Text Box: American Writers 1 Greg Kinzer MWF 9:00 - 9:50 Reg. No. 151024 Text Box: 241 Text Box: Today, we take the “separation of church and state” as a matter of course and think of theology as having nothing to do with science, but in the early centuries of American literature, science and religion were inextricably bound, marrying a deep sense of awe and mystery to a scientific attention to detail. This course will survey American writing from the first contacts with the new world to the Civil War. Through a variety of texts—including sermons, captivity narratives, letters, autobiographies, novels, short stories, and poems—we will examine these writers’ shifting attitudes toward religion and science, as they are revealing of America’s changing political atmosphere and social values. We will begin with the early colonial writing of John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America, Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations,” and, somewhat latter, Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World. We will then move to the 18th century “Enlightenment,” to consider the deeply religious Jonathan Edwards alongside the decidedly secular and practical Benjamin Franklin, both also men of science. The 19th century saw a surge of literary activity which has been dubbed the “American Renaissance,” a time of reflection, reformation, and increasingly urgent questioning of women’s rights and slavery. Here, we will read Hawthorne’s cautionary tale of science “The Birthmark” together with his attempts to grapple with America’s puritan past in “Young Goodman Brown” and The House of Seven Gables, and the gothic tales of Edgar Allan Poe. In order to assess the rapidly changing social landscape of this period, we’ll read from Thoreau’s Walden, Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit,” and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The course will conclude with an examination of new attempts at a synthesis, with the on-set of the Civil War, between the religious revivalism sweeping the country and important new developments in scientific thought (this is the period of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species) in the poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Requirements: Careful reading, regular attendance, and active discussion is a must. A mid-term exam, one short essay (4-5 pages) and one longer essay (8-10 pages). Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1, 5th edition. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables.