spring because her books are too long and we have so much else on the schedule.

Reading:

-Slave Spirituals (photocopy)
-You can listen to "Go Down, Moses" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by following these links.

-Harriet Jacobs autobiography, 804-05
-Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," 805- middle of 820.

-Norton Headnote on "Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature," 748-49
-Frederick Douglass autobiography 920-23
-Frederick Douglass, "The Heroic Slave" (photocopy)

Questions: Vincent, Joy, Qian Yu, Sharon, Sherry, Sydney, Ken

Answers:

93. (Alyssa) What would Thomas Jefferson say about the possibility that slave spirituals like "Go Down Moses" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" contain coded political messages? What would William Apess or Frederick Douglass say?
94. (Caleigh) Why does Jacobs argue that "slavery... is far more terrible for women" (816)? Why is this topic well calculated for her reading audience?
95. (Esther) Jacobs really did hide in a small space in her grandmother's attic for seven years, as you see on 818-20. But we can also consider this scene a kind of literary symbol. Analyze it, and compare it to the similar scene which takes place in Winnemucca's autobiography, on 1582-83.
96. (Jane) How do you imagine the difference reading these texts in a literature class in Taiwan instead of in a literature class in the United States?
97. (Jenny) Why does Douglass name his protagonist "Madison Washington" and refer to the greatness of Virginia on 174? And to the "principles of 1776" on 248?
98. (Lucille) What advantages does the fictional genre of this story offer to Douglass that he would not have in the autobiographical genre that Equiano or Jacobs use (which Douglass would also use in writing three of his own autobiographies)? What disadvantages?
99. (Ted) Many of the West African tribes/nations that had their people taken into Atlantic slavery were matriarchal in their political structure, i.e. dominated by women. So why do you think writers like Equiano, Walker, and Douglass place so much emphasis on the idea that blacks can/should be masculine or "manly"? Does this vision of anti-slavery or anti-racist rhetoric become problematic when we consider the role of female writers like Wheatley and Jacobs?

Class #10 (Homework for 11/19)

2009-11-17T17:44:00.006+08:00

Thursday 10:15-11:45 = Vincent, Ken, Ted, Sharon, Winnie, Carol, Sydney, Rea, Iris, Peggy, Emma
Friday 10:15-11:45 = Tady, Natalie, Meg, Clara, Jane, Jenny, Crystal, Letitia, Esther, Qian Yu, Teresa, Tracy, Viola, Caleigh, Lucille, Alyssa
Friday 3:00-4:00 (office) = Zoe, Sherry, Ting Ju

Reading:

-Equiano's biography from bottom of 355 to bottom of 356
-Equiano's "Interesting Narrative" from top of 357 to middle of 370 ("and a slave!")
-Equiano's "Interesting Narrative" from bottom of 378 ("In the preceding chapter") to bottom of 383 ("until I had left them.")
-Equiano's "Interesting Narrative" from top of 387 to bottom of 390.

-Wheatley's biography on 419-20
-"To the University of Cambridge, in New England" on 421
-"On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield" on 422-23
-"To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works" on 426-27
-"To His Excellency General Washington" on 427-28

-Walker's biography on 752-53
-Walker's "Appeal in Four Articles" on 753-56

Answers... Due at 9:00 a.m. on 11/19 regardless of which session you are attending.

86. (Vincent) If Equiano is not really from Africa (356), why does he claim so in his autobiography? Paraphrase the Norton editors' answer to this question and give at least one alternate answer of your own.

87. (Teresa) If Equiano is not really from Africa, would you call his autobiography "fiction" or "non-fiction"? Then choose a few details from chapters I and II, and explain why he chose to create/embellish/select them.

88. (Tracy) What is the significance of calling Equiano an "Atlantic Rim" author (356) instead of an American, African-American, British, Afro-British, or African author? Why might this designation suit the African-American literary tradition more generally?

89. (Ting Ju) Many critics have likened Equiano's autobiography to Franklin's. Why? And do you agree with them?

90. (Winnie) Compare Wheatley's characterization of Whitefield to Equiano's. You can skip the obvious fact that one is prose and the other is poetry. Also, compare their relative attitude about the United States versus Britain.

91. (Viola) Consider Wheatley's attitude toward Christianity as a "purer language" ("African Painter," line 32). You learn on 420 that she spoke with Occam about this subject, who held a similar view. What would Wheatley say to a black religious separatist who believed, as Pontiac, Tecumseh, Red Jacket, etc. might have, that Christianity was only a language of cultural enslavement to strengthen blacks' physical enslavement?

92. (Zoe) Why does Walker say that white refutations of Jefferson are inadequate (754)? Describe the particular approach or technique of his refutation. Could Wheatley be considered a refuter of Jefferson? Why or why not?

Questions:

This will be an in-class exercise, no need to prepare any before class!

Midterm Exam (11/17)

2009-11-10T18:45:00.005+08:00

If you missed the class today, 這是 the revised calendar for the course and 這是 the guide for the midterm exam. Please email me so I know which of the class sessions you are attending next week. You can post any questions about the exam here, or email me directly.

The groups from today's class exercise should also post the three writers they would compare to answer one of the exam questions.

I will post the assigned questions for next week's class on Tuesday night after the exam. Otherwise it's a bit too depressing, I think. Oh, and 這是 the piece of the "Eminem" movie that we watched.

Class #9 (Homework for 11/10)

2009-11-03T19:00:00.011+08:00

Sorry this took so long; I was revising the schedule and considering the exam questions. You will see that I am attempting to limit the number of questions/answers to save time for more group activity in class. We'll see how it works.

Reading: Norton Headnotes (748-49, 1255-58), Winnemucca (1579-90), Zitkala Sa (top of 1837 - middle of 1838, bottom of 1845 - end of 1850), Turner (bottom of 1852 - top of 1855, middle of 1856 - top of 1857), Jefferson (bottom of 749 - middle of 752)

Questions: Joy, Zoe, Crystal, Alyssa, Caleigh, Carol, Clara

Answers:
79 = Iris. As we discussed last week, we tend to see very vivid and imaginative use of metaphor in the 'internal' American Indian tradition of the 1800s (like the creation stories or Pontiac's speech), but the 'external' writing (by authors like Occam and Boudinot) can sometimes be very restrained or precise. In Winnemucca we clearly see the recovery of the imaginative style for an external (white) readership. Analyze several of Winnemucca's images/metaphor and their literary meaning.
80 = Tady. Analyze Winnemucca's rhetorical usage of well-known references to the Christian bible and to U.S. political ideology.
81 = Letitia. Is the Carlisle philosophy of "kill the Indian and save the man" (pg. 1837) compatible with the "universal enlightenment" philosophy of Crevecouer/Paine/Jefferson/Hamilton/Franklin/etc? How does Zitkala Sa use her story to challenge the Carlisle philosophy?
82 = Meg. Pretend you are reading the next issue of Harper's Monthly that was published after the issue containing Zitkala Sa's story. Now imagine two letters from (white) readers responding to the story, of about 3-4 sentences each. The first is positive toward the story and the second is negative. Write what the letters might say.
83 = Peggy. The Norton editors discuss Turner's frontier theory as being a challenge to 'Anglo-Saxon' racist theory. But in fact, most Americans believed both of them. Discuss how the two theories could be considered compatible.
84 = Rea. Compare Turner to Emerson. Similarities and differences.
85 = Emma. Write a dialogue of 10-12 lines. The first participant in the dialogue is Thomas Jefferson, the political poet of universal human liberty. The second is Thomas Jefferson, the 'scientific' racist and slavery apologist.

The Declaration of Independence

2009-11-03T18:38:00.004+08:00

Thank you for responding to the surveys carefully. Let me address a few of the comments:

1. The greatest concern was about the exam. We will discuss the format next week, but I want to remind you that you do not need to remember every writer and every concept for the exam. You will be given broad questions to answer and you can choose which specific writers and concepts to use. And I will give the questions for home study prior to the exam, so there will be no surprises. Maybe it helps to understand my philosophy of exams... I like to give students a "map" of the subject with many writers, concepts, historical background, philosophical dilemmas, etc. But I know it is impossible for you to know every area of the map in detail. So you can choose a couple of "areas of the map" that you find easier or more interesting, and concentrate your preparation in more detail there. Indeed if you were strongly familiar with 80% of the major concepts and 40% of the writers, I should think you'd do quite well on the exam. See the interior comment for further description, and feel free to reply, make suggestions, or ask further questions... it would help me fashion the exam.

2. I think the amount of reading and the class time will remain our areas of territorial conflict. I will always want more and you will always want less, and we will try to find a balance. But I do really like the suggestions to have fewer homework questions. I would like to have maybe 7 questions and 7 answers, and leave time for extra discussion or activity. This would also allow for more student participation in class. I'm just happy I have 22 or more weeks of the course remaining to find the right balance!

3. Another understandable area of resistance is the focus on political essays and speeches instead of fiction and poetry. I find this is necessary because it is too difficult to understand the 'pure' literature without proper contextual information (think of "Rip" or "Molineux" or "Big Bear" without it... they'd be total nonsense), and also because some of these 'non-fiction' documents are quite interesting from a literary standpoint (like Apess, Crevecouer, etc.). And, frankly, because they are shorter... we can't read too many novels or long poems in a class of this type. But I can say that the further we move forward in the chronology, the more we will read fiction and poetry. So you may find your satisfaction increasing in the coming months.

Class #8 (Homework for 11/3)

2009-10-27T18:23:00.014+08:00

Here is the famous "Crying Indian" video, if you want to watch it with the music. For an example of the "anti-racism as a maneuver to establish sophistication or superiority" theory I gave, see here. I should say that I support the political views of the speaker, but I think the way she presents her views indicates an elitist attitude that has a very loose relation to anti-racism. (Note on second video: "Redneck" is an insult that means a rural or uncultured person.

Reading: Red Jacket (214-16), Tecumseh (216-18), Apess (482-88), Black Hawk (570-74), Boudinot (577-80), Emerson (585-88)

Questions: Tady, Ted, Teresa, Ting Ju, Vincent, Viola, Winnie

Answers:
Sharon = 71. Indicate several of the techniques Red Jacket uses to gain control of the "means of representation" in English. Would any of these be relevant to Taiwanese aboriginal groups writing in Mandarin?
Sherry = 72. Indicate several of the techniques Tecumseh uses to establish a "Pan-Indian" rhetoric. Would any of these be relevant to Taiwanese aboriginal groups?
Sydney = 73. The Norton editors tell us that Apess' "Indian's Looking Glass" has unusual stylistic features which make it more like an oration than an essay. Indicate some of them. Then, discuss how Apess challenges the opposition of "black" and "white" that he finds at the core of the English language.
Tracy = 74. Would you say Apess' position is closer to that of cultural separationists like Pontiac, Red Jacket, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk, or that of cultural assimilationists like Occam and Boudinot? Give evidence for both views of him.
Zoe = 75. Give evidence to support Schmitz's claim (quoted on 571) that Black Hawk's autobiography is "a Sauk history advocating a Sauk politics."
Ken = 76. Why is the Cherokee Phoenix published in two languages? What does Boudinot mean when he says it is a "national newspaper"? And what is the meaning of the title?
Meg = 77. Why do you think Emerson considers the letter to Van Buren a "scream" or "shriek" (586) that "oversteps the bounds of decorum" (587) with a "burlesque character" (588), instead of a "thesis" (586)? Give evidence from the letter.
Natalie = 78. Why do you suppose that the literary style of Indian writers like Occam, Apess, and Boudinot stay more closely to the precise or "neoclassical" style of writers like Hamilton, Jefferson, and Franklin, rather than reflecting the more imaginative or "romantic" style of writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne?

Class #7 (Homework for 10/27)

2009-10-20T19:14:00.009+08:00

Reminder: Please buy Connecticut Yankee at NTHU bookstore by the end of 十月.
Reminder: Please post your group answer to the Emerson comparison in the interior comments. Two similarities, two differences, and whether you prefer Emerson to the other writer in style/ideas.
Reminder: Please read my responses to answers 51-60 in the interior comments.
Reminder: 十一月十七日 will be the midterm exam session, 九十分鐘. Please email my assistant Ms. Chen to indicate when you are available to meet for a 九十分鐘. class session on either 十一月十九日 or 十一月二十日. Please try to indicate as many available times as possible.

Reading: Norton Headnotes (17, 206-07, 570); Aboriginal Creation Stories (17-24); Williams (87-96); Franklin (226-30); Freneau (415-18); Pontiac (207-09); Occam (209-12)

Questions: Carol, Emma, Iris, Ken, Letitia, Meg, Natalie, Peggy, Qian Yu, Rea

Answers:
Zoe = 61. Give us a brief history of government policy toward Taiwanese aboriginals during these two periods: Qing dynasty (1680s-1890s) and Japanese occupation (1890s-1940s). Brief!
Joy = 62. Give us a brief history of government policy toward Taiwanese aboriginals during these two periods: KMT military rule (1940s-1980s), and the present era (1980s-2000s). Brief!
Alyssa = 63. Suppose you are the chief or elder of an aboriginal tribe living in U.S. territory in the 1800s, as described on 17. What are the advantages and disadvantages of collaborating with the Bureau of American Ethnology to record your tribe's stories and legends? A different question... do you agree with the Norton editors' choice to place the creation stories before Columbus in our book's chronology? Why or why not?
Caleigh = 64. One of the major distortions of Euro-American views of American Indians is that they are bloodthirsty savages. But another is that they are gentle and pure; in some way we may consider these two views to be actually the same, where the Indian is seen as a primitive child rather than a political or moral agent. What evidence do you see of political hierarchy or power in the Iroquois and Pima creation stories? Can you interpret this to have any particular significance to the situation of those tribes during the time these stories were transcribed?
Clara = 65. Compare Williams' concept of "lump" on 89 to the "quantity of earth" on 19 and the "greasy earth" on 22. How are they similar and different? Do you see evidence of any aboriginal cultural influence on Williams, or do you believe the exchange is only taking place in one direction?
Crystal = 66. Who are the savages of North America, according to Franklin? What words or techniques does he use to indicate this? Is this essay consistent with your earlier impression of Franklin or not? Explain.
Esther = 67. Why do you suppose all the Indians in this poem are dead? I mean from an ideological standpoint, not their physical cause of death. Next, if I say that Freneau is using them as a poetic or symbolic "resource," what is his purpose for doing so? In other words, what point is he trying to make?
Jane = 68. The Norton editors discuss a difficulty in reading early texts written by American Indians; many were actually edited, transcribed, or composed by Euro-Americans. Of Pontiac's speech, they write, "Neither the accuracy of the date nor the authenticity of the speech can be documented with any certainty." And consider what you learn about the man who composed it on 18 (Francis Parkman). How does this change our approach as readers? Do you think Pontiac's speech should be in the anthology? Why or why not?
Jenny = 69. Compare Pontiac's speech to the Euro-American "jeremiad" of Bradford/Winthrop/Edwards/Emerson/Thoreau/etc. How is it similar and different? Next, what does his three part division of literature (the Delaware's prophetic "dreaming" versus the "hieroglyphic" carving of the prayer versus Pontiac's oratory) tell us about the political life of the Ottawas/Delawares?
Lucille = 70. What do you think of Occam's 補習班 ? Just kidding, that's not a real question. My real question is, how would Occam react to this article? (Read this paragraph on Wikipedia if the context is not clear from the article.)

The Yankee Has Arrived!

2009-10-18T18:05:00.003+08:00

Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is now available at the NTHU bookstore for the reasonable price of $170NT. We won't be reading it until December, but please buy a copy now because I think they will ship them back to Taipei soon if they are unsold.

Class #6 (Homework for 10/20)

2009-10-15T19:44:00.008+08:00

Good work this week! As I said, I have noticed that you are more confident discussing narrative fiction than you are discussing poetry or "non-fiction" speeches and essays. Maybe you have more experience - you analyze from habit ?

Please consider the two new poll questions. I can't believe we have read 20 different authors already, but then again we are one-third finished with our reading for this semester. I do appreciate how much effort you are putting into the class. I think you will find that the harder you study now, the easier it will become at the end of this term, and also next term. Many of the concepts we are discussing now are "foundational." By the way, if you want a measure of how highly esteemed the so-called American Renaissance canon is, look at the numbering of the pages in your Norton Anthology. We arrive at Emerson on page 488, having marched all the way from the year 1492 to the year 1836 (1.42 pages per year). But for us to get to the year 1862, we must read all the way to page 1220 (28.2 pages per year). From 1862 to 2004 takes us to page 2874 (11.6 pages per year). So you can see how disproportionately the 1840s and 1850s decades are represented.

As for the last poll, the "Panic" question was quite popular and generated some interesting results. Like all good questions, I think both answers are essentially correct; panic sometimes generates more cautious responses and sometimes generates more radical ones. The "Enlightenment" question was less popular, perhaps because the wording was so long and complex. But it is good to see that there are a variety of viewpoints in the class.

I have one follow-up to today's discussion. A number of you mentioned the concept of "American Dream" in your comments last week, which I did not discuss today. My first comment about "American Dream" is that you can see this is not a new concept; every writer we discuss has a sort of American Dream, all the way back to Columbus, Winthrop, etc. The very essence of "America" is that it is a dream, not really a historical place and time (like "North American continent" or "United States"), but instead an ideological concept. Indeed you can read Shakespeare's Tempest or Thomas More's Utopia and see an American Dream from someone who has never even set foot on American soil. Something that is fascinating about Mexican literature is that it has a very similar "American Dream" until the military defeat to the U.S. in the 1840s. Thereafter the dream for Mexico is to become a version of "America" that is different from or better than the U.S. But we notice that these concepts of the American Dream evolve over time. Not only that, but multiple concepts of the American Dream may compete against one another at the same time; clearly Bradford and Morton had different dreams! The Civil War of 1861-65 is a perfect example, as both sides believed they were defending the American Dream and completing the American Revolution. All the same, it seems to me when you all use the phrase "American Dream," you refer more specifically to an updated version of the dream you find in Franklin and Crevecouer. Meaning that the American Dream is for an immigrant from any nation to come to U.S. America and gain a comfortable social and economic position by means of hard work. So I just want to point out that we can refer to "American Dream" as a general concept, but also more specifically to this one type of "American Dream."

Reading Assignments

Finish Norton Headnote (440-449)
Emerson biography (488-92) and his "Self Reliance" (start on bottom 532 to "the right of every man" on top 540, "Man is timid and apologetic on middle 541 to "what is called death" on middle 542, "But now we are a mob" on top 543 to "in their speculative views" on top 545, "2. It is for want of self-culture" on middle 546 to end on top 550)
O'Sullivan's "Annexation" (handout; extras available in green basket... try "History of Texas" on Wikipedia if you want a background reference, specifically sections 5-9 of that webpage)
Thoreau biography (825-29) and his "Resistance to Civil Government," usually called "Civil Disobedience" (start on 829 to "or thinking at all" on middle 842, "No man with a genius" on bottom 843 to end on 844)

Questions

Lucille, Caleigh, Esther, Sydney, Crystal, Jane, Jennie, Alyssa, Zoe

Answers

51. (Ting Ju) The first one always seems to be the theoretical question! OK so, a famous critic named Harold Bloom has argued that literature develops through a kind of "patricidal" or Oedipal conflict where the younger writer tries to destroy or overtake the older writer. He calls this "the anxiety of influence." So for instance, Virgil must overtake Homer, Dante must overtake Virgil, Milton must overtake Dante, Blake must overtake Milton, etc. etc. Emerson's theory on 533, 539, and 547 is somewhat similar. On 445-47 you see a very different theory of literary development expressed. How would you describe this theory? And how can you relate it to Franklin's "junto" and to the political or economic structure of 19th-century American life?
52. (Rea) I want you to do some research and find at least two essays from the past 25 years that call for a "Taiwanese national literature." Then choose a representative quotation of about one paragraph from both essays and post these for your answer.
53. (Iris) It has been said that Emerson is inspired by the Southwestern humorists; for instance, the "transparent eyeball" derives from a fascination of Southwestern humorists with gauging out or removing eyeballs! Compare "Self-Reliance" to "Big Bear." The first half of this task is easy... find thematic similarities. The second half is more difficult task... find linguistic/stylistic similarities.
54. (Joy) Contrast Emerson to one or more of the following: Winthrop, Smith, Franklin, Crevecouer, Jefferson, Hamilton, Irving, Hawthorne (your choice)
55. (Peggy) Give some theories as to how O'Sullivan's Irish ethnic background may affect his views in the "Annexation" essay.
56. (Letitia) Compare O'Sullivan's concept of "manifest destiny" (top of 2nd page) to Emerson's concept of "self-reliance."
57. (Emma) Why does O'Sullivan think that Mexican sovereignty in Texas and California is "artificial" (middle of 3rd page), whereas American sovereignty is "natural"?
58. (Teresa) How is it possible that O'Sullivan favors a war with Mexico and Thoreau doesn't favor it when the logic of popular sovereignty on the 3rd page of "Annexation" seems to be precisely that of "Resistance to Civil Government" on 829-30?
59. (Qian Yu) Do you agree with Thoreau's principle "that government is best which governs least" (829)? Explain. Do you think it is actually possible to, as he urges, "wash [your] hands" (834) of participation in injustice, in the year 2009? Explain.
60. (Viola) The Norton editor notes on 828 that Thoreau's essay was a "crucial influence" on both Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. The similarities are obvious, but I want you to analyze some of the differences between Thoreau's form of "resistance" and that of Ghandi and King.

Class #5 (Homework for 10/13)

2009-10-06T20:29:00.028+08:00

Please notice the new polls on the right. I was considering one about the U.S. baseball playoffs, but we have many other matters to discuss. You will see an extension of the Tuesday 10/6 discussion in the entry below (#4.5). I am trying an experiment to use the poll as a tool for extending philosophical discussion, to reduce your workload this week, so you will see questions about Revolutionary Panic and European Enlightenment. So comment replies on those topics are not required, but they are encouraged. (Soft power!)

