Instructor: Trena Houp
E-mail: thoup@english.ufl.edu
Office Location: Rolfs 501
Mailbox: 4301 Turlington
Office Hours: MW 7 and by appointment

Required Texts
Various online readings and Dover Thrift Editions of:
Great Speeches by Native Americans
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Great American Short Stories
Great Short Stories by American Women
101 Great American Poems
White Fang by Jack London
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Overview
Building on the study and practice of expository and argumentative writing in ENC 1101, AML 2070 teaches students how to analyze and appreciate literary texts, write critical arguments about literary texts, and gain a general knowledge of American literature and literary history. While individual sections of the course may involve different literary texts and different modes of analysis, all provide opportunities to work with a variety of literary genres, including short stories, novels, poetry, and essays. The course’s main focus is on the process of producing well supported, polished, and persuasive writing about texts. This particular class has been designed with two main audiences in mind: general education students who have some interest in United States literature and students who plan to major in English. This class will present the students in each of these target audiences with a group of texts that have been—or are currently—considered exceptionally important to American literature and/or culture. In hopes of meeting the needs of the students who need the broadest possible foundation for more advanced studies of American literature, I have designed the course to cover the broadest possible amount of literature, while simultaneously striving to select texts that have enough broad cultural significance to interest students with other objectives. The class will discuss literary style, form, and hermeneutics, but its main mode of inquiry will be historicist.

Major Assignments
Reading Journal: Students are expected to arrive prepared to contribute to class discussion. This preparation involves careful reading and developing thoughtful responses to the text. In this journal, you will take notes while reading in order to summarize and offer critical commentary on the required readings. Students are encouraged to use this journal to explore ideas for the response papers and the longer essay. Students should write at least two pages a week in the journal.
Book Review: In addition to the required texts, students will read a novel by an American author and write a book review based on this text. I will provide a list of suggested titles, but students should feel free to choose an alternate title as long as they consult with me prior to reading the book. Students must discuss the novel with me before beginning the assignment to determine the appropriate focus of the review. The review should be 6-8 pages in length.
Reading Response Papers: Over the course of the semester, you will be required to complete five response papers. These papers must be at least two pages long, fully developed, and polished. Each response paper should present an argument about the texts you have recently read. You may write about a multitude of issues (and we will discuss the possibilities at length in class), but the key is to write an argument, not a summary, vignette, character sketch, one-act dramatic performance, book report, or any other variety of prose production. The argument must have a clear thesis statement and its claims must be fully supported with details from the texts. These assignments will be given grades based on the criteria I have detailed here and that I will discuss in class.
Essay: Students will write a well thought out and researched literary analysis of one of the class texts. Students will choose a theme or aspect of the text for analysis and reflection and compose an 8-10 page paper. This paper will be a focused and more in depth exploration of a class text and needs to include both close textual reading and analysis. The goal for this paper is to produce an arguable thesis and defend it in an articulate and concise manner. Students are encouraged to consult with me prior to beginning this assignment.

Grade Distribution
Reading Journal 10%
Book Review 15%
Reading Responses 40%
Essay 20%
Class participation including in class writing and quizzes 15%

*All work must be completed for a grade or feedback because this is a Gordon Rule course.

Grading Scale
A 90-100
B+ 86-89
B 80-85
C+ 76-79
C 70-75
D+ 66-69
D 60-65
E 0-59

Course Policies

Rules for all Assignments
• Be prepared to discuss readings on the date listed.
• Ask for clarification if any assignments/requirements seem unclear.
• All writing assignments are due at the beginning of class on the date due unless specific arrangements have been made with me beforehand.
• Late essays will be lowered by one letter grade for every day late. Nothing will be accepted after five calendar days (as opposed to class days) have elapsed. If you need to submit something late over a weekend or holiday, you should contact me via e-mail to make appropriate arrangements. 
• Small writing assignments and quizzes will not be accepted late under any circumstances.   
• Average writing gets an average grade - a C. To earn a higher grade, you must demonstrate critical acumen, an engaging style, and a convincing arguing ability. Your essays will be graded on content, organization, persuasive force, wisdom, lucidity, and other criteria according to each assignment. I expect your papers to be free of major grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
 
Submission of Writing Assignments
• Writing assignments will be submitted to me in either paper or electronic format. 
• If papers are submitted via e-mail, they must be sent by the beginning of class on the day they are due. I must receive your papers via e-mail at the following e-mail address: thoup@english.ufl.edu. The paper must be e-mailed as an attachment in MS Word Format. If you do not have Word, please let me know.  
• If I request a hard copy of your papers, you must submit them at the beginning of class on the day that they are due.  
• Whether in hard print or electronic file, all papers must be typed and formatted according to the following guidelines: All margins should be 1 inch and the font should be 12 point Times New Roman. Any deviation from this format will result in penalties.  
• All citations are always expected to be in MLA format.

Attendance
Promptness and attendance are imperative in a discussion class. It should go without saying that you should arrive to class on time and well prepared. Tardiness, like sporadic absences, disrupts the class. Do not enter the class more than five minutes after it has begun. Three tardies will count as an unexcused absence. Your letter grade will be lowered one full letter grade after the third unexcused absence (university-sponsored events and documented illnesses are usually excused). Additional absences may cause you to fail the course. If you miss class, you are responsible for getting any assignments and making up any work.

