Darkness and Daylight
City Life in American Literature and Culture
1880-1930

Syllabus

An Introduction to the Course:

Over the fourteen weeks of the semester we will work together to explore the truth about city life and literature in the years between 1880 and 1930. We will not cover all the texts written in that period, nor will we cover all the topics that relate to our course title. Instead, we will be focusing on three specific novels, a variety of non-literary texts of the period, and a selected number of subjects we choose as the focus of our investigation.

Although most courses in English departments focus exclusively on "literary" texts, we will be reading a wide variety of texts written for a popular audience by reformers, journalists, scandal-mongers, social scientists, and others. Because we are engaging in a historicist form of literary interpretation, we will be using the novels to help us understand the issues and the period, and at the same time we will be using other materials from that time to help us understand the novels.

We will spend much of our time this semester reading, transcribing, and annotating both late nineteenth and early twentieth century works as well as scholarship of recent years, and it would be reasonable to wonder why anyone should bother to type a transcription of a text in an age when the copier and scanner reigns supreme. Yet, the fact is that scholars need to develop a basic knowledge of a great many texts by doing a professional kind of skimming, and they spend a great deal of their time reading texts of particular importance to their work in a very slow and careful fashion. Scholars often transcribe passages from such texts for their notes, and the transcribing process not only allows them to preserve significant passages for use in later work but also gives the reader/copier an opportunity to read and think about the text very slowly and methodically. And ironically, in this day of digital dissemination, scholars may find themselves doing more transcribing rather than less as they work to contribute to archives of online texts.

We will also be spending much of our time this semester learning how to research using libraries, databases, and other web resources, and how to share our research by constructing and posting web pages. These are crucial skills not only for academics but for all professionals in this new "information age." However, you will not be expected to develop expert skills in designing web pages. Instead, you will learn the basics of web construction and how to use the templates I have prepared for you.

You may find yourself surprised by the fact that this course is layed out in "stages," with each stage being devoted to a particular set of topics and activities. My hope is that we will engage in an authentic academic inquiry. That means we cannot predict at the outset exactly what materials we will read (other than the three novels), or exactly what topics we will take on. What we can predict with some reliability is the stages we will need to go through in order to proceed from the beginning to the end. In short, we will need to explore and become familiar with the subject with some reading that is planned and yet somewhat random, then gradually we will need to focus our investigation, collect and selectmaterials, periodically revisit and revise our questions, and finally put together an explanation of a topic based on our interpretation of the materials we have collected.

It may sound overwhelming. It may BE overwhelming. However, we can rely on several sources of consolation. First, if we can't do it, we won't do it. Just as research topics need to be revised, syllabi often need to be refined. (That's a polite word for "fixed.") Second, we don't need to do perfect work. What's most important is that we dig deeply into the subject and get our hands dirty. Third, because we will be collecting, annotating, transcribing, and even annotating selections from texts, we will not be doing any traditional formal papers. Fourth, the work for the course is spread out throughout the semester, so there should be no nasty surprises in the last few weeks. Fifth, your grades will not rely on a single final exam or paper; instead, you will receive points all along for your transcriptions, annotations, and bibliographical work. In fact, if you feel you are having difficulty doing work of the quality you were hoping, you can help your grade by contributing additional transcriptions. Finally, we will all be exploring together and helping one another. If this works, it should be great fun even if it is hard work. Which is, I suspect, the way academic life should be.

Our Goals for the Semester:

To read, transcribe, annotate, and put online primary and secondary resources on American city literature and life from 1880-1930 in order to enrich our own understanding, create a pool of resources for our own use, and share resources with other investigators now and in the future.

In the process, we will be developing an understanding of: turn-of-the-century novels; the period and its issues; the nature and role of rhetoric in literature and culture;methods for reading and interpreting literary and non-literary texts; methods of finding and evaluating resources using the library and the web; methods for planning and producing research projects; how to engage in authentic inquiry, and how to function a a member of an academic comunity.

Stage One, Weeks 1 &2: Exploring Contemporary Commentaries on City Literature and Life from 1880-1930.

NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

We will the course by getting to know turn-of-the-century city life in America by listening to the comments of those who were there. It can be difficult to understand life of a different time or place, and so I have collected a small "library" of books from the 1880's to the 1930's that can serve as our initial set of "tour guides" as we wander around in this unfamiliar world. We will need to listen closely to what they say, and for this reason, we will be transcribing selections from our library of primary resources (which will be available throughout the semester at the reserve desk of the D'Alzon Library.) Our goals are to conduct a serious investigation of city life and literature at the turn of the century, and to create a web archive of resources for other researchers. For both of these reasons, each time one of us transcribes a selection from a text, s/he will annotate it by collecting information about the book, author, intended audience, publishing history (if possible), and compiling a list of key terms and concepts. Completed transcriptions and annotations will be uploaded to the web page dedicated to "Contemporary Commentaries." The materials we transcribe will also be listed as part of our "Annotated Bibliography" on the site.