Ah, but first we can learn something from baseball. As a Yankees fan, I am often accused by other Americans of supporting the "capitalist-nihilist" position in the Enlightenment poll. But this is false. The Yankees are an instance of "aesthetic-nihilism"; their business apparatus only serves their will to power as a baseball team. I think. Further, we can learn a lot about Americans by considering this hatred that many have of the Yankees. Aren't Americans the preeminent capitalists in the world? Why do they hate the wealthiest and most powerful team? Why this contradiction? Why this support for the "underdog" team? The Boston Red Sox, fittingly for the city's Puritan roots, are the best expression of American ideology. They represent the "underdog," yet their financial strength is nearly equal to that of the Yankees. "At least they're not the Yankees" is the Boston fan's explanation. And the Yankees, the imperialistic team, are then also the international team, because they are the first team that people in the imperial domain of the U.S. become familiar with; the word "Yankee" stands for Americans in general. And this is also true to many newer U.S. immigrants. So we have a strange phenomenon. The Yankees are the team of the most powerful members of U.S. empire, but also the least powerful. The Red Sox and the other teams operate in the middle, and therefore they claim to be more "American." Strange. The true explanation of my Yankees affiliation is regional as I was born in New York and my father grew up several streets from the old Yankee Stadium (his parents the first generation immigrants, Jews from Eastern Europe). I must give this as a sort of "apology" for being a Yankees fan when I talk to other Americans even though the Yankees are by far the most popular team in the U.S. overall. This is strange indeed; it has the appearance of the "self-denying" form of U.S. power. Interestingly, the third most popular team, the Atlanta Braves utilize aboriginals as a symbolic resource.

Reading assignment as follows.

Norton headnote 431 - 440 ("An American Renaissance?," "American Literary Nationalism," "The Economics of American Letters")
Irving biography + "Rip Van Winkle" (453-466... but you can skip the introduction on 455 and the concluding note on 466)
Hawthorne biography + "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (589-605)
"The Big Bear of Arkansas" (very short biography of the author, T.B. Thorpe, available here)

Questioners as announced are Qian Yu, Ting Ju, Jennie, Alyssa. I include also Joy and Emma because they still "owe me" from last week. And I must add Sharon, Sherry, Tracy, and Jane because I miscounted.

41. Lucille You see on 431-32 a discussion of the so-called "American canon problem." Like a religious community, a political nation seeks a body of "holy texts" to define its identity. (We have already read some of these; the best example of an American holy text is the "Declaration of Independence.") You may see the present Norton Anthology similarly, as a collection of texts that seek to define American identity in a certain way. As the headnote indicates, during the 1800s many people desired a specifically American literature, but they did not deem most of the fiction and poetry that Americans were actually writing during this time to be adequate; for instance Irving was held in high esteem but deemed inferior to British writers, Hawthorne was generally disregarded, and Thorpe was considered a low culture entertainer, like today's television. At the beginning of the 1900s, when the U.S. was undeniably a world power, the first "canon" of American literature was created, but as the Norton editor indicates, most of the authors in this canon were unread or unappreciated during their own lives! This early 1900s canon emphasized the U.S. as a dynamic and creatively vital nation driven by a vision of democratic equality. It was then revised many times; the current edition of the Norton is particularly concerned to be pluralistic, inclusive, multicultural, etc. The literary canon for secondary and university study is a politicized issue in the U.S., but I would not say highly politicized at present. I am certain that the canon of Chinese/Taiwanese literature is more highly politicized in Taiwan at present. Discuss the "Taiwanese canon problem" and draw comparisons.
42. Zoe Why do you think Irving chose to adapt this particular story from the German folk tradition mentioned on 454 and 466. In other words, what is its "American" meaning? You may consider, for instance, what happens while Rip is asleep. How would you make a Taiwanese adaptation of this story?
43. Tady Let us consider the misogynistic (anti-female) undertone of the story; Rip even takes "a drop of comfort" when he learns his wife is dead! Given what you learn about the U.S. literary market on 437, why do you think Irving may want to insist that women are irrational?
44. Vincent Compare Hawthorne's handling of the theme of rebellion or revolution to Irving's.
45. Ken Give us some background information on the ritual of "tarring and feathering" in British political life.
46. Meg Compare Hawthorne's handling of the theme of humor or laughter to Thorpe's.
47. Winnie "The Big Bear of Arkansas" originally appeared in a magazine called Spirit of the Times. Because we have no Norton headnote, give use some background on this magazine, as well as on a similar publication called the Crockett Almanac. Who was the reading audience? Why were these magazines and these kinds of stories ("Southwest Humor") so popular in the 1830s-1850s? Is there any Chinese or Taiwanese equivalent to these stories and/or to the Doggett character?
48. Ted Analyze the story's narrator. What is his relationship to the reader?What is his relationship to Jim Doggett (the bear hunter)? Do you believe Doggett's/Thorpe's educational theory (to "gain information by asking and listening," 83-84), or is there actually a different educational theory operating here? Do you find any similarity between Thorpe's fictional technique and Irving's?
49. Natalie What is Doggett doing when he's "sitting down... from habit" (91)? Whatare his "inexpressibles" (92)? Many critics consider this to be thepunchline to Doggett's story and Thorpe's story, and indeed the mainpoint of both. And, speaking of what is expressible and inexpressible, point us to a few of the unique characteristics of the language Doggettuses in his description of the bear hunt, of Arkansas, and of theregion that was more generally called the frontier or "Old Southwest."
50. Carol Why does Doggett "love" the bear "like a brother" (87), and what doesthis tell us about the Old Southwest? What would Crevecouer think of this story? Some critics say that the bear can be a symbol for aboriginal people. Why do they say this, and do you agree?

Class #4.5

2009-10-06T19:42:00.008+08:00

Good class today. I always need more time than I have available; I guess that means I am not a revolutionary. I need a "push"! In particular, I enjoyed our comparison of concepts of revolution. I hope this will be useful as we go forward... if you feel frustrated or confused, like everything is too complicated, remember... we have 26 meetings of this class remaining. Gradual perfection on the Franklin plan is still possible. Ha ha.

Star Wars series in 10 minute bits (I can't believe the copyright lawyers haven't taken this down!)
Contemporary re-use of the "tea party protest" (ironically, another anti-radical "rebellion" manipulated by powerful interests)

I can't believe I didn't see this question from last week's blog. It's so smart! Rea writes:

In the headnote it’s mentioned that “the first newspaper was appeared in 1704, and by the time of the Revolution there were almost fifty papers and forty magazines” (156). I wonder what the role of these media played during the not-mentioned 70 years. Who are the major audience of these media? How strong their voices were and what proportion of people in American at that time was literate? In my anticipation, there were little people who were literate; therefore, the media were, in some way, controlled by them. If this was true, was the outcome of the revolution truly “public”? I would like to know whether my theory is correct or not.

I gave a preliminary answer at the end of class, and you can see how this relates to the broader concepts we discussed. In the Enlightenment/Rationalist/Modern European political theory, every person is a writer and a reader because every person can create knowledge. Society is artificially composed of the collaboration and/or competition between these people to create and apply their knowledge. In PreModern/Medieval Europe, the only sources of knowledge are the monarch, the academic authorities (interpreters of Greek philosophy, principally Aristotle), and the religious authorities (interpreters of the Bible... and in truth these last two are a single intellectual class, which is affiliated with the monarchies!). Traditional knowledge is considered to be belong only to some people (a central language of power - Latin, like its equivalent Mandarin), and the content of this knowledge is always the same. What is its content? Well, its content basically says that on heaven all can be equal but on earth there are people who naturally will/should control power and information (the Christian synthesis: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"). It's a big circle. Even if the circle "overturns" in revolution, you have a new ruling dynasty with a very similar ideology.

During the PreModern/Medieval era, the centers of learning in the West were the Islamic kingdoms, where human reason was taken to be a force for good in the universe. (We tend to forget this now!) Literacy and knowledge were highly concentrated in Europe; in truth Europe was intellectually dead. With the European "Renaissance" you have the re-adoption of the true content of ancient Greek & Roman learning and knowledge, but more importantly of the true spirit... this means that new knowledge is possible, new political forms are possible. And new languages... consider the invention of new non-Latin languages that we see come to flower in Cervantes (Spanish), Shakespeare (British), Dante (Italian), and Rabelais (French). Another important development is the invention of the printing press in Germany by Gutenberg. Of course the press had already been invented in China, but in Europe its usage spread much more rapidly and its political character changed more rapidly. We can see how the printing press, together with the new science of a "rational universe" and the new political philosophy of an "artificial" society created by human agents that approximated rational natural/physical laws, could threaten the traditional power of the monarchs and the Catholic church. (We must also consider how the age of exploration and trade, the early colonialism of Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Smith, etc. created the "volatility" and interchange that made these shifts possible.)

