Women’s Suffrage

NOTE: This class is American Literature Pre-Colonial to 1865. There are a list of topics to choose from and I wanted to do it on Women’s Suffrage.

One of the purposes of a survey course is to expose students to a wide array of perspectives, texts, and authors within a defined period. Often, this period spans hundreds if not thousands of years, so, by its nature, it’s impossible to cover all aspects of the literature in depth. However, this format does afford us the opportunity to be exposed to numerous thresholds wherein we might explore and discover what particular time periods, people, cultures, and texts intrigue us. This assignment invites you to select a threshold that is appealing to you, and to step-in, so to speak, so that you can wander and explore for a bit. In doing so, you can can gain deeper insight into each historical period in order to effectively discuss and analyze each piece of literature. As we keep reading and discussing both history and literature, I hope you find areas that interest you more than others – areas where you wish we spent more time.

This activity is designed to support the following Learning Objectives:

Examine American authors from a variety of ethnic and cultural groups in an historical context.
Analyze and compare different authors’ perspectives and interpretations of situations and events in light of the ethnic, literary, geographical, religious, ideological, social, and political environments within which they wrote.
Demonstrate through both in-class discussions and written assignments an ability to read literature closely and to interpret primary literary texts analytically and critically and with an awareness of cultural differences and variant interpretations of events.
Produce a critical analysis that depends on a strong thesis as a focal point, a convincing argument, and evidence from primary texts and perhaps secondary sources for support through examples, quotations, summaries, paraphrases of passages, and an explication of the language of the primary texts, using MLA documentation guidelines appropriately.
Produce clear and effective discourse that is appropriate to an academic reading audience, which is neither overly simplistic nor overly inflated and adheres to the conventions of critical literary analysis.

Develop a focused question about a topic we haven’t already explored in depth from one of the topics below.

Then, compose a 750-1000 word essay explaining what you discovered about your question and how it helps you better understand the literature of that period.

Topics

The lists below offer broad entry points; to develop your question, hone in on one particular aspect and refine it to a sub-topic that you can reasonably explore given the parameters of the assignment:

American literary nationalism
The American “renaissance”
Democratic ideals in literature
Social distinction or inherited wealth.
America’s natural landscape in literature
Technological developments (printing, the expansion in forms of transportation etc.)
Westward expansion
Literature centered on urban life
Irish immigration
Newspaper and magazine publishing
Women antebellum writers
Resistance to slavery and critiques of racism
Women’s suffrage
Transcendentalist movement
Native American treaties
Land-grabbing policies
Violations of Native Americans’ human rights
Abolition
Civil War

Requirements:

The essay must briefly explain what you discovered about your question and primarily explain how your research helps you better understand the literature of the period between 1820-1865.
Include at least 3 academic sources (not popular or general).
Work with a librarian
(Links to an external site.)
if you need help
The essay must be in third-person.
Include between 750-1000 words; MLA formatting and the Works Cited page will not factor into the required word count.
Format the essay, citations, and Works Cited page in MLA format.