Fall 2025
American Literature
Approved: Initials/date AMERICAN LITERATURE (ENGL 2326 9M1) CREDIT 3 Semester Credit Hours (3 hours lecture, 0 hours lab) MODE OF INSTRUCTION Online PREREQUISITE/CO-REQUISITE: A D or better in ENGL 1301 (Composition I) COURSE DESCRIPTION A survey of American literature from the period of exploration and settlement to the present. Students will study works of prose, poetry, drama, and fiction in relation to their historical and cultural contexts. Texts will be selected from among a diverse group of authors for what they reflect and reveal about the evolving American experience and character. COURSE OBJECTIVES Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to 1. Identify key ideas, representative authors and works, significant historical or cultural events, and characteristic perspectives or attitudes expressed in the literature of different periods or regions. 2. Analyze literary works as expressions of individual or communal values within the social, political, cultural, or religious contexts of different literary periods. 3. Demonstrate knowledge of the development of characteristic forms or styles of expression during different historical periods in different regions. 4. Articulate the aesthetic principles that guide the scope and variety of works in the arts and humanities. 5. Write research-based critical papers about the assigned readings in clear and grammatically correct prose, using various critical approaches to literature. INSTRUCTOR CONTACT INFORMATION Instructor: Cori Robinson-Gregg Email: crobinsongregg@lit.edu Office Phone: 4092420984 Office Location: Remote – by virtual appointment only Office Hours: By appointment REQUIRED TEXTBOOK AND MATERIALS An electronic device with access to the Internet. The instructor will provide information for supplemental required reading resources. ATTENDANCE POLICY This is a virtual class. Students are required to attend and engage remotely. There are no in-person class meeting times for this class. Additionally, students are expected to check Blackboard and their LIT e-mail daily. Students are required to engage in class and participate in regular discussions and assignments to receive full credit. Students who do not engage with the class daily will fall behind. DROP POLICY If you wish to drop a course, you are responsible for initiating and completing the drop process. If you stop coming to class and fail to drop the course, you will earn an “F” in the course. COURSE CALENDAR COURSE CALENDAR DATE TOPIC READINGS ASSIGNMENTS Week 1 Sept 1 – Labor Day Holiday Orientation: Course Information, Syllabus, Preliminary information “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou Poetry Foundation Poems Discussion 1 (and responses): Introductions • Plagiarism Statement • Syllabus Quiz • Poem Choice and Discussion Due Sept 2 ** (To accommodate the Labor Day Holiday Sept 1) Unit 1: Colonial and Early Nationalism Week 2 Week 2 Lecture and Notes: Creation Myths and Early Nationalism Literary Elements Review Response Paper Topics Colonial and Early Nationalism “Letter to William and Mary” Native American Creation Stories “Journal of Christopher Columbus, 1492” Discussion 2- Myths and Cultural Literary Elements Quiz Due Sept 8 Poetry Assignment- Response Paper 1 – Topic Proposal (polished) – due Due Sept 8th Week 3 Week 3 Lecture Notes: Colonialism/ Great Awakening and Themes Colonialism/Great Awakening Anne Bradstreet: “Here Follow Some Verses, “As Weary Pilgrim” Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” - except Washington Irving “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and video Discussion 3 Response paper 1 Thesis/Quotes Reading Assessment All due Sept 15 Unit 2: American Romanticism Week 4 Week 4 Lecture & Notes: Gothic Literature and Historical Contexts in the Wake of Enlightenment Gothic Literature: Edgar Allen Poe: “The Black Cat” Emily Dickenson: #241, #258, #280 and #254 aka “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” Discussion 4 Response Paper 1 due Reading Assessment Due Sept 22 Week 5 Week 5 Lecture Notes: Civil Rights in the Romantic Era The Rights of Men (and Women): Harriet Beecher Stowe “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” - Excerpt Stories from the Underground Railroad (Letters) Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman?” Discussion 5 Response Paper 2 topic proposal due Reading Assessment Due Sept 29 Week 6 Week 6 Lecture: Transcendentalism The Transcendentalists Walt Whitman - “The Poet in Nature” Henry David Thoreau: Walden - excerpt OR Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature “Introduction and Chapter 1” Discussion 6 Nature commentary OR Walden commentary Response Paper 2 due All due Oct 6 Unit 3: Realism and Naturalism Week 7 Week 7 Lecture and Notes: And It was all Yellow Gothic Literature Stephen Crane: “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” OR Charlotte Perkins: “The Yellow Wallpaper” OR Discussion 7 Reading Assessment All due Oct 13 Mark Twain “Cannibalism in the Cars” Week 8 Week 8 Lecture: Realism Midterm Instructions (Lecture 8) Naturalism Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn Excerpt Jack London “To Build a Fire” Discussion 8 Midterm – Exam Due Oct 20 Unit 4: Modernism Week 9 Week 9 Lecture Notes: Changing Times Social Commentary Ernest Hemingway: “Indian Camp” OR F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Bernice Bobs her Hair” Discussion 9 Reading Quiz 4 Reading Assessment All due Oct 27 Week 10 Week 10 Lecture Langston Hughes: The Negro Speak of Rivers and “Thank You Ma’am” William Faulkner: “Banquet Speech” John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath excerpt Discussion 10 Reading Assessment All due Nov 3 Week 11 Week 11 Lecture Notes: Lessons from Nature Selected Nature Poems By Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay” “Stopping By the Woods” “The Road Not Taken” Discussion 11 Research Paper Topics Reading Assessment All due Nov 10 Unit 5: Contemporary Week 12 Week 12 Lecture Notes: World at War Post War Outcry Art Spiegelman’s Maus Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five - excerpt from Chapter 1 OR Tim O’Brien’s: “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried Discussion 12 Research Paper Outline and sources due All due Nov 17 Week 13 Thanksgiving Break Nov 26-28 Week 13: Lecture: Black Arts Movement Black Arts Movement Gwendolyn Brooks “The Streets of Bronzeville” Alice Walker: Everyday Use OR Malcolm X: “The Bullet or the Ballot” Discussion 13 Research Paper Rough Draft due All due Nov 24 Week 14 Week 14 Lecture: Southern Gothic Southern Gothic Shirley Jackson: “The Lottery” OR Flannery O’Connor: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Discussion 14 Reading Assessment Peer Review Due Dec 1 Research Paper Review and Publish Final Draft All due Dec 4th Week 15 Week 15 Lecture Notes: They’re Coming to America! The Immigrant Experience Amy Tan: “Fish Cheeks” Jhumpa Lahiri: “A Temporary Matter” Sandra Cisneros “Eleven” Ibi Zoboi: American Street Chapter 1 Research Paper Review and Publish Final Draft All due Dec 4th Final Exam Preparation Reading Assessment All due Dec 8 Week 16 Final Exam Instructions TBA Final Exam TBA COURSE EVALUATION Final grades will be calculated according to the following criteria: • Participation 10% • Daily Work Assignments 20% • Response Papers 20% • Mid-Term Exam 15% • Research Paper--Common Assignment 20% • Final Exam 15% ▪ Total 100% GRADE SCALE • 90-100 A • 80-89 B • 70-79 C • 60-69 D • 0-59 F TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS The latest technical requirements, including hardware, compatible browsers, operating systems, etc. can be online at https://lit.edu/online-learning/online-learning-minimum-computer-requirements. A functional broadband internet connection, such as DSL, cable, or WiFi is necessary to maximize the use of online technology and resources. DISABILITIES STATEMENT The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 are federal anti-discrimination statutes that provide comprehensive civil rights for persons with disabilities. LIT provides reasonable accommodations as defined in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, to students with a diagnosed disability. The Special Populations Office is located in the Eagles’ Nest Room 129 and helps foster a supportive and inclusive educational environment by maintaining partnerships with faculty and staff, as well as promoting awareness among all members of the Lamar Institute of Technology community. If you believe you have a disability requiring an accommodation, please contact the Special Populations Coordinator at (409)-951-5708 or email specialpopulations@lit.edu. You may also visit the online resource at Special Populations - Lamar Institute of Technology (lit.edu). STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT STATEMENT It is the responsibility of all registered Lamar Institute of Technology students to access, read, understand and abide by all published policies, regulations, and procedures listed in the LIT Catalog and Student Handbook. The LIT Catalog and Student Handbook may be accessed at www.lit.edu. Please note that the online version of the LIT Catalog and Student Handbook supersedes all other versions of the same document. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE STATEMENT Lamar Institute of Technology (LIT) recognizes the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, have changed the landscape of many career disciplines and will impact many students in and out of the classroom. To prepare students for their selected careers, LIT desires to guide students in the ethical use of these technologies and incorporate AI into classroom instruction and assignments appropriately. Appropriate use of these technologies is at the discretion of the instructor. Students are reminded that all submitted work must be their own original work unless otherwise specified. Students should contact their instructor with any questions as to the acceptable use of AI/ChatGPT in their courses. *The use of AI for this course for anything other than minor grammar aid is prohibited with the consequence of earning a zero on an assignment with no opportunity to resubmit. This is a writing class and course objectives dictate that students must be able to fulfill these objectives without the aid of generative predictive text programs such as ChatGPT. All submissions unless explicitly stated by the instructor must be verifiable and original from the mind of the student. Some assignments may require quotations and proper citation from approved sources. You can read more about appropriate representation of outside sources in the following sections. STARFISH LIT utilizes an early alert system called Starfish. Throughout the semester, you may receive emails from Starfish regarding your course grades, attendance, or academic performance. Faculty members record student attendance, raise flags and kudos to express concern or give praise, and you can make an appointment with faculty and staff all through the Starfish home page. You can also login to Blackboard or MyLIT and click on the Starfish link to view academic alerts and detailed information. It is the responsibility of the student to pay attention to these emails and information in Starfish and consider taking the recommended actions. Starfish is used to help you be a successful student at LIT. ADDITIONAL COURSE POLICIES/INFORMATION Due dates are subject to change with proper notification ahead of time. I do not allow students to retake assignments. Communication: I will respond to e-mails within 24 hours during the week and within 48 hours over the weekend. Typically, I will only respond to e-mails during regular business hours. Special Populations: If a student requires accommodations while on LIT campus, they must contact the Special Populations office in Student Services. If a dual credit student has accommodations through their school’s special populations office, they must still contact LIT’s Special Populations office at specialpopulations@lit.edu. Plagiarism/Cheating: Academic Dishonesty is an infraction that Lamar Institute of Technology and I take seriously. Most colleges expel cheating students. Examples of academic dishonesty include but are not limited to: Directly copying a source into an essay without citing the original source. Paraphrasing a source without citing the original source. Self-plagiarism: submitting a piece of writing that’s already received credit in another course. Paying someone to complete an assignment, having a friend or family member complete an assignment, or using Artificial Intelligence to write a paper. If a paper has a student’s name on it, I expect to see that student’s original work. Making minor changes to an original source while still retaining up to 75% of the structure of the sentence. Using AI (ChatGPT, any AI bot, or artificial intelligence learning tools that can mimic student-produced work) to write any part of the content of your essay (unless specifically instructed) is considered academic dishonesty and will receive consequences in congruence with plagiarism or academic dishonesty consequences. Taking a quiz or test with another student, giving the answers to a quiz or test to another student, or Googling the answers to the quiz or test. My quizzes are not open-book quizzes. Students are only allowed the notes they have taken over an assignment during a quiz. If I receive a paper that requires a works cited page and in-text citations but does not feature either of those criteria, I will give the paper a zero. How to Know If Something Is Not Plagiarism: Generally, plagiarism only covers things that are not general knowledge. If a student makes the claim that the sky is blue, then they do not have to cite where they got that information, because it is something that 90% of the world already knows. However, if a student describes why the sky is blue, they have to cite their source, since that is not common knowledge. How to Avoid Plagiarism: First, students should practice good paraphrasing and rewrite sentences in their own words. Part of the course will be discussions, assignments, and videos over good paraphrasing. Also, when students turn in their assignments, they should get a visible score from SafeAssign. SafeAssign is not perfect, and I have found plagiarism in papers with as low as a 10% score. If a paper flags anything in SafeAssign, a student must rewrite and resubmit the paper until the percentage is at zero. Late Work: Late work for this class is accepted for 50% penalty. Any assignment turned in late will receive up to a 50%, up to professor’s discretion. In very rare and extreme cases, if you feel that you must request an extension, it must be requested at least 24 hours before the assignment is due in order to be considered, although no guarantees are promised. Be prepared to show documentation if requested. It is important that students not get behind in a class. Typically, if a student gets in the habit of turning in all assignments within the first three weeks, they can build that habit for the rest of the class. No late work will be accepted after the last day of class. Make-Up Work: I can make accommodations on deadlines for extenuating circumstances (family emergencies, sickness, mental health, chronic health issues, etc.). However, communication is necessary in these circumstances. I need to know at least 24 hours before a deadline if a student cannot complete an assignment on time. Upon evaluation of case by case circumstances, a new deadline may be determined in advance if approved by the instructor. If a student asks for more time on an assignment the day before or the day it is due, I will not grant their request. Be prepared to show documentation if requested.