Now where does America come in? Literacy in the "vernacular languages" (that is, languages newer than Latin, as mentioned previously) developed most rapidly in England, because England was the nation with a political and economic system (and geographic position) most favorable to the emergence of capitalism. But literacy would develop even more quickly in Britain's American colonies. The printing technology in America was worse and the transportation problems were greater, but we may say that the incentive to read and write was greater, because political and economic "volatility" on the outskirts of the British empire made it possible to realize the Modern political theory of political subjects creating their own destiny. You want to be able to read and write because you have the ability to conduct small scale business and small scale politics without an imperial authority over-ruling you (it is too distant, and in the commercialistic British system too disinterested). I simplify, of course. This is not necessarily how British-Americans viewed their life at the time. Many believed in a "natural" or cyclical process of revolution or change; they believed they were returning to be more like the primitive British or perhaps the primitive Christians/Jews or perhaps the primitive Romans. But we may say in hindsight that the underlying structural conditions encouraged the growth of Modern tendencies in their politics.

So Americans are readers and writers. And the American printing network has a unique character; it is radically decentralized unlike the one in England. This, along with the high literacy (perhaps 40% of all people in the northeast - even some women, remember Ann Bradstreet - perhaps more like 5% in the southeast - but that includes the slaves, so still 20% of the creoles), makes the system itself democratic in character even if the messages transmitted in the system are not. Once the printers were radicalized against the British rule by the Stamp Act, the system of printing and distribution becomes a kind of revolutionary network, one of the first areas in which British, Dutch, German, Scotch, etc. "creoles" living under the British empire begin to imagine that they were / could be be a union with common interests. The printers, of course, are also aligned with commercial interests, with the merchants and small bankers of New England in particular (i.e. Boston and the far northeast region). And New England has the highest literacy of all. So it becomes the revolutionary core, and the challenge is then to motivate others to join. First, to motivate those who control the agricultural centers in the Southeast. Second, to motivate the lower social classes who do not hold their own farms or their own capital. Neither of these groups has any special motivation to resist British power.

Here we see the broadening of revolutionary rhetoric in Jefferson and Paine, men whose thinking has a somewhat more radical character than that of the Boston men like John Adams, Samuel Adams, Hancock, etc., and their conservative allies in the southeast and middle states like Madison, Franklin, Washington, Hamilton. Once the door is opened, once a revolutionary panic has been declared, all creoles (and perhaps even some blacks and aboriginals) can be united temporarily by the "broad" or "plastic" concepts like liberty, freedom, etc. The decentralized nature of the printing network encourages this. Thus when the revolution is successful and the creole ruling class (those who hold land and capital; those who actually wanted this "revolution" to defend their rights as British subjects) want to re-establish their power, to re-centralize their power, the printing network is now actually a source of irritation. Because the printing network is still decentralized. It can still transmit more "radical" sorts of messages to a broader public. One of these radical messages is that any man who has basic reading skills can be a political participant, and if this man has no land or capital, he can be freely given land on the western frontier. So now any (white) man can become one of Crevecouer's virtuous farmers. This is the true political message of Thomas Jefferson. This is what he means by "all men created equal," an idea actually more radical than that of the Congress or the eventual political Constitution.

So you see, Rea's excellent question is anticipates our entire class discussion!

Other details that we were unable to discuss... what about the specific editorial changes made by the revolutionary Congress to Jefferson's Declaration? Sherry and Jennie offer some very good theories in the previous blog comments. Jennie, for instance, observes that Jefferson's accusation against the British king for causing the African slave trade is deleted because for the American creoles, "blaming the British on this point is blaming themselves too." The logic here is so ludicrously absurd and hypocritical that it deserves mention, given that this is the founding political document of the most powerful country in the history of the world. How could it be the British king's sole fault that British-American agriculturalists and merchants practice slavery? The deletion is made not only for persuasive or rhetorical reasons, but also for practical reasons... the American creoles in the southeast want to continue to practice slavery! And the ones in the northeast want to continue to benefit financially from it! Jefferson himself is a slaveholder when he writes this document! This is an example of the door swinging wider than he can control; the Declaration will be used for 230 years thereafter as proof that African-Americans should have equal political and economic rights. Now you may ask why a southeastern man, a slaveholder like Jefferson, was asked to author this document representing the revolutionary philosophy of the northeastern merchants. The first reason is because he was a southeasterner and would give the appearance of a broader political coalition. The second is because somewhat like Paine he had a true writing genius for expressing modern political thought in simple terms.

You can also see Jefferson's somewhat more radical cast of mind with his use of "expunge" the British government at the bottom of 342. The Congress changes it to "alter" the British government, as Jennie points out. This is an important difference. As you see by reading Hamilton's first issue of the "Federalist," it isn't even clear that the revolutionary class wanted to alter the government. They liked the British government in theory, but they thought it was corrupt in practice. So they wanted to create their own Britain. Perhaps even their own British "empire"; I see Hamilton's use of the term on 347 as a kind of slip or mistake. Usually he uses happy words for power like "energy" and "vigor" to conceal that he is re-interpreting the revolutionary panic toward his specific interest, along conservative lines.

Jennie also points out that even after the revolution, the main cultural twin and economic ally of the U.S. is Britain. So why antagonize them unnecessarily (thus "he, he, he, he")? There would even be a second war between the U.S. and Britain from 1812-1815, a kind of offshoot of Britain's war with Napoleon, but also a war over territorial and commercial control of U.S. lands and shipping routes. And Americans would "hate" the British until the end of the 1800s. But they were still the main cultural and economic center for the U.S.; almost like the relationship between ROC and PRC in some ways (perhaps in reverse?). Another notable difference... see how the Congress inserted a long religious addition on the right column of 346 ("the supreme judge of the world") which is entirely absent in Jefferson's original. Because as I have said, he is essentially a secularist or modernist when it comes to religion; a radical. The limit of his radicalism is his philosophy about the aboriginals and the blacks, which we will encounter later in the course. Jefferson's idea of all (white) men being (more or less, relatively speaking) political and economic equals would soon become true in practice as well as theory.

Homework for Class #4 (Tuesday 10/5)

2009-09-30T12:10:00.014+08:00

Thanks for all of your contributions to the blog this week. That seems to be going very well. I encourage you to read the posts that your classmates are making; you can learn a lot from them.For next week, the first thing you should do is give a short answer to the following question in the comment reply below:

Do you agree with Edwards that human beings are weak and therefore never entirely good, or do you agree with Franklin that they can make themselves as good as they want to be?

The reading assignment is as follows.

Norton editor's headnote from the bottom of 155 to 159 ("Imperial Politics" and "Pursuing Happiness"); you may also want to look at the timeline on 160-61
The Crevecouer biographical note (bottom 309 - top 310) and the third of his Letters from an American Farmer (310 - top 320)
The Paine biographical note (bottom 324 to 325) and the first of his The Crisis pamphlets. But I can make it shorter for you... read from bottom 332 to top 334 ("These are the times" to "arrived upon the Delaware") and top 335 to middle 337 ("I shall conclude" to "the slain of America").
The Jefferson biographical note (bottom 338 to middle 340) and his "Declaration of Independence" (top 342 to middle 346)
The Federalist biographical note (bottom 346 to middle 347) and the first number of The Federalist (bottom 347 to top 350)

Sherry, Teresa, Emma, Qian, Letitia, Joy, Peggy, Iris, and Rea should compose their own questions. I will post my questions for the others shortly.

