COURSE UNIT TITLE

: AMERICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE IN LITERATURE

DEGREE PROGRAMMES

Description of Individual Course Units

Course Unit Code Course Unit Title Type Of Course D U L ECTS
AKE 6063 AMERICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE IN LITERATURE ELECTIVE 3 0 0 7

Offered By

American Culture and Literature (English)

Level of Course Unit

Third Cycle Programmes (Doctorate Degree)

Course Coordinator

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR YEŞIM BAŞARIR

Offered to

American Culture and Literature (English)

Course Objective

The aim of this course is to enlarge the intellectual awareness on literary representation of cities as portrayed by American authors.

Learning Outcomes of the Course Unit

1   To understand the symbols and metaphors associated with the city
2   To examine the cross-textual signifiers of city in the West
3   To develop a heightened cultural consciousness of city in American literature
4   To analyze the historical and cultural layers of American city in short fiction
5   To problematize the literary stereotypes identified with the American city

Mode of Delivery

Face -to- Face

Prerequisites and Co-requisites

None

Recomended Optional Programme Components

None

Course Contents

Week Subject Description
1 Introduction to the course content American City in Poetry
2 E.A. Poe's Gothic Cities "The City in the Sea" (1845), "The Man of the Crowd" (1840, short story)
3 William Cullen Bryant's Urban Mysticism Wlat Whitman: The Poet as the Cosmopolitan Traveler "Hymn of the City" (1830) "The Crowded Street" (1843) "Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City" (1867)
4 Whitman's New York, an American Epic The Frontier Must Go On "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (1881) "Facing West from California's Shores" (1867)
5 Whitman's Ode to Progress and Technology Charles Hanson Towne's Romantic Celebration of Urban Landscape "To a Locomotive in Winter" (1881) "The City," "August in the City" (1909)
6 Carl Sandburg's Mighty City Vachel Lindsay's City as a She-Rebel "Chicago" (1914) "The Harbor" "Fog" "Lost" (1916) "The City That Will Not Repent" (1913)
7 MIDTERM EXAM MIDTERM EXAM
8 T. S. Eliot's London, the Unreal City Ezra Pound and Urban Imagism "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917) "In a Station of the Metro" (1916)
9 Conrad Aiken: Urban Romance and Gloom Edna St. Vincent Millay's Trees and Streets The House of Dust, "Over the Darkened City, the City of Towers" (1920) "City Trees" (1921)
10 Hart Crane's Urban Sublime Vladimir Mayakovsky's American Fantasy "To Brooklyn Bridge" (1930) "Brooklyn Bridge" (1925)
11 William Carlos Williams' American Anti-Epic Langston Hughes' American Nightmare Paterson, the Industrial Town, Excerpt from Book I, "The Strike" (1946) "Harlem" (1951)
12 Gwendolyn Brooks' Inner City and the Poet Flâneuse Allen Ginsberg and His Ghosts "Kitchenette Building" (1945), "The Bean Eaters" (1960) "A Supermarket in California" (1956)
13 Anne Sexton's the Urban Uncanny City as a Masculine Space in Adrienne Rich "Her Kind" (1960) "Young" (1961) "Breakfast in a Bowling Alley in Utica, New York" (1963)
14 Margaret Atwood and the Simple, Compact, Well-Join'd Scheme Denise Levertov's Cities of the Other "City Planners" (1965) "A Solitude" (1987)
15 Lucille Clifton's Growing up in American Cities Diane Ackerman's New Urban Chic of Desire "In White America" (1987) "City of Dreams" (1994)
16 FINAL EXAM FINAL EXAM

Recomended or Required Reading

Campbell, Neil, Alasdair Kean. "American City," American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Gelfant, Blanche Housman, "The City Novel as Literary Genre," The American City Novel, University of Oklahoma Press, 1954.
Hurm, Gerd. Fragmented Urban Images: The American City in Modern Fiction From Stephen Crane to Thomas Pynchon. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991.
Infante, Guillermo Cabrera. Şehirler Kitabı. Istanbul: Türkiye Iş Bankası Yayınları, 2003.
Kılıçbay, Mehmet Ali. Şehirler ve Kentler. Imge Kitapevi Yayınları, 2000.
Machor, James L. Pastoral Cities: Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of America. Madison: The U of Wisconsin P, 1987.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford U P, 1999.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.
Siegle, Robert. Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and Fiction of Insurgery. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U P, 1989.

Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods

1. Lectures: Lectures are the primary components of instruction among teaching strategies that lay the theoretical basis of subject and introduce the reading material relevant to the topic of study. Lectures play a central role in getting to know the terms and concepts defining the topic.
2. Textual analysis and discussions: It aims at questioning the applicability of course material to diverse situations, thus increasing the factual tangibility of the information.
3. Visual presentations and films: It includes the in-class projection of visual data such as pictures, illustrations, photographs, and maps as well as videos and documentaries complementing the topic when necessary.

Assessment Methods

SORTING NUMBER SHORT CODE LONG CODE FORMULA
1 MTE MIDTERM EXAM
2 FCG FINAL COURSE GRADE
3 FCGR FINAL COURSE GRADE MTE * 0.40 + FCG* 0.60
4 RST RESIT
5 FCGR FINAL COURSE GRADE (RESIT) MTE * 0.40 + RST* 0.60


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. Exam questions aim at measuring student's performance on discussing the social, cultural and literary controversies, and help develop an analytical and critical viewpoint.
2. Depending on analytical approach, question may require multiple responses.
3. Questions examine the student's ability of combining theory with literary and intellectual history.

Language of Instruction

English

Course Policies and Rules

1. Students are required to attend 70% of the course schedule.
2. Exam questions are based on open-book and open-note principle to improve students' thinking abilities and encourage them for higher cognitive responses.
3. Any form of cheating in the exam will result in a zero grade and also in disciplinary action.
4. Midterm exam covers the topics instructed in class from the beginning of semester to the day of the exam.
5. 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.

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 14 3 42
Preparations before/after weekly lectures 14 4 56
Preparation for midterm exam 1 10 10
Preparation for final exam 1 10 10
Reading 14 3 42
Midterm 1 3 3
Final 1 3 3
TOTAL WORKLOAD (hours) 166

Contribution of Learning Outcomes to Programme Outcomes

PO/LOPO.1PO.2PO.3PO.4PO.5PO.6PO.7PO.8PO.9PO.10PO.11PO.12PO.13PO.14PO.15PO.16PO.17
LO.15554554445
LO.25554554445
LO.35554554445
LO.45554554445
LO.55554554445

CONTACT INFORMATION
Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Cumhuriyet Bulvarı No: 144 35210 Alsancak / İZMİR
Phone: +90(232) 412 12 12 - Fax: +90 (232) 464 81 35

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