COURSE UNIT TITLE

: CITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

DEGREE PROGRAMMES

Description of Individual Course Units

Course Unit Code Course Unit Title Type Of Course D U L ECTS
AKE 3013 CITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE ELECTIVE 3 0 0 5

Offered By

American Culture and Literature

Level of Course Unit

First Cycle Programmes (Bachelor's Degree)

Course Coordinator

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR YEŞIM BAŞARIR

Offered to

American Culture and Literature

Course Objective

Make a comparative analysis of city as observed in American and European poetry, and explore the diverse urban imagery in American poetic canon with reference to the social and cultural mission of city in history.

Learning Outcomes of the Course Unit

1   Comment on the evolving portrayal of urban perception in American poetry (19th century, the first and second half of 20th century)
2   Describe the differing patterns of urban reality projected by American and European poetry.
3   Define the diverse resonances of urban imagination in poetry and fiction.
4   Analyze the ironic and paradoxical relation of city to poetry.
5   Evaluate the process of urbanization in connection to modernism and modern intellectual agenda in the general course of history.
6   Interpret the city in American studies in the totality of its diverse cultural references.
7   Integrate the role of artist as a poet with the social and political function of the city.

Mode of Delivery

Face -to- Face

Prerequisites and Co-requisites

None

Recomended Optional Programme Components

None

Course Contents

Week Subject Description
1 City in the 19th Century American Poetry: The Glorious City Walt Whitman's New York: "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" Poet as the Cosmopolitan Traveler: "Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City"
2 City in the 19th Century American Poetry: The Glorious City Whitman Hails Industrial Images: "To a Locomotive in Winter" The Frontier Must Go On: "Facing West from California's Shores"
3 City in the 20th Century American Poetry: Modern City as a Wasteland Eliot's London, the Unreal City: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
4 City in the 20th Century American Poetry: Modern City as a Wasteland Carl Sandburg: "Chicago," "The Harbor," "Fog," "Lost" Hart Crane: "To Brooklyn Bridge"
5 City in the 20th Century American Poetry: Modern City as a Wasteland William Carlos Williams' Paterson: An Urban Epic Allen Ginsberg and Anti-Urban Attitude: "A Supermarket in California"
6 Urban Perspectives from Europe: Blake, Wordsworth City in European Romanticism and American Soil: Blake's "London" and Langston Hughes' "Harlem" Wordsworth's City of Strangers: "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"
7 Urban Perspectives from Europe: Baudelaire, Pound Baudelaire's Flâneur and European Modernity: "Parisian Dream" "To a Passer-by" Ezra Pound and Urban Imagism, An American in Europe: "In a Station of the Metro"
8 MIDTERM EXAM MIDTERM EXAM
9 Cities of an Invisible America: The Urban Isolation The Poet Flâneuse in City: Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters" "Kitchenette Building" Growing up in Black America: Lucille Clifton's "In White America"
10 Cities of an Invisible America: The Urban Isolation City as a Masculine Space: Adrienne Rich's "Breakfast in Bowling Alley in Utica, New York" Woman in the City: Denise Levertov's "A Solitude" Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" and "Young"
11 American City in Retrospect: Homage to the Oldies E.A. Poe's Gothic Cities: "The City in the Sea," "The Man of the Crowd"(short fiction)
12 American City in Retrospect: Homage to the Oldies Moral Dimensions of Urban Landscape: William Cullen Bryant, "Hymn of the City" "The Crowded Street" Vachel Lindsay's Urban Sublime: "The City That Will Not Repent"
13 Unveiling the Urban Wilderness Defining and Designing the Natural: Language of Trees in Edna St. Vincent Millay, "City Trees" The Simple, Compact, Well-Join'd Scheme: Margaret Atwood's "City Planners"
14 Unveiling the Urban Wilderness City and Its Discontents Urban Romance and Gloom: Conrad Aiken's The House of Dust "Over the Darkened City, the City of Towers" Charles Hanson Towne, "The City" "August in the City" Diane Ackerman, "City of Dreams"

Recomended or Required Reading

Campbell, Neil, Alasdair Kean. American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997.
The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Second Ed., Vols 1-2. Lexington, Mass.: Heath and Company, 1994.
Machor, James L. Pastoral Cities: Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of America. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and Pastoral Ideal in America (1965). New York: Oxford U P, 2000.

Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods

1. Lectures: Lectures are the primary components of instruction among teaching strategies to lay the theoretical basis of subject and introduce the reading material relevant to the studied topic. Lectures play a central role in getting to know the terms and concepts defining the topic.
2. In-Class discussions: In-class discussions aim at questioning the applicability of course material to diverse situations and thus increasing the factual tangibility of the information. The last hour of each weekly lecture is reserved for discussions.
3. Visual presentations and films: It includes the in-class projection of visual data such as pictures, illustrations, photographs, and maps as well as films and documentaries complementing the topic when necessary.

Assessment Methods

SORTING NUMBER SHORT CODE LONG CODE FORMULA
1 MTE 1 MIDTERM EXAM 1
2 FIN FINAL EXAM
3 FCGR FINAL COURSE GRADE (RESIT) MTE 1 * 0.50 + FIN * 0.50
4 RST RESIT
5 FCGR FINAL COURSE GRADE (RESIT) MTE 1 * 0.50 + RST * 0.50


Further Notes About Assessment Methods

Exams are to inquire the correct use of terms and concepts profiling the course material and question the major thinking patterns acquired in the course.

Assessment Criteria

1. Midterm exam covers the topics instructed in class from the beginning of semester to the day of the exam.
2. Final exam covers the topics instructed in class after the midterm exam to the end of the semester, with some vital references to the content of the midterm exam.

Language of Instruction

English

Course Policies and Rules

1. Students are required to attend 70% of the course schedule.
2. No textbooks or notes are allowed during the exam.
3. No dictionaries are allowed during the exam. All vocabulary used in the exam are covered previously in the class and expected to be familiar to the student.
4. Any form of cheating in the exam will result in a zero grade and also in disciplinary action.

Contact Details for the Lecturer(s)

yesim.basarir@deu.edu.tr
office phone: (232) 301 8513

Office Hours

By appointment

Work Placement(s)

None

Workload Calculation

Activities Number Time (hours) Total Work Load (hours)
Lectures 13 3 39
Preparations before/after weekly lectures 13 2 26
Preparation for midterm exam 1 10 10
Preparation for final exam 1 10 10
Reading 13 2 26
Midterm 1 1 1
Final 1 1 1
TOTAL WORKLOAD (hours) 113

Contribution of Learning Outcomes to Programme Outcomes

PO/LOPO.1PO.2PO.3PO.4PO.5PO.6PO.7PO.8PO.9PO.10PO.11PO.12PO.13PO.14
LO.14353
LO.233555
LO.335
LO.455
LO.55442434
LO.6543
LO.733434

CONTACT INFORMATION
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Phone: +90(232) 412 12 12 - Fax: +90 (232) 464 81 35

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