DURING STAGE ONE WE WILL LEARN ABOUT, DISCUSS, AND EXPLORE:

DURING STAGE ONE WE WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS OF OUR PROJECT:

Stage Two, Weeks 3 & 4: Exploring City Fiction by Reading Sister Carrie, and What Critics & Scholars Say about City Life and Literature

NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

During this section of the course we will begin to explore the "literature" of city life. I put the word "literature" in quotation marks because, in a sense, all of the primary works we are reading are part of the literature of the period, even if they were the work of reformers, social scientists, or police detectives. Although not part of the traditional literary canon and not "belle letristic" in nature, we can use some of the conventional tools of literary analysis -- including a consideration of the rhetorical dimensions of the work and the relationship between author, subject, and audience -- to interpret such "non-literary" literature. However, in this phase of our work we will begin to focus on Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, a major American novel of city life, originally published in 1900. Just as in the first phase of the course, what we will be doing once again is selecting passages and scenes from the novel that we regard as thought-provoking starting points for further investigation. Online versions of all three of our course novels are already posted on the Darkness and Daylight site, so we will be cutting and pasting passages from the fiction and then providing the normal kinds of annotations. We will also be using both the web and the library to locate reviews of and reactions to Sister Carrie that have appeared since it was first published. We will begin to create an online archive of the responses by putting those texts or selections from them on our "Critics & Scholars" page on the Darkness and Daylight site. (You can transcribe materials not already available on the web, and/or copy from and link to a digital text at another site.) We will employ our standard practice of annotating the criticism.


DURING STAGE TWO WE WILL LEARN ABOUT, DISCUSS, AND EXPLORE:

DURING STAGE TWO WE WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS OF OUR PROJECT:

Stage Three, Weeks 5 & 6: Planning the Next Stage of Our Inquiry and Constructing a Selected Bibliography


NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

Through our work in the first two stages of the course we have read one significant novel on American city life at the turn-of-the-century and have also have developed a basic familiarity with the issues of city life and some of the different kinds of commentators who focused on those topics. This should mean that we are at a perfect point to develop at least a tentative plan for our future work. Now each person or small group will have the chance to choose a topic that seems particularly interesting, and do a little additional exploration in that area. When you choose a preliminary focus, you are not making any long-term commitment to doing a final project on this subject. Instead, you are simply deciding what you are most curious about finding out next. How do you choose a focus? Think about the key term or subject or individual, or work that you found most thought-provoking. Then conduct some library and web research in order to put together a brief annotated bibliography of the essays, fiction, criticism, scholarship, and web resources that might be most useful as materials for exploration. (You need not try to compile the longest possible list of scholarly books and articles on your topic. Instead, use a few, perhaps ttwo to five, particularly rich and appropriate scholarly resources that can best help you develop a deeper understanding of your topic and identify additional primary and secondary resources of value. Compose a short annotated bibliography of both the primary and sources you recommend to those who share your interest in this topic, and which you hope to explore in your future work. If you are working in a group, the annotated bibliography should be more substantial, with each participant contributing a minimum of two secondary sources and a number of references to primary works.

DURING STAGE THREE WILL LEARN, DISCUSS, AND EXPLORE:

DURING STAGE THREE WE WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS OF OUR PROJECT:

Stage Four, Weeks 7 & 8: Reading Wharton's House of Mirth; "Reading" Pictures and Constructing a Graphics Gallery

NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

Edith Wharton's House of Mirth is another important piece of city literature from the turn-of-the-century era. In fact, it offers a close look at the way that the city of New York and the lives of New Yorkers were changing as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth. We will use this text as a means of exploring the topics we have already chosen as our areas of (preliminary) interest. In order to build on our understanding of how we can benefit from placing literary works in the context of other, "non literary" texts of the same period, we will use "What's Wrong With This Picture: Contextualizing Edith Wharton's Work in the College Classroom." (Because the Wharton site was done for a specific project, you may find some of the navigational links useless. In those cases, just use the "back" and "forward" buttons to get where you need to go.)

