Dr. Kendall Johnson      kjohnson [@] hku.hk      Office Hours: Tuesday afternoons      from 2-5 and by appointment      Class: KK605; Office: 819 K.K. Leung

This senior seminar in American Studies offers students the opportunity to enjoy the intellectual foundation that they have built by examining closely the important concepts of the "captivity narrative" and the "frontier" in United States film and literature. The "captivity narrative" dates back to the first encounters between Europeans and the Natives of the New World. In its most basic formula, the captivity narrative is about an Euro-American woman on the frontier settlement who relates her capture by Indian "savages," her experience in captivity, her escape, and eventual restoration into her proper society. Why were captivity narratives so popular? Who was reading them and why? In what ways did these narratives depend on assumptions regarding gender, race and class in order to structure the dramatic turns of abduction and redemption?

As we read texts that are the foundation of American culture, our concern is also with the legacy of these texts as they influenced authors and film makers in subsequent centuries and to this very day. We will see authors reinvent and the themes of captivity and the frontier to reflect on a system of political identity based in a national system of property that makes them feel lonely and alienated. Other authors will use the captivity narrative to fight for their legal freedom and political and economic enfranchisement.

• American Captivity Narratives, Edited by Gordon M. Sayre, Houghton Mifflin
  [ISBN-10: 0395980739; ISBN-13: 978-0395980736]
  
  
• John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1690), Simon and Schuster Publishing, Peardon Editor
  [ISBN-10: 0023933003; ISBN-13: 978-0023933004]
  
  
• Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1794), Penguin
  [ISBN-10: 0140390804; ISBN-13: 978-0140390803]
  
  
• James Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824), Syracuse
  [ISBN-10: 0815624913; ISBN-13: 978-0815624912]
  
  
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of a Life of an American Slave (1845), Penguin edition
  ISBN-10: 014039012X; ISBN-13: 978-0140390124]
  
  
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slavegirl (1861), Harvard University Press
  ISBN-10: 0674002717; ISBN-13: 978-0674002715]
  
  
• Henry James, Daisy Miller (1878), Penguin
  ISBN-10: 0140432620; ISBN-13: 978-0140432626]
  
  
• Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World (1993), Fawcett Books

ISBN-10: 0449909662; ISBN-13: 978-0449909669]

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

• Attendance and participation in course sessions: Scheduled meeting times will consist of both lecture on and discussion of assigned reading. It is your responsibility to study the assigned material before class meetings and be able to explain what it felt like to watch or read the material.
  
  Each session I will pass around an attendance sheet. Please be sure to sign it. Unexcused absences will adversely affect your final grade.
  
  
• Short response papers: The goal of this course includes the development of your ability to analyze both the themes of American literature and culture, as well as the forms of these stories. How do stories begin, unfold, end, and how do the technologies of print and video affect the structure of their narrative development, crisis, and resolution?
  
  Approximately every other week, I will ask you to write a short paper (1-2 pages) that addresses a specific question about the material we are discussing.
  
  
• Midterm Exam and Essay: 2,000 words (approximately 5 pages). This paper can be an expansion of one of your response papers. It should have a thesis and make an argument that interprets a text that we have discussed in class.
  
  
• Final Exam and Paper: 2,000 to 3,00 words (8-10 pages).

COURSE OBJECTIVES and LEARNING OUTCOMES:

• Convey understanding of key concepts and philosophies behind the creation and development of the United States, theories of nationalism, and print culture.
  
  
• Familiarize students with many important cultural themes and historical events that continue to be very influential in the political, literary, and legal issues of the twenty-first century United States.
  
  
• Foster abilities to read closely a variety of media and genres (literature, legal documents, paintings, film) and to identify key cultural and theoretical concepts.
  
  
• Demonstrate how consideration of a text's immediate and potential extended audiences are important factors in the interpretation of that text.
  
  
• Exercise communication skills that encourage students to think critically, to evaluate arguments and to respond constructively in writing and in speech, and in both formal and informal environments.
  
  
• Development of an international context to the foundation and development of American Culture/
  
  
• Cultivate the enjoyment of intellectual experience in everyday life and continue to broaden students vision of the dynamic relationship between literature, history, geography, science, and the arts.

