ECTS credits ECTS credits: 6
ECTS Hours Rules/Memories Student's work ECTS: 99 Hours of tutorials: 3 Expository Class: 24 Interactive Classroom: 24 Total: 150
Use languages Spanish, Galician, English
Type: Ordinary Degree Subject RD 1393/2007 - 822/2021
Departments: English and German Philology
Areas: English Philology
Center Faculty of Philology
Call: Second Semester
Teaching: With teaching
Enrolment: Enrollable
1. Place the literary works in their respective historical, cultural and literary contexts.
2. Close reading and analysis of each of the works, paying attention to formal and aesthetic aspects as well as to their relation to the contexts.
3. Competent and well thought-out readings. The students will be expected to provide original and coherently argued interpretations.
4. The aim is to arrive at a solidly based knowledge of the evolution of the American literary tradition in the 19th century.
The basic aim of this course is the study of the thematic and formal aspects of several seminal texts written by 19th century US writers. We shall also pay attention to the literary and historical contexts in which these texts were written:
BENJAMIN HARRIS (pub.). "New England Primer" [selected fragments] (1802).
THOMAS PAINE. "The Age of Reason" [selected fragments] (1794, 1795, and 1807).
WASHINGTON IRVING. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820).
SARAH WENTWORTH MORTON. "My Mind and Its Thoughts" [selected poems] (1823).
EDGAR ALLAN POE. "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839).
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. "The Scarlet Letter" (1850).
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly" [selected fragments] (1852).
WALT WHITMAN. "Leaves of Grass" (The "Calamus" poems) (3rd edition, 1860).
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. "The Mysterious Key and What It Opened" (1867).
HORATIO ALGER JR. "Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks" [selected fragments](1868).
MARK TWAIN. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884-5).
JACOB RIIS. "How the Other Half Lives" [selected fragments] (1890).
KATE CHOPIN. "The Story of an Hour" (1894).
HENRY JAMES. "The Turn of the Screw" (1898).
ZITKALA-SA [GERTRUDE SIMMONS BONNIN]. "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" and "The Schooldays of an Indian Girl"
(1900).
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. "Up from Slavery" (1901).
BASIC
See previous section.
COMPLEMENTARY
BARNEY, W. (ed.) (2001). A Companion to 19th-Century America. Malden: Blackwell.
BAUER, D. M., and P. GOULD (eds.). (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
BERCOVITCH, S. (ed.) (1994). The Cambridge History of American Literature vols. 1-2. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
ELLISON, J. (1993). "Race and sensibility in the early republic: A. E. Bleecker and S. Wentworth Morton." American Literature 65 (3): 444-.
GANDAL, K. (2023). The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum. Oxford: Oxford U.P.
GERHARDT, C. (ed.) (2018). Handbook of the American Novel of the Nineteenth Century. Berlin: De Gruyter.
GONZÁLEZ GROBA, C. (2008). On Their Own Premises: Southern Women Writers and the Homeplace. U. de València.
GRAY, R., and O. ROBINSON (2004). A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South. Malden: Blackwell.
GRYCTKO, M. (2016). “'The Romance of the Nursery': Lost Boys and Deadly Femininity in 'The Turn of the Screw' and 'Peter Pan'." Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 41 (2): 142–157.
HAYES, K. (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Cambridge U.P.
HOCHMAN, B. (2011). Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Reading Revolution. Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P.
JARRETT, G. A. (ed.) (2014). The Wiley Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature. Volume 1. Chichester: Blackwell.
LARSON, K. C. (ed.) (2011). The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
LÓPEZ PEÑA, L. (2014). "Dressing Uncivil Neighbor(hood)s. Walt Whitman’s Adhesive Democracy in 'Calamus' and 'Drum-Taps'." Lectora 20: 61–80.
MNASSAR, S. (2023). "Humanity, Nature, and the Supernatural in Washington Irving’s 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'." European Journal of American Studies 18 (2): Online.
OLWELL, V. (2011). The Genius of Democracy. Fictions of Gender and Citizenship in the United States. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P.
PAPKE, M. E. (1990). Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. Westport: Greenwood Press.
PARINI, J. (1994). The Columbia History of the American Poetry. New York: Columbia U.P.
PHOTINOS, C. (2007). "The Figure of the Tramp in Gilded Age Success Narratives." Journal of Popular Culture 40 (6): 994–1018.
PIZER, D. (ed.) (1995). The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
PORTER, J, and K. ROEMER (eds.) (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. New York: Cambridge U.P.
RULAND, R. (1991). From Puritanism to Postmodernism. London: Routledge.
STRICKLAND, C. (1985). Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott. Tuscaloosa: U. of Alabama P.
TAWIL, E. (ed.) (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature. New York: Cambridge U.P.
WEINSTOCK, J. A. (2017). The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
WHITMAN, W. et al. (2011). Walt Whitman’s Songs of Male Intimacy and Love ‘Live oak, with moss’ and ‘Calamus’. Iowa: U. of Iowa P.
WOODWORTH-NEY, L. (2008). Women in the American West. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.
CB1, CB2, CB3, CB4, CB5 (Basic)
CG3, CG5, CG6, CG7, CG8, CG9, CE5, CE6, CE7, CE8, CE9, CE10
- Command of the cultural registers used in 19th century American literature
- Command of the techniques employed in text analysis
- Learning and applying of techniques to prepare written papers
The lectures will be devoted to the explanation of the main theoretical aspects of each period/movement/author included in the syllabus. Students must be ready to take part in short activities and/or question-answer sequences that might be inserted within the lectures. Although teacher-centred, these sessions are designed to gradually diminish the lecturer's intervention and foster the student's. The student will need to do some prior work (such as reading, etc) for each session.
