American Wars in Literature 4219-SC166
Steinbeck once wrote that "all war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal" but this course will hinge on the assumption that American wars in fact offer key slices of American intellectual, social, and political history. This is especially true of the wars as they are expressed, recorded, reimagined, commemorated, in great works of literature. The course will be divided into five sections, each divoted to a different war--the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. We will move from Melville's poetic expressions of the modern view of war and Whitman's contemplation of the Civil War as the death of his American dream to Yousuf Komunyakaa racial interrogations of the war in Indochina. American war literature will be studied as reflecting major shifts in American consciousness, political social history, and aesthetics.
Type of course
Mode
Learning outcomes
Students will:
• Learn how to read literary works as sources of historical knowledge on wars and as expressions of the intellectual condition of American society ocassioned by wars
• acquire knowledge on a series of important moments in the history of American literature
• Be able to predict other consequences and research venues resulting from this particular approach
Assessment criteria
• Participation in class, discussions 30%
• Test 30%
Discussion of assigned readings, presentations of research, film showings
Bibliography
CIVIL WAR: Walt Whitman, selection from Drum Taps; Herman Melville, selections from Battle Pieces; Ambrose Bierce, “Chicamauga”; “A Tough Tussle”
WORLD WAR I: Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms; Edith Wharton, “Coming Home”; Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”
SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Edwin Rolfe, “First Love,” “Elegia”
WORLD WAR II: Joseph Heller, Catch-22; Selections from the poetry of Randall Jarrell and Karl Shapiro
VIETNAM WAR: Bobbie Anne Mason, In Country; Tim O'Brien, selections from The Things They Carried;
Yousuf Komunyakaa, selections from Dien Cai Dau
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: