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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