Introduction
This course focuses on the era of American (specifically United States) literature from 1830 through 1870. Literary critics often refer to these four decades as the American Renaissance, a term that literally means rebirth and suggests a parallel to the Renaissance in Europe, a flowering of the arts and sciences that began in the 14th century. As always, the dates that mark the beginning and end of any era are somewhat arbitrary, and any label raises as many questions as it answers. In this case, if something is supposedly being reborn, that suggests it lived before, but American literature before 1830 offers few highlights: minor novels by Charles Brockden Brown, popular stories by Washington Irving that he wrote mostly while living in Europe, entertaining but unrealistic adventures by James Fenimore Cooper. As for parallels with the Renaissance in Europe, that era resulted in part from the rediscovery of classical Greek texts that had been lost to Europe but preserved by Muslim scholars during the Early Middle Ages or Early Medieval Period (sometimes popularly, though not accurately, referred to as the Dark Ages). None of this applies to American literature.

In the United States, the year 1830 is thus more a birth than a rebirth. It marks the beginning of a period of remarkable change and growth in American literary sophistication and ambition. This period begins with the growing influence of Romanticism, which had swept through Europe since its beginnings in Germany in the late 18th century and inspired two generations of English writers in the decades since. Indeed, the era of the American Renaissance is identical with the era of American Romanticism; the terms are nearly interchangeable. Romanticism in this country took the form of American Transcendentalism, whose key thinker is Ralph Waldo Emerson. The decades that followed brought a succession of major writers — including but not limited to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson — who engaged with this philosophical movement in various ways. Simultaneously, the United States changed from a country of fewer than 13 million people, including slaves, to one of almost 40 million people, and from one expressed through the plural construction the United States are to one expressed by the the singular construction the United States is, a grammatical transformation that required the loss of perhaps 750,000 (the exact figure is unknowable) lives in the Civil War. In other words, the American Literary Renaissance occurred at a time in which the United States was experiencing not only extraordinary growth but also redefining itself as a nation, both in theory and in fact.

In this class, we will consider the literature of this era both as individual texts and in those texts’ socio-historical, philosophical, and literary contexts. To do that, we will read closely and engage thoughtfully with works now recognized as being some of the most important in American literary history. The phrase now recognized is important, as with the exception of Emerson, none of these authors during their lifetimes attained the reputations they have now. Note, though, that our task will be to employ the tools of literary analysis in order to better understand and appreciate these works, writers, and ideas, not to explain them away as the product of an era or the result of larger forces. The connections between the nation and its literature, the texts and their contexts, and the individual and his or her time are always complex and symbiotic, not simple and causative. By the end of the course, my goal is that you will appreciate the ways in which the American Renaissance became the context that later American writers — and to a lesser but still important extent writers from elsewhere — absorbed and responded to. My further hope is that these works will reward repeated re-readings throughout your life because, like all truly great literature, they are inexhaustible.

Texts and Materials
You must own the following:

The Annotated Emerson, edited by David Mikics (Belknap-Harvard)
The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Leland Person (Norton)
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville (Bedford-St. Martin’s)
Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions, by Walt Whitman, edited by Karen Karbiener (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville, edited by Hershel Parker (Norton)
The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin (Belknap-Harvard)
MSWord (either the Mac or the PC version) or Apple Pages
An excellent dictionary
A writer’s handbook

I recommend you own the following:

A handbook of literary terminology

You must use the editions I have ordered. All editions of classic literary works are not the same; the texts themselves vary from one edition to another. In some cases, the annotations are essential to your understanding of the text. For poetry, electronic books (such as for the Kindle, the Nook, or iBooks) almost never correctly maintain essential textual elements such as line-breaks and indentation — often their publishers do not even attempt to do so — which makes them virtually useless. I make every attempt to hold down textbook costs where possible, and you are welcome to buy used copies to hold costs down further.

