Category: early american literature

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Why We Teach: Literature and the Presidential Election

In the Republic, Plato famously claims that there is a longstanding quarrel between philosophy and poetry, even stating that poets are nothing more than imitators and cannot relate truth to their audience, thus perverting them: “the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Nature (1836), … Read More Why We Teach: Literature and the Presidential Election

Are We Just a Number? Henry David Thoreau and W.H. Auden

Ralph Waldo Emerson concludes his essay “Self-Reliance” (1841) with the following words: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (660).About seven years later, Henry David Thoreau delivered his lecture “Resistant to Civil Govermnet,” which would eventually be renamed “Civil Disobedience” after his death. Thoreau’s lecture, essentially, elaborates on the closing lines of Emerson’s essay, … Read More Are We Just a Number? Henry David Thoreau and W.H. Auden

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Tumblr, Blogger, and Wikis in the Literature Classroom

Over the past few months, I have posted different pedagogical approaches that I have implemented in the classroom from the elevator pitch in the composition classroom to the use of archival materials in the literature classroom. Today, I want to take the moment and expand upon a couple of projects that I have used in the literature classroom.

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“Theresa, A Haytian Tale” and the “Tropical Sublime”

Thirteen years before Victor Sejour’s “The Mulatto” (1841), S’s serialized story “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” (1828) appeared in the Freedom’s Journal between January 18 and February 15, 1828. Now, scholars believe that S’s  story is the first short story by an African American author; however, there may be something else tucked away in a library, archive, or collection somewhere in the world. Whether or … Read More “Theresa, A Haytian Tale” and the “Tropical Sublime”

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Archives and Collaborative Documents in the Literature Classroom

Last Tuesday, I wrote about some of the ways I have been implementing technology into my composition and literature classrooms. Today, I want to speak about a couple of more ways that I am incorporating the Internet and Web 2.0 tools into the literature classroom.