Asia Education Foundation Resources Primary English Literary Texts

Studying fundamental texts is, by itself, not enough. Even to understand the texts themselves, supporting studies and training are necessary: a solid foundation in at least one foreign language and in disciplines and subject matters pertinent to the main questions of students are essential parts of the major. Students benefit from knowledge of the historical contexts out of which certain problems emerged or in which authors wrote; knowledge of specific subject matters and methods; knowledge of the language in which a text was originally written, as well as an understanding of the shape a given language imparts to a given author; fundamental skills of analysis, gathering evidence, reasoning, and criticism; different approaches and perspectives of conventional disciplines. All these are integral parts of the educational task.

Spiraled mini-lessons integrate new and previously learned skills using topic-based unit texts and resources. Language foundations are reinforced through explicit phonics and word study instruction that is linked to authentic reading and writing practice, with reading and writing independence achieved through gradual release of responsibility from whole-group to small-group/independent time.

Fred Lewis Pattee's career at Penn State marks the beginning of a heyday for the study of American literature. By the 1930s, prominent American critic Granville Hicks hailed what he dubbed "the great tradition of American literature" as a series of key themes in American writing, including folk traditions, politics, business, labor, social critique, fugitives, and flight. Since Hicks's time, literary scholars have contested the very notion of any "great tradition," because so many different authors have always participated in the American literary scene. This course examines American literature by looking at the dynamic and varied literary productions that, across time, have comprised the American literary canon, even as it calls into question the notion of whether America ever had a single literary canon, whether historically or in the present day. Students will learn how access to educational institutions, to writing equipment, and to printed and graphic materials all influenced who might become an author, and who, a reader. They will also learn how changing political and cultural institutions influenced writers' literary production and literary achievements. With text selection at the instructors' discretion, students will study poetry, fiction, non-fiction, oratory, and drama, and they will examine many of the most enduring themes in American literature: religion; moral and ethical ideals; the lure of mobility, especially upward mobility (or absence of it); gender dynamics; enslavement, abolitionism, and emancipation; race and ethnicity; the lure (and social complications) of the American West; American pragmatism; love and loss; hope and despair. Students will be asked to take up such questions as the following: Who has had a voice in American literary history? Why are some writers more frequently studied than others? Who determined what should be considered "great" literature inside the academy? In what ways does the study of American literary history uphold American values of freedom and freedom of expression? Who had access to publication, when, and under what circumstances? How does the publishing marketplace influence readers' choices regarding "great" American literature? How do educational institutions influence readers' choices? The course aims to provide a foundation for further study of American literature by equipping students with an understanding of the American literary past and its complex relationship to American culture and to American educational, political, and marketing institutions. Instructors might examine one or two key themes in the tradition, or they might ask students to learn about sweeping literary movements across time.

This course will provide an introduction to Jewish American literature through a historical survey of the tradition's key texts, figures, and themes. The course will focus on the defining aspects of the literature and on what the literature "thinks" about Jewish American culture and identity. But rather than assuming a unity to Jewish-American culture, this course will use Jewish literature to seek ways of articulating and representing both the points of cohesion and the points of divergence that characterize Jewish life in America. The United States has absorbed large numbers of Jewish immigrants hailing from many parts of the world, holding many different ideas about Jewish practice, and affiliating themselves with many different political, social, and cultural traditions. Moreover, Jews have settled and made homes in a wide variety of American communities. This course aims to explore Jewish American culture's marked diversity by offering a literary window onto the major fault-lines running through Jewish American culture: lines demarcated by gender, by political affiliation, by geography, by pre-immigration community by religious practice, by attitude toward world Jewry, by national allegiance, and by minhag (or custom), to name just a few. The class therefore provides an opportunity to consider the constitution, origin, and development of Jewish American's identity and social formations by looking at how that identity and those social formations exist and what they "do" in literature written by and about Jews in America. Materials will consist predominantly of primary texts, including prose fiction and nonfiction, poetry, drama, and film. Course methodology will emphasize the close reading of these texts. The course complements offerings in Jewish Studies and English, and it will satisfy the GH and US requirements. Most obviously, the course will offer students of Jewish literature, world literature, and American literature an opportunity for contextualization. It enables students in Jewish Studies to study the rich literature of American Jews, and it adds to courses covering Jewish American history, religion, and culture. The course offers students in English a valuable, sustained introduction to an important U.S. and world sub-culture.

This course will allow students to study African American literature, culture, history, and arts in connection with an annual public event, the African American Read-In (AARI). The AARI, promoting literacy and appreciation of African American literature, is a national event established in 1990 under the auspices of the National Council of Teachers of English. It has become a regular feature of Black History Month celebrated by community, neighborhood, and church groups as well as schools and institutions of higher education throughout the United States and elsewhere on a given Sunday and Monday in February attracting more than a million participants annually. This course offers students an engaged learning experience in which they will produce original intellectual and artistic content to be presented publicly at an AARI event on campus. Students will study texts from a range of historical periods and/or genres, and thus gain a solid introduction to the African American literary tradition. At the same time, the primary organizing principle of the course will be a particular theme that both allows a broad and coherent overview of a significant cultural or historical topic and engages issues of cultural diversity in the United States. The specific theme, thus, will bring the study of African American literature into a broader interdisciplinary context that intersects with African American culture, history, identity, and the struggle for equality. Students will study texts that relate to this annual theme and participate in a relevant field trip (museum, theater, cultural site, library, etc.) to deepen their understanding of the significance and contexts, social, historical, cultural, artistic of these materials and this theme. They will then develop this knowledge through creative and critical engagements into exhibitions, presentations, or performances to communicate their insights about a particular author, text, or topic in in the African American literary tradition. As shapers of the AARI program on their campus, class members will also have a voice in designing and planning the AARI as well as a stake in its overall success. As this course necessarily spans semesters, students who enroll in the Fall course will be expected to enroll in the Spring course in order to present their projects at the AARI in February. Only students who were enrolled in the Fall course will be permitted to enroll in the Spring, as it is the culmination of the same course.

Examines the interconnection of culture and nature in the Chesapeake Bay region through the literature of the region. ENGL 181A Adventure Literature: Exploring the Chesapeake Bay (4.5) The course focuses on a specific place--the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed--that has generated a distinctive regional identity and literature from its natural and social context. The course begins consideration of the concept of watershed, both as a geographical concept and a literary metaphor, before turning to an examination of the culture(s) and nature of the largest and most important tributary of the Bay, the Susquehanna River. Students will read texts associated with the history and the development of the Susquehanna, with some emphasis on logging, rafting, mining, and hydropower development. Readings here should aim at helping students see how a regional cultural identity has evolved from the river's geography and economics. Focus on the Bay itself, students can learn similar lessons. We begin by looking at the rich native cultures that occupied the region before the advent of Europeans and then move to initial European exploration and settlement. The class might then focus on development (agricultural, cultural, and industrial) of the Bay and Bay Region generally, through readings that might include regional histories and literary works like James Michener's Chesapeake: A Novel. Significant attention should be devoted to the sub-culture of the Chesapeake waterman, a regional identity that has generated its own mythology and folklore and has been the focus for numerous writers. Texts might be chosen to show the role nostalgia plays in conceptions of the Bay or the ways in which issues of race, class, and gender are raised by examining representations of the waterman culture. What students should see is how literature and culture are transformed over time, while resonances of former place identities remain. Finally, the course will turn to the Bay as it is today and how the representation of place and regional identity in literature has changed over time.This course was designed to include out-of-the-classroom educational experiences on the Susquehanna River and other tributes of the Bay and on the Chesapeake Bay itself. The trips should provide students opportunities to fully understand the interconnections of nature and culture in the Bay region. They should also allow students the chance to travel in the footsteps of the writers they read in venues throughout the region. The goal is to both see how a distinctive culture derived from the natural circumstances of the Chesapeake and to understand how that culture might continue (or not) into the future. 2b1af7f3a8