Immigration Politics Then and Now

In class on Monday, we discussed some of the similarities between debates about immigration in the late nineteenth century and today. As we discuss the work of Abraham Cahan, Henry James, and Jane Addams, focus on the different perspectives each author brings to the immigration discourse of their own time. What entryway into the ghetto does Cahan provide us? From what subjective position does James write? What ideas about the "alien" and "foreignness" do we get from these writers? Most importantly: What rhetoric surrounding immigration persists to this day?

POST HERE: The Idea of the West in American Culture

Your homework for Friday asks you to provide an example of the power of Western imagery and ideas of the Old West and pioneer life in contemporary American culture. We discussed a number of Western themes in class today and I am happy to answer more questions about what you might use as an example if you email me.

Willa Cather

For Wednesday's class, you'll be reading Willa Cather's "Neighbor Rosicky," published in 1932. Although Cather's work was published later than most of the works we're reading this quarter, it narrates life during the earlier period we're studying. Cather's work, including her most famous book, the novel My Antonia, focuses on the pioneer ethos and America's idea of western expansion and farm life.

Cather grew up in Nebraska, and many of her works, including "Neighbor Rosicky," are set there. Cather's early work was heavily influenced by Henry James. However, after being admonished by Sarah Orne Jewett, Cather began to write more autobiographically, situating her stories in the pioneer landscape she knew intimately. Cather's work, which is distinctly apolitical (or even conservative at times), forms a contrast to that of Hamlin Garland, the other author you're reading for Wednesday, who was deeply invested in enacting social change through his writing and depictions of the difficulty of life on the farm.

Controversy and Huck Finn

Since its publication, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been embroiled in countless controversies. In earlier years, parents argued that Huck Finn's spouting of obscenities and flouting of convention provided a bad example for their children. At different times, Huck Finn was criticized for advocating atheism, being anti-Southern in attitude, and generally amoral in tone. However, it was in the latter years of the twentieth century that Mark Twain's novel was involved in its most heated controversy: that over race and racism.

Huck Finn increasingly came to be viewed as a classic just as Americans were coming to terms with the repercussions of centuries of racism. The question remains: Is Huck Finn racist? Why has it been censored so frequently? (Huck Finn was number 5 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most challenged books.) Does its history--particularly, the many critiques lobbed against it--say something important about larger national struggles around questions of race? We'll discuss all this and more in class tomorrow.

Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

We begin the quarter with the work of Mark Twain, otherwise known as Samuel Clemens, one of America's foremost authors. Hemingway contended that "all modern American literature comes from Huck Finn," and there is much in Twain's 1885 novel that will orient our conversation in "American Writers" for the rest of the quarter.

Twain's work was seen to herald a uniquely American form of literature in large part because of his adoption of the vernacular throughout much of Huck Finn. While European literature was often characterized by its impeccable use of language, Twain endeavored to make his characters sound more like everyday people in Mississippi during the time he was writing. Often, Twain's use of the vernacular can be uncomfortable--especially as it pertains to his representation of Jim, the slave who lives with Huck Finn's adopted "mother" as the book begins.

As we will discuss in depth in the coming weeks, the topic of race (the debates over slavery that divided America, the rising tide of post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws that were affecting African Americans in the years after slavery was abolished, and the racism that is so deeply embedded in American culture) hangs over much if Huck Finn--a fact that prefigures the role of race in much subsequent American literature. Mark Twain's work has been read to increasing controversy in the United States as its representation of the racial inequalities of its time prove distasteful and offensive to contemporary audiences.

Along with exploring some of the broader issues of the time period, we'll spend the next week or so looking more closely at this complex and influential novel.

Welcome

Welcome to American Writers. Please check back shortly for more information about class requirements, as well as background about the authors and historical periods we'll be discussing during the course of the quarter. We have a lot in store! The period from 1865-1914 was a rich one in American history and American literary history. In our time together, we'll look at a number of currents that shaped the literature and culture of the time--currents that, in many cases, continue to reverberate in the contemporary American landscape. The idea of the Western frontier, the increasing availability of rail travel, the rise of America as a colonial power, battles over literary form, and shifts in discourses about race and gender at the time all had vast effects on the writers we'll study. Stay tuned for more.