We will also use The House of Mirth as a way of beginning to think about the importance of images in the study of literature. In a very real sense, Wharton's novel describes a group of people who have come to see life as a series of spectacles. The men and the women in the novel work to produce particular images of themselves, and they respond to others by interpreting the images those people represent. Thus, the novel should prove a very useful way of thinking about the place of images in literature and culture, and how to "read" them. So as we read the novel and focus on the scenes it presents to our minds' eyes, we will also collect and interpret photographs, drawings, paintings, and other images of urban life in that period. This will be an important phase of the course for several reasons. First, the study of images is playing an increasingly important role in scholarship (as in other areas of contemporary life) because of the wide availability and use of graphics in digital technologies. Second, the people who wrote the books we are reading this semester were part of an earlier technological revolution. The recent wide availability of the camera made it possible for journalists, reformers, and other kinds of people to use photographs to document their cases, while the improvement of printing technologies made it possible to increase the number of illustrations in printed works.

 

DURING STAGE FOUR WE WILL LEARN ABOUT, DISCUSS, AND EXPLORE:

DURING STAGE FOUR WE WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS OF OUR PROJECT:

Each person, whether working individually or in a group, will construct a small gallery of at least four images related to his/her topic. One or two images may be saved from web sources that permit copying; you should scan or photograph the others. As usual, provide a brief annotation that includes the name of the artist, the date of the work, the publication in which it appeared, any additional information you can track down regarding the artist and work, a brief description of the image, and a list of key subjects you believe are connected to the image. Post your annotated collection to our Graphics Gallery.

Stage Five, Weeks 9, 10 & 11: Refining Our Topics, and Developing Our Collections of Contemporary Commentaries and Comments by Critics and Scholars


NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

During this stage of the course we will read and discuss the final literary work on our syllabus, Stephen Crane's 1893 novel, Maggie:A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York). The title alone tells us a great deal, wouldn't you agree? Now that we are well into our investigation of city life and literature at the turn-of-the-century, it would probably be wise to consider whether we wish to refine or even change our selected topics for inquiry. After all, our understanding of the subject and our interests inevitably alter as we get deeper into our investigations. Once we have reconsidered our topics, we will further deepen our understanding by reading, transcribing, and annotating selections from at least two secondary sources and two primary sources. If the annotated bibliography you -- or someone else -- posted to the Selected Bibliography page is still pertinent, feel free to pursue those sources.

 

DURING STAGE FIVE WE WILL LEARN ABOUT, DISCUSS, AND EXPLORE:

DURING STAGE FIVE WE WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS OF OUR PROJECT:

Stage Six, Weeks 12, 13 & 14: Constructing an Exhibit on the Topic of Your Choice


NARRATIVE OVERVIEW:

Each student will draw upon the materials we have collected and insights we have enerated in order to create a printed or digital "exhibit." Each exhibit will focus on a specific topic, and use as its starting point a significant scene related to that topic from one of the novels we have read this semester. In order to provide a rich set of resources for understanding the topic and literary text, you will construct a gallery of images and selections from related primary and secondary works. In order to help visitors understand your exhibit, you will provide an introductory (or "overview" essay), as well as commentaries on each individual item. In a sense, you will be creating an annotated edition of one section of a novel, or even a kind of hypertext" in which words or phrases are linked to commentaries and related resources. In fact, you may wish to build active links between highlighted words or passages and excerpts that help illuminate its meaning.

But in simpler terms, all you are really being asked to do is to assemble a kind of scrapbook, in which you present one item and help viewers understand its meaningfulness by surrounding it with other items that help explain it. For example, if you were a child putting together a scrapbook on your experiences at a summer camp, you might have a picture of your bunkhouse in the center of the page or front of the notebook. Then you might draw lines out from the photo and at the end of each line put one set of items: pictures of your bunkmates standing with your arms wrapped around one another; a sign you and your bunkmates made for the cabin naming it "Stinkhouse"; a broken balloon from the time you and one bunkmate water-bombed the other two kids, and a Kleenex with blood on it from a fight you had one night when things got out of hand. Think about the way this selected collection and arrangement of items would give your viewer a particular but rich way of understanding your camp experience. In a similar way, think about how to design an "exhibit" that will allow others to develop a deep appreciation and understanding of the meaning(s) of a particular passage or set of passages from city fiction by placing it in the context of selections of other primary texts, secondary works, and images, and by offering explanatory comments in the form of a brief introductory essay and a caption/annotation for each item included in the project.

At the beginning of this stage of the course we will consider what would best aid us in our work as we develop our exhibits. We should consider whether we need to solicit support from library or IT professionals, faculty members from departments such as English, History, Sociology or others. What form of workshops or consultations would best meet our needs while minimizing the demands we are placing on those we are asking to serve as mentors? How can we most intelligently schedule these sessions so they give the biggest benefit to the most people?

