Topics and Texts for 7500 Transatlantic Ties: Britain and the United States 1830-1920
Since many graduate students will have read some of our potential texts, each unit will be arranged as a cluster. If students have already read or discussed the two major texts assigned, they will be asked to read alternative texts and to report on them to the class.
There are more than 10 potential clusters, and since these can’t all be covered in one semester, I am placing stars in front of those we will surely read, and the others will be chosen from the remaining topics.
*Topic 1: Slavery and the Transatlantic Abolitionist Movement (2 weeks)
UK Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince; Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” and “A Curse for a Nation”; William Wedderburn, The Horrors of Slavery
US Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper, poems, Harriet Wilson Our Nig, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
*Topic 2: The Industrial Revolution and Factory Life, Worker Protest (2 weeks)
UK Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, North and South, Thomas Wheeler, Sunshine and Shadow, Ellen Johnston, The Autobiography of Ellen Johnston, William Dodd, A Narrative of the Experience and Sufferings of William Dodd, A Factory Cripple, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Cry of the Children”
US Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills [proletarian: Hamlin Garland, Main Travelled Roads, Harriet Wilson, Our Nig]
*Topic 3: *Environmentalism, Utopianism, Pastoral (1 1/2 weeks)
US Henry David Thoreau, selections from Walden; John Muir, selections from The Mountains of California
UK selections from John Ruskin, Modern Painters and Fors Clavigera, William Morris, “The Beauty of the Earth”, poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Charlotte Mew
Slides and discussion of Pre-Raphaelite, Hudson School, and other landscape art
*Topic 4: Future Worlds, Pastoral and Industrial: (2 weeks)
UK William Morris, News from Nowhere, Richard Jeffries, After London, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Florence Dixie, Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900
US Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards, selections from William Dean Howells, A Traveller from Altruria, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (or Ourland)
*Topic 5: Literature of the First World War: (2 weeks + )
UK poems by Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Charlotte Mew, Rudyard Kipling, also poems by German soldiers of the period; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
US Mark Twain, The War Prayer, John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers, Timothy Findlay, The Wars, Jeff Shaara, To the Last Man, Susan Glaspell, The Inheritors, Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandberg, Robert Frost
Other Possible Topics:
Transatlantic Women Poets: US Emily Dickinson, Lydia Sigourney, Frances Harper, Lucy Larcom UK Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market” and “In an Artist’s Studio”, Augusta Webster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Witchcraft and Puritanism: Elizabeth Gaskell, “Lois the Witch,” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter
The Fallen Woman Becomes the New Woman: Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth. “Lizzie Leigh”; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; later, UK Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm, US Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Lyricism and Elegy in Major Victorian Poets: Tennyson, Swinburne, Hopkins, Whitman
Arthuriana, Medievalism and Satire: Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Holy Grail”; William Morris, “The Haystack in the Floods,” Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
The Realist Novel: George Moore, Esther Waters (can skip horseracing parts), George Gissing, The Nether World, Henry Morison, Children of the Jago, Israel Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto; UK Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (first half), Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Empire and Colonialism: UK: an Irish play, possibly by Synge or O’Casey, poems by Toru Dutt, Rudyard Kipling, “Ballad of East and West,” “The White Man’s Burden,” “Recessional,” and Kim; North America, E. Pauline Johnson, poems, Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
Fin de siècle decadence/New Women: UK, poetry by Mary Coleridge, Michael Field, and Alice Meynell; poetry by Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, The Beth Book; US, poetry by Amy Lowell, Susan Glaspell, Trifles, The Verge
Expatriates: T. S. Eliot, e e cummings, Hilda Doolittle, Henry James
Feminism, Women’s Equality: UK Mill and Taylor, The Subjection of Women, Eleanor Marx, The Woman Question, Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Topics and Texts for 7500 Transatlantic Ties: Britain and the United States 1830-1920
Since many graduate students will have read some of our potential texts, each unit will be arranged as a cluster. If students have already read or discussed the two major texts assigned, they will be asked to read alternative texts and to report on them to the class.
There are more than 10 potential clusters, and since these can’t all be covered in one semester, I am placing stars in front of those we will surely read, and the others will be chosen from the remaining topics.
*Topic 1: Slavery and the Transatlantic Abolitionist Movement (2 weeks)
UK Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince; Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” and “A Curse for a Nation”; William Wedderburn, The Horrors of Slavery
US Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Frances Harper, poems, Harriet Wilson Our Nig, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
*Topic 2: The Industrial Revolution and Factory Life, Worker Protest (2 weeks)
UK Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, North and South, Thomas Wheeler, Sunshine and Shadow, Ellen Johnston, The Autobiography of Ellen Johnston, William Dodd, A Narrative of the Experience and Sufferings of William Dodd, A Factory Cripple, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Cry of the Children”
US Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills [proletarian: Hamlin Garland, Main Travelled Roads, Harriet Wilson, Our Nig]
*Topic 3: *Environmentalism, Utopianism, Pastoral (1 1/2 weeks)
US Henry David Thoreau, selections from Walden; John Muir, selections from The Mountains of California
UK selections from John Ruskin, Modern Painters and Fors Clavigera, William Morris, “The Beauty of the Earth”, poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Charlotte Mew
Slides and discussion of Pre-Raphaelite, Hudson School, and other landscape art
*Topic 4: Future Worlds, Pastoral and Industrial: (2 weeks)
UK William Morris, News from Nowhere, Richard Jeffries, After London, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Florence Dixie, Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900
US Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards, selections from William Dean Howells, A Traveller from Altruria, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (or Ourland)
*Topic 5: Literature of the First World War: (2 weeks + )
UK poems by Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Charlotte Mew, Rudyard Kipling, also poems by German soldiers of the period; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
US Mark Twain, The War Prayer, John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers, Timothy Findlay, The Wars, Jeff Shaara, To the Last Man, Susan Glaspell, The Inheritors, Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandberg, Robert Frost
Other Possible Topics:
Transatlantic Women Poets: US Emily Dickinson, Lydia Sigourney, Frances Harper, Lucy Larcom UK Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market” and “In an Artist’s Studio”, Augusta Webster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Witchcraft and Puritanism: Elizabeth Gaskell, “Lois the Witch,” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter
The Fallen Woman Becomes the New Woman: Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth. “Lizzie Leigh”; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; later, UK Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm, US Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Lyricism and Elegy in Major Victorian Poets: Tennyson, Swinburne, Hopkins, Whitman
Arthuriana, Medievalism and Satire: Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Holy Grail”; William Morris, “The Haystack in the Floods,” Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
The Realist Novel: George Moore, Esther Waters (can skip horseracing parts), George Gissing, The Nether World, Henry Morison, Children of the Jago, Israel Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto; UK Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (first half), Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Empire and Colonialism: UK: an Irish play, possibly by Synge or O’Casey, poems by Toru Dutt, Rudyard Kipling, “Ballad of East and West,” “The White Man’s Burden,” “Recessional,” and Kim; North America, E. Pauline Johnson, poems, Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
Fin de siècle decadence/New Women: UK, poetry by Mary Coleridge, Michael Field, and Alice Meynell; poetry by Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, The Beth Book; US, poetry by Amy Lowell, Susan Glaspell, Trifles, The Verge
Expatriates: T. S. Eliot, e e cummings, Hilda Doolittle, Henry James
Feminism, Women’s Equality: UK Mill and Taylor, The Subjection of Women, Eleanor Marx, The Woman Question, Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century