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[Spring 2006]
ENGL G6608y Literature of
War and Reconstruction
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Prof.
Amanda Claybaugh
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When military reconstruction ended, in 1877,
cultural reconstruction began. Under the sponsorship of
the nation's leading literary magazines, a number of US
writers
deliberately set out to memorialize the war and to reconcile
the nation. This seminar will focus on the difficulties
attending these two projects. In some cases, reconciling
the nation required forgetting the war. In others, sectional
reconciliation required that the work of racial reconciliation
be left undone.
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REQUIREMENTS
Students who take this seminar for 6000-level credit will
write one 20- to 25-page research paper at the end of
the semester. Students who take this seminar for 4000-level
credit will write three 5-page papers at times convenient
for them.
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SYLLABUS
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| Session 1: |
Introduction
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The Immediate Post-War Period |
| Session 2: |
racial reconciliation
Lydia Maria Child, Romance of the Republic
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| Session 3: |
sectional reconciliation
John W. De Forest, Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession
to Loyalty
John W. De Forest, "The Great American Novel"
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The South: Old and New |
| Session 4: |
planters and klansmen
Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings
Albion Tourgée, excerpt from An Invisible Empire
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| Session 5: |
the old and new south
George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes
George Washington Cable, "The Freedman's Case in
Equity"
Henry W. Grady, "The New South"
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Remembering the Civil War |
| Session 6: |
experiencing the war
Ulysses S. Grant, excerpt from Personal Memoirs of Ulysses
S. Grant
William Tecumseh Sherman, excerpt from Memoirs of Gen.
W. T. Sherman
Walt Whitman, "The Wound Dresser"
Herman Melville, Battle-Pieces
Mary Chesnut, excerpt from Diary from Dixie
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| Session 7: |
missing the war
Henry James, excerpt from The Middle Years
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
William Dean Howells, excerpt from Years of My Youth
Mark Twain, "Chronicle of a Campaign that Failed"
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Repeating the Civil War |
| Session 8: |
the war abroad
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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| Session 9: |
the war at home
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes
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The 1890s |
| Session 10: |
the epic of war
Frances W. Harper, Iola Leroy
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| Session 11: |
the lyric of war
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
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| Session 12: |
separate but equal
"Plessy v. Ferguson"
Sutton Griggs, Imperium in Imperio
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| Session 13: |
the end of reconstruction
Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
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