For this course you must own a good dictionary. I know you are all used to using the dictionaries built into your computer or available on the web; I often use OneLook.com, which accesses several dictionaries at once. However, dictionaries built into computers tend to be relatively feeble, and web-based dictionaries use older editions and are inconvenient when reading. An actual text dictionary is more useful. Be careful, though, because anybody can call a dictionary “Webster’s”; the name is now in the public domain and means nothing. The best reasonably-priced dictionaries available are the Merriam-Webster Tenth Edition, The American-Heritage Dictionary, and The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is even better, though more pricey ($175). My favorite inexpensive dictionary is the Little Oxford English Dictionary, which is hardcover but only about six inches by four inches, quite portable, lists for $15, and can be purchased for about $10 on Amazon. Of course, the complete Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest dictionary in the world, though unwieldy in its two-volume Compact edition ($400) and prohibitively expensive ($1045) in its full-sized version. You may access the complete OED through the Mason library databases, though again web-based dictionaries are much less convenient than a book.

I use MS Word’s Comment function to mark your formal writing assignments. For that reason, you must have some version of MS Word — not Works, not an open-source program that mimics Word, because those knock-offs often do not handle the Comment function well. Patriot Computers (in the Johnson Center) provides MS Office to students free. Meanwhile, anyone who does not keep copies of his or her work in the cloud and on a flash-drive or portable hard-drive these days is asking for trouble.

Also, you must own a writer’s handbook. When you make grammatical and stylistic errors, I will point them out and expect you to look them up in a handbook. Some of the better handbooks are Diane Hacker’s Rules for Writers and A Writer’s Reference, Muriel Harris’s Prentice-Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage, and Andrea Lunsford’s The Everyday Writer. Countless others are available. I do not care which handbook you own, but if you do not own any of them, buy one. The primary difference between them is the way they are organized; the material is mostly the same.

Finally, if you are an English major, literary terminology is your stock-in-trade, so I strongly recommend you own a guide to literary terms of some kind. Good examples include The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by J. A. Cuddon (revised by C. E. Preston) and The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms by Chris Baldick. Norton also has a guide called Essential Literary Terms, but it includes exercises that I suspect you will never even think of using, so I cannot recommend it. In any case, you will likely encounter occasions on which the finer distinctions between terms like metonymy and synecdoche escape you, and on those days (and sometimes nights), being able to reach for a paperback that contains the answers will be more than worth the $10 or $15 it has cost you. You can access the Oxford volume through the Mason Library Databases, but never underestimate the value of having a book at hand. Logging into the databases with your university account and password in order to look up a term is simply not as convenient as opening an alphabetically indexed book.

Course Requirements
Reading Assignments
Because this is a course in reading and writing about literature, keeping up with the readings is your primary obligation to the class after attendance. We will be reading essays, short stories, poems, a romance, and whatever we want to call Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale (it doesn’t quite fit the catgory of novel). The most important advice I can give you is not to read passively — read with a pen in your hand. Make marginal notes (called glosses) or keep a reading notebook rather than merely underlining passages, which is practically useless by itself. Conduct a dialogue with the text. Here are some tips to make your reading more productive for specific genres:

When reading prose fiction and non-fiction: These are obviously going to be the most familiar to you, yet you should remind yourself not to read passively; always engage with the text. Read with a pen in your hand, make marginal notes or (less convenient) keep a notebook. Ask questions, raise objections, consider ramifications. When reading fiction, remember that authors have incredible freedom. Ask yourself why the author wrote the text you are reading in exactly this way, with this narrator, in this style, beginning it here and ending it there, putting in these particular scenes and details but leaving out others you might imagine. Remember that all of these components represent choices the author made, and in those choices lies the art. Also, taking a little time to put faces to characters will help you keep them distinct in your mind, and looking up words you don’t know is a must. Language changes over time, and we are reading works written at least 150 years ago. Keep your dictionary at hand.