WEEK 1 Thursday, January 13:	THE MYTH OF JOHN SMITH AND POCAHONTAS: Primary reading: John Smith's The Generall History of Virginia (1624; pgs. 82-90 in Sayre) Disney's Pocahontas (movie, 1995) First Charter of Virginia(1606) Excerpt from Kathryn Derounian-Stodola and James Arthur Levernier, The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900 (1993)      Chapters 1 (The Captivity Tradition in Fact and Fiction) and 2 (Mythology of...) THE BAPTISM OF POCAHONTAS AT JAMESTOWN, 1613 placed in U.S. Capitol Rotunda in 1840 John Gadsby Chapman
WEEK 2 Th, January 20: (First Half)	THE PURITANS: Primary Readings: Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682, p. 132-176 in Sayre) Secondary reading Learning to read like a Puritan: excerpts from The New England Primer Excerpts from Michael Wigglesworth, Day of Doom (1662) John Locke, Second Treatise (1690) Sherman Alexie, "Captivity" Cotton Mather on Hannah Dustan from Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, The Ecclesaistical History of New England (1702), and on "A Narrative of Hannah Swarton" (1702, p. 186-194 in Sayre) Susan Faludi, America's Guardian Myths, The New York Times(7 September 2007) Recommended Reading Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The 17th Century (1939) Sacvan Bercovitch, Puritan Origins of the American Self (1975) James Axtell, "White Indians of North America" The William and Mary Quarterly 32.1 (Jan. 1975) James Axtell and William C. Sturtevant, "The Unkindest Cut: Or, Who Invented Scalping" The William and Mary Quarterly 37.3 (July 1980) Michelle Burnham, "Captivity, Contact, Commodification," and "Between England and America" from Captivity and Sentiment:Cultural Exchange in American Literature: 1682-1861 (1997) PART I | PART II Compare the Boston and London title pages Anne Bradstreet and John Robinson on Pilgrim children Captivity narrative episode of Little House on the Prairie
WEEK 3 Th. Jan. 27:	James Seaver, The Life of Mary Jemison (1824) "The Western: Or the American Film Par Excellence"() and "The Evolution of the Western" () from What is Cinema: Vol. II (in French, 1958-62) The Searchers (1956; John Ford)
Holiday Th. Feb 3:	No Class: Holiday
WEEK 4 Th. Feb 10:	DECLARING INDEPENDENCE : Declaration of Independence, in Jefferson's Autobiography Here is Jefferson's hand-written draft of the Declaration. Notice the the irregular spacing between words in Dunlop's broadside of the Declaration(click on icon at right). What might these spaces mean? Celebrity reading of document The Articles of Confederation and The Constitution from Henry Steele Commager's Documents of American History "Federalist X from The Federalist Papers (1788) Notice the the irregular spacing between words in Dunlop's broadside of the Declaration(click on icon at right). What might these spaces mean? Recommended Reading Benedict Anderson, Chapters 1-3, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Spread and Origin of Nation Identity (1983) Ernest Renan, "What is a Nation?" (1886) Etienne Balibar, "The National Form: History and Ideology" (1991); "Subjection and Subjectivation" (1994) John Dunlop's broadside
WEEK 5 Th. Feb. 17:	Feminine Purity and the Early Crisis of National Family Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1794) Way Down East (1920; D.W. Griffith)
WEEK 6 Th. Feb. 24:	Escape Primary reading: Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" (1854) and "Resistance to Civil Government," pages 189-213 (1849) Into the Wild (Sean Penn; 2007) literary references in Into the Wild (Sean Penn; 2007)
Th. Mar. 3:	READING WEEK MIDTERM PAPER TOPICS, essays are due by Friday March 11 at 5 pm. Useful terms: from Timonthy Corrigan and Patricia White, "Glossary" of The Film Experience: An Introduction (2004)
WEEK 7 Th. Mar. 10: (Part 1)	AMERICAN SLAVERY: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave (1845) Consider Douglass's reflections on Garrison and the role of "the slave" at Abolitionist events, from "Chapter XXIII: Introduced to the Abolitionists," My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) Fugitive Slave Acts (1850, Commager pdf file) Douglass on Garrison from My Bondage and My Freedom(1855)
WEEK 8 Th. Mar. 17:	Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl (1861) Amistad (1997; Steven Spielberg)
WEEK 9 Th. Mar. 24:	Slavery Primary reading: Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno", pp. 66-170 (1855; 1856 book publication)
WEEK 10 Th. Mar. 31:	GOING EAST: Henry James, Daisy Miller (1878) Lost in Translation (2003)
WEEK 11 Th. Apr. 7:	Bharati Mukherjee, Holder of the World (1993)
WEEK 12 Th. Apr. 14:	Bharati Mukherjee, Holder of the World (1993)
WEEK 13 Th. Apr. 21:	Wrap up and brainstorming for final exam. FINAL PAPER TOPICS, essays are due by Friday April 29 at 5 pm.