31 (Viola). Why do you think the British-American settlers who protested against British policies in the "Boston Tea Party" dressed themselves as aboriginals? (see pg. 156). Unrelated side question - do you find it confusing that those aboriginals are commonly referred to as "Native Americans" or "Indians"?
32 (Caleigh). Crevecouer actually does live on a farm, but of course he is no more a 'simple farmer' than Cooke or Franklin. One of the interesting things about his Letters is that he tries so hard to simulate the voice of that simple farmer. Point to several examples where he uses 'farmer language,' like metaphors of animals, plants, and growing cycles.
33 (Sydney). Compare Crevecouer's notion of the American "hybrid" to Cooke's. In particular, consider his description of ethnic "mixture" on 311 and his pronouncement on 314 that the settlers who live on the western frontier are "no better than carnivorous animals."
34 (Crystal). What does Paine mean when he says that "panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt"? Why does he think that the U.S. revolution against the British is one of these "cases"? Do you think this theory about panic is true? Why or why not?
35 (Esther). Compare Paine's writing to that of a non-American revolutionary writer - Robespierre, Bolivar, Lenin, Mao, or whoever you like. In particular you may want to look for similarities to his absolutist statements that the British-American colonies are "infested" by British loyalists (tories) and that every one of them "is a coward" (335), or that "the blood of his children will curse his cowardice who shrinks back" (337). You might also consider comparing the tone and vocabulary he uses, which is quite different from that of Jefferson and Hamilton.
36 (Jennie). Choose at least one of the deletions that the Congress made to Jefferson's first draft of the "Declaration of Independence" (the underlined words), and explain why this choice might have been made. Choose at least one of the additions that the Congress made to the first draft (the small words in the right margin), and explain why this choice might have been made.
37 (Alyssa). Who is the implied reading audience for the "Declaration" of 1776? In other words, when "we" complain about "he," who are "we" speaking to? Why do you think this document later became the favorite resource for U.S. political activists who opposed slavery, who opposed mistreatment of aboriginals, and who favored political rights for women, etc.? And why might this fact be ironic when we consider the political beliefs of Jefferson and his editors?
38 (Jane). Why does Hamilton call the United States an "empire" (347)? Why does he say that it is "the most interesting" empire "in the world"? Why does he say that creating the wrong political system for the United States will result in "the general misfortune of mankind," and which of our previous writers does this statement remind you of?
39 (Clara). What do you think Hamilton/Publius means when he says the government should have "energy" or "efficiency" or "vigor" (349)? These sound like positive words... why would anyone be worried that the government should be like this, and what more negative words might they use instead?
40 (Tracy). Instead of talking about the specific content of the various pieces that we are reading this week, let us now talk about their general medium. All four of them were printed either in newspapers or in small, cheap pamphlets, and they were widely circulated and reprinted. What does this fact tell you about the social organization of the British-American colonies? Here is a related question... why do you think the Stamp Act of 1765 caused printers of newspapers and pamphlets (like Franklin) to show an anti-British bias in the content they printed?

Homework for Class #3 (Tuesday 9/29)

2009-09-22T19:45:00.020+08:00

Recall that I asked all of you to do a short homework post about the "baggage" or "limited viewpoint" problem. As I said, you can simply rephrase this idea into your own words, provide a personal example, provide a historical/literary example, disagree with the idea, or whatever you want. Post these in the comment reply below.

Here is the new reading assignment.

Norton editor's headnote from 151 to the bottom of 155 ("Expanding World," "Enlightenment Ideals," "Reason and Religion")
The Cooke poem, "The Sot-Weed Factor" (photocopy handout)
The Edwards biographical note (bottom 168 - top 170) and his sermon "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" (194-205)
The Franklin biographical note (middle 218 - top 220), the italicized parts of "The Way to Wealth" (220-226), in which Franklin collects quotations from the first 25 years of his writing career, and the following parts of his Autobiography... top of 231 - bottom of 232 ("Dear Son" to "Lord of the Manor there"), top of 237 - middle of 243 ("To return. I continu'd thus" to "I was too saucy and provoking"), bottom of 259 - bottom of 260 ("At my first Admission" to "went on now very agreeably"), top of 267 - middle of 268 ("Before I enter upon" to "and determin'd to preserve it"), top of 269 - top of 270 ("I should have mention'd" to "recommending Business to us."), and finally 283 - top of 292 (the end).

The "experts" should post answers to the following questions in the comment reply, as well as your ten new questions for me.

21. Compare the music/time/meter of Cooke's poem to that of Bradstreet's poems. How does the difference feel to you as you read it? Cooke has copied this style from a famous poem about the English Revolution of the 1640s, called Hudibras. Why do you think Cooke chose this "hudibrastic" style of poetry to express his thoughts about colonial Maryland. (Maryland is a small province that was made of Smith's Virginia, the non-religious southern British colony.)
22. Cooke's poetic speaker hates Maryland and pronounces a curse on it at the end of the poem. But it is hard to say whether Cooke himself agrees with this "metropolitan" or anti-Maryland view, or whether he takes a "colonial" or pro-Maryland view. Give evidence for both theories about Cooke, and explain which you think is better.
23. Write a short poem about NTHU (in English) using the "hudibrastic" meter of "Sot-Weed Factor." You may trade this question to another student if you feel you are not good at writing poetry.
24. Which of Edwards' images did you find the most terrifying, and why? Is there any comparison possible between this sermon and religious elements in Taiwanese Daoism, Buddhism, animism, etc?
25. Why would this type of sermon perhaps be unnecessary for Winthrop or Bradford? Do you feel there is any contradiction between warning people that their bad actions will be punished, but at the same time telling them that they really have no way to know for sure whether their good actions ("an opportunity to attain salvation" - 204) will result in safety (their "election" to heaven)?
26. Judging from his sermon, do you think Edwards is an anti-Enlightenment thinker? Or do you think his words/ideas show the influence of Enlightenment ideas like Newton's "rational physics" and Locke's "sentimental psychology"? Give evidence for both theories about Edwards, and explain which you think is better.
27. Do you, personally, agree more with Franklin's ideas about ethics/morals/psychology, or more with Edwards'? Explain why.
28. The Chinese tradition has many maxims or proverbs of a similar nature to the ones that "Poor Richard" says in "The Way to Wealth." Find a few traditional Chinese maxims that agree with Franklin's maxims, and a few that disagree.
29. Why is it important for Franklin to establish that he is the "youngest Son of the youngest Son for 5 Generations back" (232)? What can you learn about the changing social organization of the British-American colony when you consider Franklin's rebellion against his older brother (242-43) together with his "Club" or "Junto" (269)?
30. When the new United States Congress had its first meetings in the 1780s, one of the issues debated was what the seal symbol of the new nation would be. This was their choice. Franklin disagreed, saying that the bird should be a turkey rather than an eagle. Perhaps he was joking... you can never really tell with Franklin. But let us consider that he wasn't. Why does Franklin think the turkey would be a good symbol for the U.S., and how can you relate this to his ideas in "The Way to Wealth" and the Autobiography?

Catchup Questions (Class #2.5)

2009-09-22T18:28:00.019+08:00

Good class today... I know we were all pretty tired at the end, but I think we accomplished a good amount. I apologize for not making the time to answer your questions, and making my questions the priority instead. This is not my "city on a hill" ideal for teaching, as described in the Syllabus Covenant. Just because it's something I did do, doesn't mean it's something I would do! I will answer them below.

Oh, and here is the proper YouTube link for Pocohontas.