When reading poetry: Take your time. Even though in most cases the poetry assignments will be shorter in terms of number of pages, you should spend the same amount of time on each poetry assignment as you would on an assignment in fiction or drama.  Reading poetry requires a different approach from reading prose. Most poems require that you read them several times. They are usually densely packed with meaning and often rich in symbolism. Poetry typically emphasizes power of expression over logical clarity. Nevertheless, good poetry is not needlessly obscure. Most poetry obeys the basic rules of grammar: punctuation is there for a reason, pronouns refer to the nearest possible antecedent, and so on. Don’t be misled by line breaks — the basic unit of meaning in most poems is still the sentence. Again, looking up words you don’t know is a must.

You must — must — read poetry aloud to get the full effect. Find some place away from other people and get used to doing it. After you have read a poem silently and think you have figured it out, recite it. Again, pay attention to punctuation and respect enjambment (in other words, you should not pause at the end of a line unless the punctuation or syntax suggests it). Try to get a sense of the rhythmic pattern (cadence) of the lines. Some of the poetry we are reading this semester is in a formal meter. If it is, respect the meter but do not overemphasize it; avoid being too sing-song in your delivery. If the poem is not in a formal meter, you should still pay close attention to its rhythms. Also, poetry should not, except in rare instances, be read in a monotone. Allow your emotions free but realistic play. In other words, avoid reading like a robot without hamming it up.

The Listserv
I have assigned you to a listserv group. Every time you send an e-mail message to the listserv, everyone in the class receives it, and, in turn, you receive every message that anyone else sends. When used properly, a listserv is a great way to converse with your classmates, to test ideas, to ask questions, and generally to work with the material and each other in productive ways. In this class you will submit two kinds of posts: Reading Posts in response to the readings and Synthesis Posts that tie together the readings, your peers’ posts, and the class discussions. See the Listserv Assignment for details about what I expect.

Formal Writing Assignments
The required length of papers in this class is comparatively short; I am looking for quality here more than quantity. We will talk more about these assignments when the time comes, but for more detail on them, check the appropriate web-pages. All writing assignments in this course should be submitted as doc or docx attachments to e-mail messages sent directly to me at rnanian@gmu.edu. Also, I insist you always keep back-up files of your work; in 2019, claiming a computer glitch destroyed your work is like claiming your dog ate your homework.

Final Examination
There will be a final examination; see the Class Calendar for the day and time. Taking the examination when it is scheduled is mandatory. Why give examinations at all? I believe examinations are important in literature courses, not only to help me evaluate your performance, but to allow you to demonstrate (to yourself as much as to me) how much you have learned. Typically, students underestimate how much they have learned until they are tested. We will discuss in class the form my examinations take. Don’t panic: the intent is to test your ability to express yourself clearly on what you may reasonably be expected to recall, not to make you spend endless hours cramming your head with minutia. If you keep up with the reading and listserv assignments, attend class, pay attention, and take notes, you should not need to spend more than a few hours studying for the exam. If you don’t do these things, I suspect all the cramming in the world won’t help you much.

Class Participation
I believe that learning requires an active engagement on the part of both the students and the teacher. You cannot simply sit back and expect to have knowledge downloaded into your brain. Moreover, I have no desire to stand up at the front of the class and lecture for seventy-five minutes every day. At minimum, you must participate by paying close attention to everything that goes on in class. Ideally, you should also ask questions and risk exposing your ideas to your classmates. Testing your ideas, even or especially when they prove erroneous, is worthwhile, so you do not lose credit in my eyes if I or someone else corrects you about something. (The one rare exception is if something you say reveals that you are unprepared for class, for example if you have not done the necessary reading.)

Attendance
A healthy percentage of success in life depends simply on showing up where and when you are expected. This is especially true for literature courses, which do not have a textbook in the same way a history or chemistry class does.  The works you read in this class more closely resemble what rocks are to a geology class: they are what you are studying, but do not by themselves tell you what you need to know. I guarantee you that you will learn far more by showing up and participating than by reading on your own at this stage of your life, and what you could learn on your own you will only truly know you know by being in class and testing your assumptions and conclusions against mine and those of your peers. If you are the kind of student who has trouble showing up, this is not the course for you.  On the other hand, students who never miss a class tend to do well in my courses.

