Selected Author Reports: Oral Report and Explication

ENGL 2131

Janssen

Selected Author Reports: Oral Report and Explication

Each student in this class is expected to showcase the life and work of one of the American authors from the list below in a 10-minute presentation. The primary purpose of the presentation is to acquaint the class with at least one of the writer’s major works. The reading assignments for each author are included on the list. You should plan a presentation that focuses on at least 10 of those pages. It is acceptable for some portion of the presentation to be informational. It is important to provide some biographical and historical contexts. However, it is not acceptable to merely parrot Wikipedia-like trivia involving births, deaths, marriages, etc… Any sources consulted outside of the Norton Anthology must be properly cited (see my plagiarism policy on the syllabus). Remember, your main job is to familiarize us with a portion of your chosen writer’s work through your own analysis and interpretation of the primary text(s).

In preparing your presentation, you must also compose and distribute a study guide on your author for the class. Your study guide may be in the form of a PowerPoint presentation or similar electronic format or a one-two page handout. If you choose the latter, you must make enough copies for everyone in class, including me. This is important because I will use the information you convey about your author to include on the final exam.

A separate handout on the explication essay will be distributed in the next couple of weeks. Suffice to say here that you will need to choose one work from your author, or perhaps a small collection of works, on which to perform a close reading, or explication. So, it would be wise to choose that particular work early so that the interpretive work you do for the explication can inform your presentation and vice versa. I will be more than happy to help you pick a major work from your author. There are more than enough authors to go around, but choices will be decided on a first-come, first-served basis, and your deadline for choosing is August 27. If you have not made a choice by that date, I will assign you an author. Please note that you may choose from the “thematic chapter list” below as well as the list of individual authors.

Author List

William Bradford (Vol A, 104-137)

Thomas Morton (Vol A, 138-146)

John Winthrop (Vol A, 147-166)

Roger Williams (Vol A, 173-186)

Anne Bradstreet (Vol A, 187-214)

Michael Wigglesworth (Vol A, 217-234)

Mary Rowlandson (Vol A, 235-266)

Edward Taylor (Vol A, 267-286)

Cotton Mather (Vol A, 307-333)

Jonathan Edwards (Vol A, 384-436)

J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur (Vol A, 595-615)

Thomas Paine (Vol A, 629-648)

Thomas Jefferson (Vol A, 649-664)

Olauda Equiano (Vol A, 674-709)

Phillis Wheatley (Vol A, 751-763)

Washington Irving (Vol B, 951-984)

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (Vol B, 1009-1027)

Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (Vol B, 1028-1043)

William Cullen Bryant (Vol B, 1044-1050)

Lydia Maria Child (Vol B, 1078-1105)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Vol B, 1495-1506)

Margaret Fuller (Vol B, 1637-1658)

Harriet Beecher Stowe – Jaqueline Deignan

Fanny Fern (Vol B, 1792-1807)

Harriet Jacobs (Vol B, 1808-1828)

William Wells Brown (Vol B, 1829-1852)

Frederick Douglass (Vol B, 21243-2170)

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (Vol B, 2524-2537)

Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (Vol B, 2538-2553)

Rebecca Harding Davis (Vol B, 2599-2625)

Thematic Chapter List

Stories of the Beginning of the World, (Vol. A, 17-30)

Native American Trickster Tales, (Vol. A, 72-103)

“A Notable Exploit”: Hannah Dustan’s Captivity and Revenge, (Vol. A, 434-353)

Native Americans: Contact and Conflict, (Vol. A, 437-448)

Native Americans: Removal and Resistance, (Vol. B, 1252-1271)

Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature, (Vol. B, 1682-1697)

Section, Region, Nation, (Vol. B, 2171-2189)