ENGL 7760 American Literature and Culture

Literature of the American South
1:15–5:15 TR
Bert Hitchcock

This offering of “American Literature and Culture” will investigate the concept or entity, subject, phenomenon, tradition, or category (!?) of Southern literature through the framework or means of critically, comparatively scrutinizing three recent comprehensive major-publisher textbook anthologies of writings from the American South (published 1998, 2001, 2005). Common primary class reading will include (a) text selections from one chosen anthology and, keying off of the three anthologies’ relative appraisal of authors, (b) several longer (book-length) texts by “major” writers. In general, by the end of the (admittedly) (very) short term, each student should be able to produce an informed, thoughtful prospectus or proposal for a hypothetical short anthology of Southern literature that would include a convincing defining justification and appealing table of contents. Individual, particular student responsibilities or tasks will entail detailed investigation (primary and secondary material research) of one important but non-major author toward the dual objective of (1) writing a worthy, publishable biographical and critical anthology- entry manuscript on that person and (2) discovering an original, prospective scholarly article/conference presentation idea regarding this writer’s work. Allowing if not demanding, in several senses, the “distinguishing” of the “literature” of “the American South,” then, this study of literature and culture will also be giving significant attention to the process of anthologizing and the phenomenon of canonization.