Crystal wants to know why there was so much linguistic diversity among American Indian (aboriginal) tribes. I believe the answer lies in the political and geographical decentralization of these tribes. As I discussed, in Central America (e.g. Aztec Empire in today's central Mexico, Maya Empire in today's southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, etc.) and in South America (e.g. Inca Empire in today's Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador), there were aboriginal empires that had written languages, complex trading networks, complex agriculture, etc. But the North American tribes encountered by the French and British (like the island tribes first encountered by the Spanish) tended to be organized into smaller political and linguistic units. This leads me to a further observation, though. It is a mistake to think that there was only one Spanish people or language. Actually, it was Ferdinand and Isabella who conquered the other "tribes" of Spain and imposed their language (Castilian) and their rule right around the same time that they started their American empire. People still speak those other versions of Spanish today, and there are even still independence movements. Nor was there only one English people or language; right around the same time that they started their American empire, the English were trying to consolidate their imperial language and their imperial rule ("Britain") over the Scottish, Irish, Welsh, etc. Meaning that the empire in the Americas was actually one way that those "tribes" were able to consolidate power in their local area. So another "lie" of ideology is that American aboriginal people are "tribal" whereas European people are "unified."
Lucille wants to know how imperial encounters altered European languages. I'm not entirely sure the answer to this question. My sense is that the European languages that entered the Americas stayed distinct from one another because the Europeans generally arranged (or fought) to have separate territories. The best counter-example is the city of New Orleans, which was populated for hundreds of years by various French, Spanish, British, free African, and free American peoples. The British considered this to be the city of "sin" or unforgivable linguistic and ethnic mixing. They still celebrate the Catholic holidays there today, like Mardi Gras. Recall that the Spanish tended to permit "mixing" with American aboriginals, whereas contrary to the "Black Legend" the British policies were more about imposing ethnic borders, even at the cost of genocide. You can see then that the Spanish language was more open to the entrance of aboriginal languages, which we can see in today's Mexican, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, etc. versions of Spanish, which are very different from standard or "Castilian" Spanish. (Although not in Peru, which was the central imperial capital because of the gold. Their Spanish there is very "pure." And in Argentina & Chile, their Spanish is very "changed," but they seem to have killed all the aboriginals at some point.) Even so we can see the entrance of many aboriginal terms into British-American language, in particular the names of places, rivers, etc. You will see a funny version of this take place in Cooke's "Sotweed Factor," where he has an awkward time incorporating the aboriginal word "canoe" into English.
Esther wants to know what the origins of "Eurocentrism" or European supremacist attitudes are. My answers in class today were "graphocentrism" or the supposition that written language is superior to spoken language, and what we may call "agrocentrism," the supposition that large-scale agriculture involving import/export and private land ownership is superior to hunting, fishing, gathering, or small-scale agriculture. It might also be argued that the greed for physical resources comes "before" the ideology, and the ideology only comes "after" in order to justify it. This is the core of the Black Legend; the British are accusing the Spanish of using their religion as a pretext for conquest, and claiming that they behave otherwise. All the same, I don't think we should consider this attitude uniquely European; it may be possible to look at another empire, for instance, and speak of a "Chinocentrism" that contains many of the same attitudes about writing, agriculture, and skin color, among other things, either as "pre-justifications" or "post-justifications" of empire.
Caleigh wants to know about womens' roles in the British empire. This is difficult. On the one hand, the "volatility" of imperial adventure leads to stricter gender separation because in circumstances that are physically difficult, the physical difference in strength, etc. between male and female becomes more important. I believe, in practice, that more of the settlers were men, and you can see the ideological side of this when you look at the Pocohontas legend where the European is "male" and the aboriginal is "female." On the other hand, if bare survival is less of an issue, it could be said that the volatility of imperial adventure leads to more open gender roles. Why? Because it takes luxury or real economic security to create the kind of leisure roles that high-status women had in agricultural aristocracies or industrial bourgeois societies. Women who came to the Americas were likely to be the daughters and spouses of relatively poor men, or relatively low status men, and so the womens' economic activity was necessary for prosperity if not bare survival. It is only later when the British colonies become more economically secure that we may see a counter-movement... for instance in the 1770s during the U.S. revolution women were typically seen as economic participants in the society (though not citizens or political participants) whereas by the 1850s they were seen only as "symbols" or "teachers" of American ideals to their children. The strictest answer to your question is that the British law of "coverture" was extended to the Americas and later adapted into U.S. law. Unmarried women could not hold property (it was their father's), married women could not hold property (it was their husband's), but widowed women could (therefore they were seen as a sort of economic and sexual threat), and there was pretty much no possibility of divorce. One of the curious things about the Puritans is that, even though the quasi-democratic Puritan political leadership was all male, and even though they were low-status in Europe mainly for religious reasons (they had some degree of wealth and education), the Puritans did include women in their desire for universal education, which was not usual for the British. (The threat of this female power can be seen in the "Salem Witch trials.")
Viola wants to know how Puritan writers like Bradford and Winthrop influenced later American people/writers. I think I covered that fairly well today. "American exceptionalism" means that America is the exception to other countries/empires, a sort of paradise on earth. It also means that any act that it undertakes which does not equal its stated ideals is an "exception." And it means that the British-American colony, or the United States nation, is the "city of man," but America as the underlying ideological concept is a city of God that has no beginning and end, no restricted historical existence.
Sydney wants a clarification of the Norton editor's point about what audience Puritan religious writing addresses itself to, and how it addressed itself. I tried to discuss the curious double approach in Puritan writing (and in Puritan religious thought) between an address to the "heart" and an address to the "mind." But I think what the editor meant was that the Puritans basically divided the world into five sociological categories. First is aboriginals; they don't seem particularly interested in converting them to their religion as the Spanish and the non-Puritan British like Smith did. Second is Europeans who live in Europe; they live in the "corrupted" city of man and are doomed. Third is the "strangers" who came with them to New England but reject their religion, like Morton. They are also doomed. Fourth is the Puritans themselves, or let's say the "ideal" version of the Puritans... the people that they want to be. They called themselves "saints," pure and holy people, though to be fair they were constantly worried that they weren't living up to their ideals. But the fifth category is the audience of Puritan religious writing and speech. And this is the people who could be "saved"... either people attracted to Puritan religious ideas who haven't fully committed themselves, or Puritans who are "backsliding" and failing to uphold their ideal. The reason this is important is because even as the original Puritan ideas fade, we see the "address to the backsliders" occur again and again in American writing and speech. Both Edwards and Franklin are writing in this form, I think. Both Bush and Obama clearly use this form.
Tracy wants to compare Smith to Columbus. This is an open question, and one I would encourage you to pursue in the reply comments to this post. Certainly they both suffered many "volatile" ups and downs in their fortunes as a result of their imperial adventures. Certainly we can see the same mix of calculation and legitimate wonder or imagination in their writing. The main difference I pointed out today was that in Columbus' empire he reports directly to the monarch as sovereign, whereas Smith, like the Puritans, is bound by a sovereign legal document or charter that was created by a mixed monarchal/parliamentary government. The British system deliberately encourages the imperial agent to be rather independent or entrepreneurial, although we can see from reading the misfortunes of Columbus or Cabeza da Vaca that the "weak" grasp of Spanish authority in the Americas means that there are many entrepreneurial opportunities.
If I am understanding her correctly, Clara wants to know why Winthrop references the "Book of Micah" on pg. 86 instead of the Jewish/Christian Bible. Finally, an easy one! The Book of Micah is in the Bible. When I was a small child my family lived in New York and next door there was a boy the same age as I. His name was Micah. My name, Aaron, is also from the Jewish portion of the Bible. The context is interesting... Aaron is a sort of interpreter or translator. His brother Moses is the prophet, the man with the direct "telephone" to God who sees the full truth. But these kind of people, you know they have a hard time putting their ideas into ordinary language... so Aaron helps him. The problem comes when Moses departs for some time and Aaron is left to teach the people... they become unjust because they are now only receiving the word of God indirectly. Then Moses returns and lectures them angrily. My personal interpretation, as suits my name, is that there is no telephone to God and that all of us must struggle with the "partial view" of truth that we get through our mind and our language. I guess that's why I'm Aaron!