The seminars and/or workshops will be devoted to the discussion and analysis of the literary texts included in the syllabus. Students must read the texts in advance, and must be ready to comment on them with the group.
(1) ORDINARY ASSESSMENT:
First Opportunity:
-Continuous Assessment: 40% of the final grade. The continuous assessment grade will only be considered if the exam grade is equal to or greater than 3 (out of 6), therefore, passing the exam is necessary to pass the course.
At the beginning of the semester, the weekly planning for all assessment items will be available to students in the Moodle platform ("Virtual Campus").
-Final Exam: 60% of the final grade.
Grids for the assessment of each activity will be available to students in the Moodle Platform.
Second Opportunity:
The assessment system will be the same as in the first opportunity.
The continuous assessment grade will remain the same in both opportunities.
(2) EXTRAORDINARY ASSESSMENT FOR THOSE STUDENTS WHO ARE OFFICIALLY EXEMPT FROM CLASS ATTENDANCE:
First Opportunity:
-Final Exam: 100% of the final grade.
Second Opportunity:
The assessment system will be the same as in the first opportunity.
(3) EXTRAORDINARY ASSESSMENT FOR RETAKERS AND STUDENTS WITH TIMETABLE CONFLICTS:
First Opportunity:
Retakers and students who cannot attend classes due to timetable clashes with other subjects may choose between the following assessment systems:
(A) Continuous Assessment (40% of the final grade) + Final Exam (60% of the final grade)
(B) Final Exam 100%.
Students must inform the course coordinator which option they choose BEFORE the third week of the semester via email. Failure to do so will result in evaluation as follows: continuous assessment 40% + final exam 60%.
Second Opportunity:
The assessment system will be the same as chosen for the first opportunity with no possibility of modification.
USE OF ENGLISH:
The correct use of the English language will be taken into account in the assessment of the course. Therefore, the maximum number of gross mistakes allowed in the exam and any assessment actvity in this course will be six gross mistakes. Please note, however, that any assessment activity and exam may be failed not only (1) if the number of gross mistakes is reached; but also, (2) if the student makes a lower number of gross mistakes, but this is compounded by a series of minor mistakes; (3) by an excessive accumulation of minor mistakes; (4) if the student is too conservative, so that the exercise does not reach the level required by the course, even if it contains few or no mistakes.
FRAUD:
In case of fraudulent completion of exercises or tests, the provisions of Article 16 of the "Regulations on the assessment of academic performance of students and review of grades" will apply: "The fraudulent completion of any exercise or test required in the assessment of a subject will result in a failing grade in the corresponding session, regardless of any disciplinary process that may be initiated against the offending student. Fraudulent conduct includes, among other things, submitting plagiarized work or work obtained from publicly accessible sources without reworking or reinterpretation and without citing the authors and sources." Therefore, the detection of plagiarism (including "cut & paste", "slicing" or the use of any AI tools) in ANY of the assessment activities will be penalized with a FAIL grade (0) in the SUBJECT regardless of the grade the student may have obtained for other concepts.
3 hours a week of work in the classroom. Attendance is compulsory.
7 hours a week of individual work to read and prepare the assigned literary works.
Since this is an ECTS subject, the student will need 150 hours (lectures and autonomous work included) to pass the course.
Attentive and critical reading of the compulsory works is indispensable BEFORE the explanation and discussion in class.
Attendance is compulsory.
Students are reminded of the importance of checking the Moodle platform ("Virtual Campus") regularly for important announcements concerning the course. Any announcement made through the Moodle platform has the same validity as those included in this teaching guide.
Late arrivals are NOT acceptable. Students should avoid entering the classroom after the lecture/seminar has started as s/he will not be allowed to enter the classroom.
Continuous assessment activities must be handed in on time. Otherwise, the task will not be considered for the continuous assessment.
DATA PROTECTION AND COPYRIGHT: Classes and course materials are copyrighted and protected by law. Recording classes or sharing/uploading course materials -particularly via social media and the internet- constitute an infringement of data protection and copyright laws. Students who commit any of these infractions might face important penalties at various levels.
In accordance with article 36 of the Organic Law of the University System, which specifies in its section c) among the duties of the students 'Observe the guidelines of the teaching staff and the university authorities', the use of electronic devices (mobile phones, tablets, computers, etc.) is not authorized during lectures and seminars, except when expressly authorized by the teaching staff.
The USC has additional tutorial support service to help diversity (students with specific needs). https://www.usc.gal/gl/servizos/area/inclusion- participacion-social. E-mail: sepiu.santiago [at] usc.es (sepiu[dot]santiago[at]usc[dot]es).
Ruben Jarazo Alvarez
Coordinador/a- Department
- English and German Philology
- Area
- English Philology
- ruben.jarazo [at] usc.es
- Category
- Professor: Intern Assistant LOSU
| Tuesday | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 13:00-14:00 | Grupo /CLE_01 | English | D08 |
| 14:00-15:00 | Grupo /CLE_01 | English | D08 |
| Thursday | |||
| 11:00-12:00 | Grupo /CLIS_03 (P-Z) | English | D05 |
| 12:00-13:00 | Grupo /CLIS_02 (G-O) | English | D05 |
| 13:00-14:00 | Grupo /CLIS_01 (A-F) | English | D05 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLE_01 | C11 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_01 (A-F) | C11 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_02 (G-O) | C11 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_03 (P-Z) | C11 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLE_01 | C12 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_01 (A-F) | C12 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_02 (G-O) | C12 |
| 05.27.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_03 (P-Z) | C12 |
| 07.02.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLE_01 | C11 |
| 07.02.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_01 (A-F) | C11 |
| 07.02.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_02 (G-O) | C11 |
| 07.02.2025 09:30-13:30 | Grupo /CLIS_03 (P-Z) | C11 |