Grade Complaints
A low grade on a single assignment will not prohibit a good course grade if your work improves. You should first discuss grade complaints with me. After doing this, if you still have grade complaints about multiple assignments and expect your final grade to be too low, get a complaint form from the English office and submit this along with all written work and an explanation of absences and class participation. A committee of faculty members will review each complaint and decide whether to raise, lower, or keep the given grade.

Academic Dishonesty
Unless it is specifically connected to assigned collaborative work, all work should be individual. Evidence of collusion (working with someone not connected to the class or assignment), plagiarism (use of someone else’s published or unpublished words or design without acknowledgement) or multiple submissions (submitting the same paper in different courses) will lead to the university’s procedures for dealing with academic dishonesty. All students are expected to honor their commitment to the university’s Honor Code.

Classroom Conduct
Every student in this class is expected to participate in a responsible and mature manner that enhances education. Each student is expected to show respect for the diversity of opinions expressed during discussion and in drafts. Each student should balance the desire to express opinions with the recognition that other students and the instructor in the class also need to be heard. Any conduct that disrupts the learning process may lead to disciplinary action.

Conferences
I encourage you to make arrangements to see me, especially when you have questions about an assignment, need help with a particular writing problem, want extra feedback on a draft, or have questions about my comments on your work. Of course, we can also correspond via e-mail.

Schedule
* This is not a lecture class, so come prepared to discuss the texts.

Section 1: Non-Fiction

Week 1
January 9 M Class introduction and review of syllabus
January 11 W Great Speeches by Native Americans p. 1-49
January 13 F Great Speeches by Native Americans p. 50-62, 66-71, 75-84, 89-115, 121-122, 130-132 and 141-147

Week 2
January 16 M No Class - holiday
January 18 W Great Speeches by Native Americans p. 149-169, 171-185 and 195-218
January 20 F Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth” and “Remarks Concerning the North American Savage”

Week 3
January 23 M Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience
January 25 W Life of Olaudah Equiano (read all excerpts from Interesting Narrative) and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl p. 1-33
January 27 F Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl p. 33-80

Week 4
January 30 M Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl p. 80-135
February 1 W Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl p. 135-167; Response Paper 1 Due

Section 2: Short Stories

February 3 F Great American Short Stories: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, and Harte

Week 5
February 6 M Great American Short Stories: Crane, Twain, Jewett and Chesnutt
February 8 W Great American Short Stories: Freeman, Gilman, James, and Chopin
February 10 F Great American Short Stories: London, Bierce, Dreiser, and Cather

Week 6
February 13 M Great American Short Stories: Fitzgerald, Anderson and Hemingway
February 15 W Great Short Stories by American Women: Davis, Alcott, and Chopin; also Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby”
February 17 F Great Short Stories by American Women: Wharton, Dunbar-Nelson and Glaspell

Week 7
February 20 M Great Short Stories by American Women: Barnes, Hurston and Larsen; Response Paper 2 Due

Section 3: Poetry

February 22 W 101 Great American Poems: Bradstreet, Wheatley, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow and Poe; also Wheatley’s “On Virtue,” “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” and “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”
February 24 F 101 Great American Poems: Lincoln, Holmes, Melville, Whitman, Harper and Dickinson

Week 8
February 27 M 101 Great American Poems: Lazarus, Wilcox, Thayer, Masters, Robinson, Crane, Johnson, Dunbar and Stein
March 1 W 101 Great American Poems: Frost, Sandburg, Lindsay, Stevens, Williams, Teasdale and Pound
March 3 F 101 Great American Poems: Jeffers, Moore, Eliot, McKay, Millay, MacLeish, and Cummings; also Eliot’s “The Wasteland”

Week 9
March 6 M 101 Great American Poems: Toomer, Hughes, Cullen and Auden; White Fang p. 1-34; Response Paper 3 Due

Section 4: Fiction

March 8 W White Fang p. 35-91
March 10 F White Fang p. 92-152

Week 10
March 13 - 17 No Class – Spring Break

Week 11
March 20 M My Antonia p. 1-62
March 22 W My Antonia p. 63-109; Book Review Due
March 24 F My Antonia p. 110-175

Week 12
March 27 M The Jungle p. 1-61
March 29 W The Jungle p. 62-116
March 31 F The Jungle p. 117-167; Response Paper 4 Due

Week 13
April 3 M The Jungle p. 167-234
April 5 W The Jungle p. 234-290
April 7 F Last of the Mohicans p. 1-61

Week 14
April 10 M Last of the Mohicans p. 62-153
April 12 W Last of the Mohicans p. 154-226
April 14 F Last of the Mohicans p. 227-327; Response Paper 5 Due

Week 15
April 17 M Adventures of Huckleberry Finn p. 1-72
April 19 W Adventures of Huckleberry Finn p. 73-140
April 21 F Adventures of Huckleberry Finn p. 140-220

Week 16
April 24 M Conferences
April 26 W Last day of class, Essay Due

NOTE: I reserve the right to alter the syllabus at any time.