Although absences are always bad, if you know ahead of time that you will be absent, you should tell me. For example, if a commitment connected with the university — an athletic trip, a forensics competition, or something similar — means you will be away from campus, talk to me and we can arrange to meet outside of class so that you do not fall behind. If you are home with a 102 degree fever, let me know via e-mail so I do not think you have just disappeared. Regardless, you are absolutely responsible for finding out what happened in class (given that you have e-mail addresses for your classmates, this should not be a difficult task) and for submitting any assignments due that day. Missing a class does not grant you an extension.

Policy on Late Work
Assignments are due when specified. Listserv posts cannot be made up once the next class begins. You may submit essays late; however, an essay will receive a 20% penalty for being late and an additional 10% penalty for every day beyond the first 24 hours, meaning that an essay that you send to me one day and one hour late will receive a 30% penalty to the available points. If you make arrangements with me with me prior to the due date (not after the fact nor on the day on which the assignment is due) — you may (at my discretion) receive a less severe penalty of one-third to one-half of a grade (3.33-5.00 points) per day, or, in rare cases, no penalty at all. Note: this presumes that we discuss it and I agree, not that you send me an e-mail at the last minute saying, “My paper will be late, please accept it.”

Evaluation
You may earn up to one hundred points in this course, divided as follows:

You have two essays due this semester. Together, they total 30 points of your grade. The essay that earns the higher total grade will be worth 18 points; the essay that earns the lower total grade will be worth 12.

Strong in-class participation will earn students up to a 5.0 point bonus on their final grade. While I do not penalize for shyness (showing up on time and paying attention is adequate), poor participation resulting from inattention — including excessive absences or lateness — will result in up to a 5.0 point deduction. I’ll warn you if you are in danger of incurring that penalty. Note this comment from the student handbook: “Students who fail to participate (by virtue of extensive absences) in courses in which participation is a factor in evaluation may have their grades lowered.”

You may see your grades throughout the semester on Blackboard.

Possible final grades in this course include A+ (97.0 points or above), A (93.0-96.9), A- (90.0-92.9), B+ (87.0-89.9), B (83.0-86.9), B- (80.0-82.9), C+ (77.0-79.9), C (73.0-76.9), C-(68.5-72.9), D (60.0-68.4), and F (below 60). Note, however, that you cannot satisfy the requirements for a degree in English unless you earn at least a C in this course (though you may re-take it).

I grant incompletes only in the case of the direst of circumstances beyond the student’s foresight and control, and only when I have a reasonable expectation that the student can complete the course successfully.
 

Basic Rules of Conduct
A class, like a society, requires that all participants observe a certain code of civilized behavior. Some of these are pretty obvious, but believe it or not every one of them is here as a result of past experience:

Be on time. Arriving late is disruptive. Running a class is like driving a stick-shift: it takes time to shift up to cruising speed. When you walk in after the agreed upon starting time, you stop the class and make it start out again in first gear. It is rude.

The outside world should not intrude on our class. Please disable any cellular telephones, pagers, and wrist watches with alarms, or leave them behind. Laptop computers are acceptable, but only for class purposes. Reading e-mail or cruising the web for your own amusement will be grounds for the class participation deduction mentioned above.

Attendance implies body and mind and so requires consciousness. Putting your head down on the desk or closing your eyes because you are tired is unacceptable at any level above nursery school.

Wait until the class actually ends to pack up. Few things are more annoying than having to raise my voice at the end of class because people are sliding their books off the desks and unzipping and zipping their backpacks.

At any moment, one of three things will be happening in the class: either I will be talking, a student will be talking (asking or answering a question, participating in a class discussion), or everyone will be concentrating silently on the task at hand. In every case, courtesy demands that you pay attention, and not engage in your own private conversations. But please feel free to ask questions and express your ideas — that kind of talking demonstrates your involvement and is generally a good thing.

