Saturday, January 29, 2011

My Abstract

This is my abstract for the conference. I will turn it in early next week, so feel free to leave comments if there is an unclear section or if you have any suggestions.

----
My research examines A Present for Young Ladies, which is a collection of educational materials written by the American novelist Susanna Rowson that has received little critical attention entitled. I argue that Present has the potential to expand the critical context of Rowson, nineteenth-century women’s literature, and pedagogical studies.
The 1811 publication is divided into sections that include didactic addresses, poems, and short plays. Present advances a philosophy of female education that advocates the cultivation of independent thought, admonishes idleness, and promotes the retention of feminine grace while promoting that women may have a powerful influence on society. The collection demonstrates Rowson’s "affective-based authority,” which encourages students to challenge lessons and develop conclusions based on independent thought.
Placing the collection in conversation with Rowson’s fiction, especially Charlotte Temple allows for an examination of the paradox between domesticating women and encouraging individuality. In addition to enhancing Rowson studies, Present contributes to existing scholarship on nineteenth-century female novelist-teachers, such as Harriett Beech Stowe and Catherine Maria Sedgwick.
Furthermore, I argue that studying Present could enhance pedagogical studies since Rowson was a preceptress and material from Present was republished in numerous nineteenth-century textbooks. The collection and Rowson’s affected-based authority model are situated within the nineteenth-century national debate of whether the goal of female education was to teach women domestic duties or to provide them with the same education as men.
            The visual companion to my research is the following Website:
http://sites.google.com/site/apresentforyoungladies/home

Thursday, January 20, 2011

OMG, She really likes ME!

Yesterday, I received a message from a Professor that I always believed found my work subpar. I struggled in her class. I resumed some bad habits to cope with the stress of her class while taking it one year ago. I enjoyed the material that she presented. Really enjoyed it. My preference would be to work on a dissertation in that area, in fact. Still, I always thought that she felt I was lacking in some way.

That is the reason that the email was such a shock. She invited me to submit an abstract of one of the projects that I completed for her course to present at a conference.

I sat shocked, and, as my husband would understand, "I was astound."

Am I submitting that abstract? Um. Yes. Of course. I will have it written by Monday.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Reading Lists

These are my three reading lists for my Comprehensive Exams. I will update them as I decide to include new material and receive feedback from profs. I have barely started reading.

My three test areas are: Children's Literature, 19th Century American Literature (approx. 1830-1870), and 20th Century American Literature (approx. 1900-1950).

Children’s Literature

Primary Texts
Alcott, Louisa May
"The Blind Lark"
"Daisy’s Jewel-Box and How She Filled It"

Anderson, Hans Christian
Collected Fairy Tales

Babbitt, Natalie
Tuck Everlasting

Banks, Lynne Reid
The Indian in the Cupboard

Barrie, J.M.
Peter Pan (play)

Baum, L. Frank
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Brown, Margaret Wise
Goodnight, Moon

Bunyan, John
The Pilgrim’s Progress

Burnett, Frances Hodgson
The Secret Garden
The Little Princess

Carroll, Lewis
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Dahl, Roald
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Witches
Fantastic Mr. Fox

DeFoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles
A Christmas Carol
Eastman, P.D.
Are You My Mother?
Grahame, Kenneth
The Wind in the Willows
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Hamilton, Virginia
MC Higgins the Great

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys

Hinton, S.E.
The Outsiders

Juster, Norton
The Phantom Tollbooth

Kipling, Rudyard
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Lowry, Lois
The Giver

L’Engle
A Wrinkle in Time

Lewis, C.S.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird
Milne, A. A.
Winnie-the-Pooh

Montgomery, L. M
Anne of Avonlea
Newberry, John
A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

O’Dell, Scott
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Paterson, Katherine
Bridge to Terabithia
Potter, Beatrix
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Sendak, Maurice
Where the Wild Things Are
Seuss, Dr.
The Cat in the Hat
Sewell, Anna
Black Beauty
Stevenson, Robert Louis

Twain, Mark
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Verne, Jules
Webster, Jean
Daddy Long-Legs

White, E.B.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
Wiggin, Kate Douglas


Wilder, Laura Ingalls
Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie
Williams, Margery
The Velveteen Rabbit

Wyss, Johann
Swiss Family Robinson

Secondary Readings
Blackford, Holly Virginia. Out of This World: Why Literature Matters to Girls. New York:
Teacher’s College Press, 2004.

Bradford, Clare. "The End of Empire? Colonial and Postcolonial Journeys in Children's Books."
Children's Literature 29, 2001, 196-218.

Buckley, Jerome. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1974.

Clark, Beverly Lyon. Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

Dobrin, Sidney I. and Kenneth B. Kidd, Eds. Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004. 16-30.

Griswold, Jerry. Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children's Literature. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 2006.

Gubar, Marah. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Hollindale, Peter. Signs of Children in Children’s Books

Lerer, Seth. Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin. Children’s Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child.

Lurie, Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children’s Literature.


Marcus. Leonard S. Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of
American Children’s Literature. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

MacLeod, Anne Scott. American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994.

Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008.

---Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Rose, Jacqueline The Case of Peter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction. London:
MacMillan, 1984.

Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. 1992.

Stephens, John, Ed. Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children's Literature and Film. 2002.

Stephens, John and Robyn McCallum. Retelling Stories, Framing Culture, Traditional Story and
Metanarratives in Children's Literature. 1998.

Tatar, Maria. Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood. New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2009.

Trites, Roberta Serlinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent
Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.

---Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Novels. Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press, 1997.

Tucker, Nicholas.The Child and the Book; a Psychological and Literary Exploration. 1983.

Zipes, Jack David. Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from
Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2001.

---Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. New York:
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2006.

