Weekly Schedule
Monday: I post a new lecture with discussion questions
Tuesday: Office Hours Meet-Up; Time TBD (attendance optional)
Thursday: Class Open Lab post due by 12 pm (noon) (so I can respond before we move on)
City Tech Fall 2020 Academic Calendar (including withdrawal deadlines)
Week 1 Welcome to City Tech and our American Literature I course
Classes begin 8/26
- Register for OpenLab and request membership to our course site
- Complete technology/access survey
- Complete Doodle Scheduling Poll for office hours
- View Professor’s intro video
- Post your own introduction to the class on OpenLab (in video or writing)
- Explore class website
UNIT ONE: From Colonization till Independence (1492-1776)
Week 2 8/30
Read your classmates’ introductions and respond
Read: 1) Christopher Columbus, “On His First Voyage to America, 1492” (Here is a PDF version of the letter)
2) Bartolome de Las Casas “Destruction of the Indies”
View: “Lost History of the Taino People”
Post a response on Open-Lab.
Week 3 9/6 (No Classes 9/7)
View: “New York: Before the City” (with Eric Sanderson)
Read: 1) Biography of Jacob Steendam and his poem “In Praise of New Netherland” (1636)
2) Washington Irving “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
Week 4 9/13 (No Classes 9/18)
View: The Pilgrims (PBS FILM)
Read: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1650)
Week 5 9/20
Read: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
View: The Scarlet Letter (Film 1995)
Week 6 9/27 (No Classes 9/28; Tues. 9/29 =Mon. schedule)
Read: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1790)
Week 7 10/4
Read: Phyllis Wheatley “On Being Brought From Africa to America”
Listen: Venture Smith, A Narrative of a Native of Africa: His Life and Adventures (1798)
Week 8 10/11 (No Classes 10/12; Wed. 10/14 =Mon. schedule)
Read: 1) Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)
2) Abigail Adams “Remember the Ladies”
3) David Walker’s “Appeal to the Colored Peoples of the World” (1829)
Week 9 10/18
Read: Alexander Hamilton “Examine Well Your Heart”
View: Hamilton: The Musical
UNIT TWO: The American Renaissance (1820-1865)
Week 10 10/25
Unit 1 Draft Essay due
Read: 10 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”,
2) Emerson “American Scholar”
Week 11 11/1
Read: 1) Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
2) Thoreau, Walden
Week 12 11/8
Read: 1) Margaret Fuller “Educate Men and Women as Souls”
2) Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848)
3) Sojourner Truth “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Watch: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (film)
Week 13 11/15
Frederick Douglass “Autobiography” (1845)
Week 14 11/22 (No classes 11/26-7) HAPPY WAMPANOAG DAY/THANKSGIVING!!!!!!
Week 15 11/29 Happy Halloween!
Read: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”
Listen: Poe’s “The Raven” (read by James Earle Jones)
View: Stephen King’s 1922 (film)
Week 16 12/6
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (Audio Text)
Week 17 12/13 (No classes 12/10)
Read: Abraham Lincoln “Gettysburg Address”
View: Glory (Film)
Unit 2 Essay due (12/18)
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