The class is only 75 minutes long, so you should seldom, if ever, need to leave the classroom. If the need arises, and you can’t wait, by all means go in peace. I trust you will return quickly, and not abuse my patience and generally kind disposition.

Honesty
George Mason University’s Honor Code requires all members of this community to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty and integrity. Cheating, plagiarism, lying, and stealing are all expressly prohibited. In fact, the list of offences is redundant: cheating is fraud; plagiarism is theft. These are the two clear felonies of the academic community.

Plagiarism means using judgments, opinions, research, or phrasing from another source without giving that source credit. Common knowledge does not fall into this category, but knowledge researched, compiled, or organized by a particular person does. Writers give credit through the use of accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation; a simple listing of books, articles, and websites is not sufficient. Students must take responsibility for understanding and practicing the basic principles of good scholarship. To avoid plagiarism, meet the expectations of a U.S. academic audience, give their readers a chance to investigate the issue further, and make credible arguments, writers must

1) put quotation marks around, and give an in-text citation for, any sentences or distinctive phrases (even short, two- or three-word phrases, if they are distinctive) that writers copy directly from any outside source: a book, a textbook, an article, a website, a newspaper, a movie, a song, an interview, an encyclopedia, a CD, a baseball card — whatever

2) completely re-write (not just change a few words) any information they find in a separate source and wish to summarize or paraphrase for their readers, and also give an in-text citation for that paraphrased information

3) give an in-text citation for any facts, statistics, or opinions which the writers learned from outside sources (or which they just happen to know) and which are not considered common knowledge for the target audience (this may require new research to locate a credible outside source to cite)

4) give a new in-text citation for each element of information — meaning not rely on a single citation at the end of a paragraph, because that is not usually sufficient to inform a reader clearly of how much of the paragraph comes from an outside source

5) include a Works Cited list at the end of their essay, providing full bibliographic information for every source cited in their essays.

That said, let me be clear. Any act of academic dishonesty will result in my reporting you to the honor committee and recommending failure of the course (not merely the assignment). In every case in which I have done this, the honor committee has accepted my recommendation, and in several cases has imposed additional penalties. This may sound harsh, but you will find similar guidelines at every college in the country. It does not get any more serious than this. I will use available online plagiarism-finding tools to check your essays as I see fit.

The official English Department statement on Academic Dishonesty is as follows: “Plagiarism means using the exact words, opinions, or factual information from another person without giving the person credit. Writers give credit through accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation, footnotes, or endnotes; a simple listing of books and articles is not sufficient. Plagiarism is the equivalent of intellectual robbery and cannot be tolerated in the academic setting.”

 
The University Writing Center
The university’s Writing Center is one of the best resources you will find on campus. You can schedule a forty-five minute appointment with a trained tutor to help with any phase of the writing process. Tutors can provide feedback on a draft, answer your questions, and show you strategies for brainstorming, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing. In addition to free individual tutoring sessions, it has an outstanding website that offers a wealth of online resources for student writers. To schedule an appointment, visit the center's main location in Robinson Hall B 213, or go to writingcenter.gmu.edu, register with the center, and make an appointment using the online scheduler. The Writing Center even offers some services online, but please plan ahead and allow at least three days to receive a response.


Note Regarding Students with Disabilities
Students with documented disabilities should present me with a contact sheet from the Disability Resource Center as soon as possible so that together we may plan appropriate accommodations.

My Responsibilities
In this syllabus, I spell out clearly what I expect of you. What may you expect of me? You have the right to expect that I am knowledgeable about the subject, that I will be prepared for class, that I will return your assignments to you reasonably promptly, that I will indicate clearly where you need to apply yourself in order to improve as both a reader of literature and as a writer, and that I will give you positive feedback whenever possible. It also means that you can count on my honest evaluation of your work. If I say something positive, believe it. If you perform poorly, I will certainly let you know. However, I will not chase you: if you are struggling, ask to meet with me.  More fundamentally, you can expect that I want you both to succeed and to enjoy the experience, and will do everything within my power to help.