What is American Literature?
And how do we teach it to a new generation?
As immigration, the Civil Rights movement, and the women's movement have shifted the demographic and ideological currents of the American nation, novelists, poets, and playwrights reflecting--and reflecting upon--the changing American landscape have emerged. Meanwhile, scholars have argued for the merits of works by women, African-Americans, Latinos, and many others who stood outside the center of traditional literary esteem. But unlike previous literary revolutions (the one that displaced Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes in favor of Melville and Hawthorne, for example), the rise of newer writers hasn't effaced the importance of older ones. Toni Morrison turns out to be interested in dialogue with Faulkner--even though, or perhaps especially because, she frequently disagrees with him. And, as UM Native American specialist Betty Bell reminds us, Louise Erdrich sharpened her sense of narrative by reading Henry James.
In order to respond to this fluid reconstruction of American letters, to represent the increasingly diverse faculty of the Department, and to respond to the changing expectations of students, a new introductory course was introduced last year. Entitled "What is American Literature?" and offered as a prerequisite to the major (part of the English 239 "What is Literature?" sequence), the course was developed by Professors Jonathan Freedman, Lemuel Johnson, and Patsy Yeager, with financial support from the LSA Dean's Office and the strong encouragement of English Department Chair Lincoln Faller. Meeting together over the course of a summer and consulting with experts in Native American literature, Latino literature, Asian-American literature, and American art and film, they developed a syllabus that attempted to connect older and newer conceptions of the literatures of America, ranging from Walt Whitman through Toni Morrison to contemporary novelist Bharathi Mukherjee, and studying novels, plays, films, and even classic and contemporary American paintings.
Our goal "was not to be inclusive: we couldn't capture the rich variety of imaginative expression in America in a year, much less a semester. It wasn't even to be representative--we didn't want writers or artists to have to represent anything: be it political program, creed, ethnicity, gender, or race-- rather, it was to be thought-provoking, to gather as many writers and artists asking interesting questions as we could over the course of the semester, and to see what could come of the energy created by their juxtaposition.
The course was unconventionally arranged. Meeting together once a week to hear a lecture by one of the professors or to experience a special event, the class would also break into small groups led by each professor. Students seemed especially appreciative of the variety. "It took awhile to get used to the format," wrote one, "but after awhile, I came to look forward to the change of pace. It kept us on our toes." And it was unconventional in a second sense as well, since the UM professors welcomed guest lecturers who could supplement their bases of knowledge and amplify their concerns. Professor Kim Blaeser, of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, described the distinctive world-view of Native American literature in order to help the class work through Leslie Silko's Ceremony. Professor Rachel Lee, of the University of California at Los Angeles, helped the students parse the mysteries of identity and the theme of spycraft in order better to understand Chang Rae Lee's novel Native Speaker. Professor Bryan Wolf lectured on the aesthetics of American transcendental painting and the undoing of their assumptions in John Sayles's film Lone Star. And Professor Kirsten Silza Gruesz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, discussed ironic responses to media reflections of Mexican-Americans by contemporary Latino American playwrights and poets.
The instructors and students alike agreed that the course had been a powerful and successful experience. The Department agrees: after the first year of operation, we have decided to mount the course on a permanent basis, using but continuing to modify over time the syllabus constructed by Professors Freedman, Johnson and Yaeger. In the longer term, the Department hopes to use the course as a "gateway" experience to further study American literature,and looks forward as well to revising its American offerings in the future in ways that will ask students to build upon their initial experiences in the class. Continuity and change: the course, like American literature itself, testifies to the vast transformations in the imaginative and cultural conditions of life in the United States, and will continue to evolve as fully as those conditions do.
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