IMPORTANT:

Remember, this is not a new, start-from-scratch project, nor is it the "research project." We will have been investigating all semester before we get to this point. We have also been constructing sections of this exhibit all along. The exhibit simply presents an opportunity for you to select, arrange, and comment on those texts and other items you have collected that you feel provide the best way of offering a close look into your subject.

THE EXHIBIT SHOULD BUILD ON THE WORK YOU'VE DONE UP TO THIS POINT IN THE SEMESTER AND SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS:

1) A scene or section that you regard as significant in one of the three novels we are reading this semester, with key terms or significant words, phrases, or passages highlighted and annotated. (If you wish, you could instead focus on several passages you regard as related to one another in some way.)

2) An annotated collection of selections from primary sources, secondary works, and images that relate to the passage(s) you have chosen as your focus.

3) Annotations that link particular words or passages to your commentaries, excerpts and/or graphics from your gallery of primary and/or secondary works on related issues OR use an exhibit model and take us through different issues/themes/key words in your passage one mini-exhibit at a time. The excerpts can present a similar or different way of looking at the issue at hand. Your job as a commentator is to explain the relationship between the two, whether they are similar or different. You should use references to a minimum of three primary resources and two secondary resources unless you have received permission to follow an alternate plan.

4) A short introductory or overview essay in which you explain the source of your central passage (name of author, novel, explanation of role the scene plays in the plot) and discuss ways of developing a deep understanding of the people, events, and themes in the scene by placing them in context. In other words, how are we expected to respond to this scene—what are we supposed to notice and how are we supposed to see, hear, feel, and think about this? How is this scene part of an ongoing discussion of a particular topic or topics in the culture of that time? How is this passage's treatment of the theme similar or different from the way other texts treated that topic in the period? This commentary is not intended to function as an extended research paper with dozens of footnotes. Instead, it is intended as the text to accompany your "exhibit." It need be no longer than one or two pages, or it could be broken up into short commentaries on a series of connected topics/small exhibits.

5) A brief annotated list of recommended resources for others interested in this book/topic. Your list should include primary and secondary sources, both printed and digital.

You should post your completed exhibit to the Exhibits by Student Researchers page of our course site.

A Preliminary List of Our Assessment Criteria

We need to adopt a clear and functional sense of criteria that we can use to direct, assess, and revise our work over the course of the semester. Because we are attempting to conduct authentic an authentic scholarly investigation, our main criteria will include the following:

Accuracy and Completeness
Are all of the necessary elements included and presented in an appropriate format? Is all of the information correct?

Clarity and Authority
Is the material presented in a way that allows the reader to understand the information and ideas clearly? Is it reasonably free from distractions caused by noticeable disruptions in grammar, word choice, or sentence structure? Does the writer seem credible; in other words, does s/he seem to know how to talk with other people in a reasonable voice? Does s/he seem tohave a reasonably good understanding of the subject? Does s/he discuss reasonably complex issues in realistically complex terms rather than offering simple discussions of simple issues?

Focus/Depth
Does the exhibit offer an in-depth look at a fairly well-focused topic, or does it offer you a little bit of lots of topics?

Complexity/Truth/Usefulness
Would a reader/visit come away from this exhibit saying "That's exactly what I thought!" or would s/he say "Oh yes! Now I see!" Instead of reducing an issue to an oversimplified explanation, does this open up new ways of thinking about this subject or new elements of the topic by dealing with some of the confusing and complicated elements of the issue? Does it help us understand something we never understood before; does it make a difference?

Texts:

Maggie:A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York)
by Stephen Crane, Kevin J. Hayes (Editor)
A Bedford Cultural Edition
1999 Paperbound 374 pp. ISBN 0–312–15266–3

Sister Carrie : An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, and Sources Criticism
by Theodore Dreiser, Donald Pizer (Editor)
Norton Critical Editions
1999 Paperback 580 pages 2nd edition, W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393960420

The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton, Anna Quindlen (Introduction)
Mass Market Paperback - 350 pages Reprint edition (February 2000)
Signet Classic; ISBN: 0451527569 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.84 x 6.76 x 4.21

How the Other Half Lives : Studies Among the Tenements of New York
by Jacob Riis
Dover Publications, 233 pages ISBN: 0486220125

 

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The Darkness and Daylight Project was constructed by Dr. Lucia Knoles, Dept. of English, Assumption College, in collaboration with her students. We welcome visits and comments from other researchers.