Sample Courses
Early American Literature
This course examines the foundations of American expression and American literature, examining different answers to the question, "What does it mean to be American?" Together we will read and examine the literature of the American colonies, the American Revolution, and the early republic from the beginnings through 1830. Topics include the roots of African American literature, Native American backgrounds, European travels in and constructions of the New World, New England Puritanism, the Enlightenment in America, political independence and the rise of national consciousness, and the development of American literature.
Early American Novels
As the Constitution was being ratified, American writers picked up their pens and turned to fiction, using narrative to explore the racial, political, social, cultural, and religious dynamics of this new nation. They experimented with form and stretched the reach of traditional genres, employing new types of voice to investigate what it meant to have a voice in early America. In the process, these writers imagined new ideals, sought justice through print, expanded the meaning of freedom, and, above all, tried to identify and define the features of a new American identity. Reading a series of novels—from the ratification of the Constitution (1788-90) to the rise of Andrew Jackson (1827-1828)—this course will examine the answers proposed, and, more importantly, the questions raised in America’s earliest fiction.
First Encounters
This course will examine interactions between European cultures and the “New World.” Together we will read Spanish, French, and English accounts of exploration and colonization, considering what “America” meant to the many people who lived in it, sailed by it, sought gold in it, settled on its lands, or shipwrecked on its shores. Most importantly, we will use European accounts to investigate first encounters in early America, learning different paradigms for the study of cultural relations while seeking to uncover Indigenous voices and perspectives. A guiding feature of the class will be the consideration of textual evidence: how do we make claims about early America—especially about early Native American experiences and perspectives—when Europeans did almost all the writing and recording? How do such texts work? What can we learn from them? And how should we read them? Such interpretative questions will guide our literary and historical exploration of early American encounters.
City on a Hill
Taught for American Culture Studies
This course examines the concept, history, and culture of American exceptionalism—the idea that America has been specially chosen, or has a special mission to the world. First, we examine the Puritan sermon that politicians quote when they describe America as a “city on a hill.” This sermon has been called the “ur-text” of American literature, the foundational document of American culture; learning and drawing from multiple literary methodologies, we will re-investigate what that sermon means and how it came to tell a story about the Puritan origins of American culture—a thesis our class will reassess with the help of modern critics. In the second part of this class, we will broaden our discussion to consider the wider (and newer) meanings of American exceptionalism, theorizing the concept while looking at the way it has been revitalized, redefined and redeployed in recent years. Finally, the course ends with a careful study of American exceptionalism in modern political rhetoric, starting with JFK and proceeding through Reagan to the current day, ending with an analysis of Donald Trump and the rise of “America First.” In the end, students will gain a firm grasp of the long history and continuing significance—the pervasive impact—of this concept in American culture.
Marilynne Robinson
Graduate Seminar
The novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson first achieved national acclaim with Housekeeping (1980), a haunting coming-of-age novel about two sisters set in the beauty and grandeur of the west. That novel eventually established Robinson at the Iowa Writers Workshop where she taught for many years. What many noticed in her first book was a new sort of voice, a lyric prose, which returned over two decades later in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead (2004). Since then, she has written two more novels (Home and Lila) set in the same town, but with radically different voices and perspectives. Between these novels and her collected essays, Robinson’s work engages issues of race, gender, history, regionalism, and religion. Her later work has focused in particular on the role of the humanities and higher education. In this class, we will read all her published books, asking questions of development, style, and voice. Meanwhile, as we see what critical engagements have been made with her writings, we will situate her within broader academic discourses and ask how various approaches can open new insights into her writings.
Markets and Morality
Beyond Boundaries Course
What does it look like to live a moral life of leadership in market systems? We know all too well what it does not look like. The news is filled with moral failures of leaders and executives at top firms. We like to believe that we would behave differently, but what kind of pressures inform our moral choices? What pulls us, what pushes us, and what persuades us to act one way rather than another? These are the questions that a course combining business and literature can open in unique ways, for the world of fiction helps open the ethical dilemmas of the market we inhabit everyday. In the following course, we use great books, classics of film and modern television, and the tools of modern psychology and business strategy to think critically about what is entailed in living a moral life in the midst of the modern market.
