Iulian Cananau, PhD,

Assistant Professor
TITLE OF COURSE: Introduction to American Civilization
2nd Year English Minors
Fall Semester 2010

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed as an introduction to American Civilization. It aims to provide

the students with a framework for their future study of American literature, culture and
society. The course is thematically structured following a loose chronology from the
earliest European accounts of the New World to the present. Using a combined
diachronic and synchronic perspective it focuses on major aspects of American
civilization shedding light on cultural paradigms such as Puritanism, frontier,
transcendentalism, feminism, multiculturalism, and globalization. The readings span a
wide range of cultural diversities, including racial, gender, sexual and regional
differences.

CONTENTS

I. Exploration Encounters. Modes of Appropriating the New World

- Columbus’ Diario (Heath I pp. 69-81)
- Tzvetan Todorov, “Columbus as Interpreter” from The Conquest of America (Course
pack)
- Captain John Smith, A Description of New England (EAR, pp. 10-12); The General
History of Virginia (EAR pp. 392-402)

II. Puritan Intellectual and Social Life

- William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation (EAR pp. 188-210)
- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (EAR pp. 14-24)
- Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue (EAR pp. 211-3), “The Flesh and the Spirit” (pp. 220-
2), “To My Dear and Loving Husband” (p. 223)
- Edward Morgan, “Husband and Wife” in The Puritan Family (Course pack)

III. The Great Awakening

- Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (EAR pp. 311-324)
- ----------------------: Personal Narrative (EAR pp. 324-36)
- Phyllis Wheatley “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield” (EAR pp. 340-42)

IV. Articulating the American Dream

- Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography (EAR pp. 61-115)
- Jean de Crevecoeur “What Is an American?” (EAR pp. 116-29)

V. The Enlightenment and the American Revolution

- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (EAR pp. 692-703)
- Thomas Jefferson “The Declaration of Independence” (EAR pp. 688-91)

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- Philip Freneau “The Indian Burying Ground” (EAR pp. 516-23), “George the Third’s
Soliloquy” (EAR pp. 677-79)

VI. The Frontier and the Indian in American Culture

- Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson (EAR pp. 434-68)
- William Apess (Pequot) “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (Heath I pp.
1753-60)
- Clarence King “The Newtys of Pike” (NCAR, pp. 73-9)
- Frederick Jackson Turner “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
(NCAR, pp. 80-85)

VII. Slavery in American Culture and History

- Olaudah Equiano The Life of Olaudah Equiano (EAR pp. 648-53)
- Frederick Douglass “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (Heath I pp. 1704-23)
- Abraham Lincoln “A House Divided” (Urofsky pp. 152-55), “Emancipation
Proclamation”, “Gettysburg Address” (Urofsky pp. 159-63)
- George Fitzhugh “Negro Slavery” (NCAR pp. 309-14)

VIII. Intellectual Traditions and Utopian Communities

- Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self Reliance” (NCAR pp. 104-108)
- Henry David Thoreau “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” (NCAR pp. 112-19)
- Orestes Brownson “The Laboring Classes” (Course pack)
- John Humphrey Noyes “The Oneida Community (NCAR pp. 217-21)

IX. From Manifest Destiny to Imperialism and Internationalism

- John O’Sullivan “The Great Nation of Futurity” (NCAR pp. 6-10)
- Walt Whitman “Passage to India” (NCAR pp 10-20)
- Carl Schurz “Manifest Destiny” (NCAR 25-31)
- Woodrow Wilson “Fourteen Points Speech” (Urofsky 306-309)
- Henry R. Luce “The American Century” (TCAR pp. 431-39)

X. Cultural and Political Responses to the Challenges of Industrial Society

- People’s Party Platform (Urofsky, 180-84)
- Upton Sinclair The Jungle (TCAR pp. 58-60)
- William James “Pragmatism” (TCAR pp. 24-9)
- Henry Adams “The Dynamo and the Virgin” from The Education of Henry Adams
(Heath II pp. 883-90)

XI. Feminism in American Culture

- Seneca Falls Declaration (Urofsky pp. 114-16)
- Sarah Margaret Fuller “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (NCAR pp. 222-26)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman “Are Women Human Beings?” (TCAR pp. 19-23)
- Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Bode pp. 231-35)
- Benita Roth, “The Emergence and Development of Racial/Ethnic Feminisms in the
1960s and 1970s” (Course pack)

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XII. The Battle for Civil Rights: Political, Cultural and Legal Fronts
- Booker T. Washington “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (NCAR pp. 410-13)
- W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk (TCAR pp. 9-14)
- Poets of the Harlem Renaissance (TCAR pp. 226-31)
- Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” (Urofsky pp. 228-32)

XIII. Post War American Decades. From Tranquility through Turmoil to

Narcissism and Conservatism
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy “Inaugural Address” (Bode, pp. 247-50)
- Norman Mailer The Armies of the Night (Bode, pp. 265-69)
- Alvin Toffler Future Shock (Bode, pp. 275-280)
- Newsweek Magazine “Year of the Yuppie” (Bode pp. 296-302)
- Allan Bloom The Closing of the American Mind (Bode, pp. 314-21)

XIV. Multiculturalism, Cultural Representations of Difference and the Challenge of

Globalization
- Maxine Hong Kingston “Girlhood among Ghosts”, (Course pack)
- Gloria Anzaldúa “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (Course pack)
- David Held & Anthony McGrew “Making Sense of Globalization” (Course pack)
- September 11 articles (Course pack)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

An Early American Reader, edited by J.A. Leo Lemay (EAR) to be found at the
American Studies Library & BCU
A Nineteenth Century American Reader, edited by Thomas M. Inge (NCAR) to be found
at the American Studies Library & BCU
A Twentieth Century American Reader, eds. Jake lane & Maurice O’Sullivan (TCAR) to
be found in the American Studies Library & BCU
American Perspectives, ed. By Carl Bode, (Bode) to be found at the American Studies
Library & BCU
Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy, ed. Melvin I. Urofsky (Urofsky) to be found at BCU
Course pack to be found at the American Studies Library
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vols. I & II, first edition, (Heath) to be
found at the American Studies Library
O istorie documentara a SUA, ed. Iulian Cananau to be found at BCU & American
Studies Library
REQUIREMENTS

Students are expected to attend a minimum of 75% of the seminar classes (5 out of 7) and
at least 50% of the lectures (7 out of 14). Failure to observe this attendance policy shall
result in student’s disqualification. I have assigned a list of seminar readings for every
lecture; excepting the first, every such list includes two underlined titles of materials that
students must read on a weekly basis. However, all readings are compulsory. A five-
minute mid-lecture Q/A test will check the students’ comprehension of the two texts

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identified by the underlined entries in the reading list for the scheduled lecture. This
amounts to 10% of the final grade. For the seminar, the student will hand in one paper
and make two presentations on any of the materials mentioned in the reading list. Every
student is expected to have completed all the readings assigned for each seminar class. Be
therefore prepared to answer questions on texts that other students had to present in class.
The seminar activity represents 40% of the final grade and the final (written) exam adds
the remaining 50%.