Zornado, Joseph. Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Rise of Childhood. 2001.

Nineteenth Century American Literature (1830-1870)

Primary Texts
Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women

Child, Lydia Maria
Hobomok, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans

Cummins, Maria Susanna
The Lamplighter

Cooper, James Fennimore
The Last of the Mohicans

Dickinson, Emily
various poems

Douglass, Frederick
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
"The Poet"
“Self-Reliance”
“Nature”
“The American Scholar”

Fuller, Margaret
“Women in the Nineteenth Century”

Jacobs, Harriet
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
"Young Goodman Brown"
"The Celestial Rail-road”
The Scarlett Letter
The House of the Seven Gables
The Blithedale Romance
The Marble Faun

Melville, Herman

Poe, Edgar Allan   
“The Cask of Amontillado”
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
“The Tell-Tale Heart”
“Ligeia”
“The Raven”
“Annabell Lee” 
“The Philosophy of Composition”

Sedgwick, Catherine Maria
A New-England Tale
Hope Leslie

Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Thoreau, Henry David
Walden
“Resistance to Civil Government”/”Civil Disobedience”
“Walking” 
Warner, Susan
The Wide, Wide World

Whitman, Walt
Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)
“Song of Myself”
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” 
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

Secondary Readings
Baym, Nina.  Novels, Readers, Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America. Ithaca:
Cornell University, 1984.

Davidson, Cathy M. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York:
Oxford University  Press, 1986.

Fiedler, Leslie A.  Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Criterion Books, 1960.

Mathiessen, F.O.  American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and
Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.

Reynolds, David.  Beneath the American Renaissance:  The Subversive Imagination in the Age of
Emerson and Melville. Harvard University Press, 1988.

Robbins, Sarah. Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women’s Narratives on Reading and
Writing in the Nineteenth Century. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction: 1790-1860. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986.




20th Century American Literature (approx. 1900-1950)

Primary Texts
Albee, Edward
      Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Anderson, Sherwood
      Winesberg, Ohio

Austin, Mary
     The Land of Little Rain

Baldwin, James
      Go Tell it on the Mountain

Cather, Willa
O Pioneers!
My Antonia

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening

Cullen, Countee
      “Yet Do I Marvel”; “Heritage”; “Incident”

Crane, Hart
     “At Melville's Tomb;” “Chaplinesque;”  “To Brooklyn Bridge;” “The Bridge”

Crane, Stephen
     Maggie, A Girl of the Streets
     The Red Badge of Courage    
    “Black Riders;” “War is Kind”

Cummings, ee
     “anyone lived in a pretty how town;” “Buffalo Bill's;” “i sing of Olaf glad and big”

Eliot, T.S.
     “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;” “The Waste Land;” “Journey of the Magi”
     “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

Ellison, Ralph
       Invisible Man

Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Great Gatsby

Frost, Robert
   “The Pasture;” “Mowing;” “Mending Wall;” “The Death of the Hired Man;” “Home Burial;”    
     “After Apple-Picking;” “The Road Not Taken;” “Birches;” “’Out, Out—‘;” “Stopping by
      Woods on a Snowy Evening;” “Desert Places;” “The Figure a Poem Makes”

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
      “The Yellow Wallpaper”
      “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”

Glaspell, Susan
      “Trifles”

Hansberry, Lorraine
      A Raisin in the Sun

H.D.
     “Helen”

Hemingway, Ernest
     A Farewell to Arms     
     The Sun Also Rises
     “The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber”
     “Hills Like White Elephants”

Hopkins, Pauline
     Contending Forces

Hughes, Langston
     “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “Epilogue”; “Harlem”; “Same in Blues”; “Theme for
      English B”; “Mother to Son”; “Song for a Dark Girl”
     
Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God

James, Henry
    “The Art of Fiction”

Loy, Mina
     “Lunar Baedeker”

Miller, Arthur
      Death of a Salesman

Moore, Marianne
     “A Grave;” “Baseball and Writing;” “Poetry;” “The Paper Nautilus;” “The Mind Is an  
      Enchanting Thing”

Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita

O’Connor, Flannery 
      Wise Blood
      A Good Man is Hard to Find (collection)

O’Neill, Eugene
      Long Days Journey into Night

Pound, Ezra
     “The Cantos;” “To Whistler, American;” “Portrait d’une Femme”

Porter, Katherine Anne
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
      Flowering Judas and other Stories

Salinger, J.D.
The Catcher in the Rye
Franny & Zooey

Stein, Gertrude
     Three Lives

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath

Stevens, Wallace
     “The Snow Man”; “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”; “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a  
      Blackbird”; “Of Modern Poetry”; “Not Ideas about the Thing But the Thing
      Itself”

Welty, Eudora
      The Collected Short Stories of Eudora Welty

Wharton, Edith Wharton
      The House of Mirth
     Ethan Frome

Williams, William Carlos
     “Spring and All;” “To Elsie”
Williams, Tennessee
     Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
     The Glass Menagerie

Wright, Richard
Native Son

Adding -- Jean Toomer’s Cane; Nella Larsen’s Passing and/or Quicksand; and Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.  Dreiser, either Sister Carrie or An American Tragedy; DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Charles Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars or The Marrow of Tradition; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; James Agee/Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; Henry Roth, Call It Sleep; Allan Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems; Elizabeth Bishop, some selected early poems.

Secondary Readings:

Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey
Walter Benn Michaels, Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism
Nancy Bentley, Frantic panoramas : American literature and mass culture, 1870-1920
Mark McGurl, The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James
Elizabeth Ammons, Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century
Amy Kaplan, The Social Construction of American Realism
Walter Kalaidjian, ed., The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism
Bill Brown, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature
Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color