Homework for Class #2 (Tuesday 9/22)

2009-09-15T18:58:00.017+08:00

Please notice the reading assignments are now shorter!

Read Norton^7th headnote pgs. 11-12 ("Writing in Tongues" & "Pilgrim & Puritan). We'll finish the rest next week. You may also find the timeline on 15-16 useful.
Read Norton^7th pgs. 57-58 (William Bradford biography) and the following sections of Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation: middle of 60 to middle of 61 ("Being thus arrived..." to "before the sons of men.")... bottom of 63 to bottom of 64 ("so being very weary" to "called that place the First Encounter") bottom of 65 to middle of 66 ("I shall a little return" to "as cases did require")... top of 68 to top of 69 ("All this while" to "befell him and his men")... middle of 71 to middle of 75 (MR. MORTON section & PROSPERITY WEAKENS section)
Read Norton^7th pgs. 75-76 (John Winthrop biography) and section II of Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (bottom of 84 to middle of 87)
Read Norton^7th pgs. 97 (Ann Bradstreet biography) and Bradstreet's poems "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" (107-08) and "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (10)
Read Norton^7th pgs. 43-45 (John Smith biography), the following sections of his General History of Virginia... top of 48 to bottom of 53 ("And now the winter approaching" to "God hath still delivered it") and the following sections of his Description of New England... top of 54 to top of 55 ("Who can desire more" to "worthily deserve them.")... top of 56 to middle of 57 ("For I am no so simple" to "country, master, and servant.")

The 10 answerers and the 10 questioners should comment in reply to this post by Monday. But anyone else is welcome to join the discussion. Here are my questions.

11. How would you classify the genre, audience, and purpose of Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" ? (Consider the detail given on 11 about when and where it was first 'published.') Compare to the genre, audience, purpose, and setting of Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation.
12. What does Bradford's phrase "this evil world" (85) tell you about Puritan religious views? Compare to Bradstreet "fading world" ("Before the Birth" line 1 on pg. 107). Do the Puritans view New England as a paradise or as a hell? Both? Explain.
13. Clearly Winthrop considers the Massachusetts Bay Company's "covenant" with the divine (God/Jesus Christ) to be more important than its charter with the government of England. Compare these two 'contracts' to the so-called Mayflower compact that Bradford quotes on 66 and to the Puritans' agreement with the aboriginal chief Massassoit that he quotes on 68.
14. The Puritan authors make use of a literary technique called typology, in which they compare their experience in America to that of the early Hebrews (Jews) and the early Christians, as written in the Jewish/Christian holy bible. (See Bradford on 60-61 and Winthrop at the bottom of 85 for examples). But typography, to me, is more generally representative of the mental state of the traveller or migrant. It is not possible to see a new place and its people "as they really are"; instead, you try to organize them using your previous concepts and experiences. Please give an extended example of this more general "typology" phenomenon, either in literature/film, or in your own personal life.
15. What evidence do we have from Winthrop that the Puritan community is seeking to be more egalitarian than society in England? How does he think this can be accomplished?
16. Winthrop's "city on a hill" (86 - a quote from the Christian Bible) is one of the most famous phrases in U.S. politics. Even recent American politicians like John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger continue to use it. What do you take this phrase to mean, and how might its meaning conflict with the "radical linguistic and cultural diversity of the [American] colonial world" that the Norton editor speaks about on 12?
17. Describe the various actions of Morton that make him "lord of misrule" and a kind of anti-Bradford or anti-Winthrop (71-74). Why does Bradford think Morton's "sundry rhymes and verses" are somehow different than, say, Bradstreet's? Would he consider John Smith to be a lord of misrule?
18. Do you recognize the poetic form Bradstreet is using? I mean the music/time/meter of the verse. Where else have you seen it? There are only a few examples where she violates the rule of this form, and they seem to be intentional; what is their effect and how does it relate to the meaning of the lines. (See line 5 & 6 of "Birth" and lines 10-12 of "Husband").
19. This Disney movie is the version of the John Smith / Pocohontas story most Americans are familiar with. What assumptions/changes are made to the story in this short video clip that may conflict with Smith's account, and/or with historical fact?
20. You can tell Smith's outlook is very different from that of the three Puritan authors; he says at the top of 56 that there is no "motive" for coming to America "other than wealth." Indeed, Description of Virginia would probably be best classified as an advertisement. Imagine you are a modern advertising specialist who has been transported back in time to help John Smith improve his 1616 ad with advertising techniques from 2009. You may trade to another student with more interest in advertising, graphic art, etc.

Catch-up Homework (Class #1.5)

2009-09-15T18:57:00.023+08:00

It was great to meet all of you today! I am impressed by your intelligence in class and in the survey forms I'm reading now. I think this is going to be a very good course for all of us. Difficult, but good.

Click here for my summary/analysis of your responses to questions #1-6 of the survey, about the biographical profile of the class.
Click here for my summary/analysis of your responses to question #7 of the survey, about concepts of empire.
Click here for a blank form. I also put the completed forms in my mailbox in case you want to add more to them, and then return them to the mailbox.

I hope you will ask me any questions you have about the course or the syllabus, either here on the blog, by emailing Ms. Chen, or by emailing me. Note: some of you have said that myNTHU emails are rejected by your server due to virus threat. I haveexperienced the same problem when extracting NTHU mails to my Gmailaccount. So I will email the whole class from my Gmail and you willhave a better address to use. I don't list it here because it will drawspam.

Remember that you need to "catch up" on today's reading assignment if you didn't have the texts to read, or didn't have the time to do so before class. That means you need to buy the Norton Anthology (Shorter 7th Edition) from the NTHU bookstore if you haven't already done so. Each of the groups needs to post one comment here as an answer to the question that was given to them on Tuesday 9/15. Please do so by Friday. Click on the comments below to see my response to a student email, in which I give guidance as to the level of detail I would like in your answers. I am reducing the size of this reading assignment, as follows! If you read more, that's not "bad" because it gives you extra understanding.

I still want you to read Norton 1-9 for background, and all the writing by Columbus and Cabeza de Vaca on 24-36.
The most important part of the Columbus letters, I think, is the last paragraph on 26, which is very famous.
Ifind the entire Cabeza de Vaca letter fascinating! But I suppose themost important part is "The First Confrontation" & "Falling-Outwith Our Countrymen" on 34-36. So when I say most important, I mean youshould read the rest at moderate speed but read more slowly andcarefully on these important parts.
But wecan reduce the Champlain reading ... the only part that I think isnecessary is the fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs of Chapter III, inwhich Champlain tells the aboriginal leader that Christianity issuperior to the aboriginal religions

Preparing for the First Class Meeting

2009-09-02T00:00:00.020+08:00

I moved the information in this post to the one above it. But I don't want to delete it because there are some good comment replies. So let's continue to use this post for "personal" discussion, general comments about the class, technical questions about the Blogger web software, etc.

What is this?

2009-09-01T23:21:00.007+08:00

This blog is your resource for all information about our American Literature class. I will update it frequently, so you should check it frequently. You will also use it to post homework answers and questions. I will provide more details in the syllabus I hand out on the first day of class, which you can preview here. I'm looking forward to meeting all of you. Feel free to email me any questions, or post them in reply below.