Course Description:
This course will consider the social and political contexts of British Romantic literature by examining works that deal specifically with the most important issues of the time.

Course Objectives:
This course will emphasize the importance of critical and analytical skills in examining various works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, written in a variety of modes, including autobiography, poetry, and narrative fiction.  Students will be expected to develop their own interpretive abilities while demonstrating their ability to

• identify the connections among the abolitionist, feminist, and reform movements, incorporating consideration of the French and Napoleonic wars, counterrevolutionary measures in England, and British colonialism;
• examine the Romantic conceptions of the African, the “Oriental,” and the woman in terms of racial, national, class, and gender identity;
• examine the Romantic notions of individual consciousness, the interplay between reason and the imagination, the connections between solitude and community, and the perceived relationships among different world religions at the time;
• demonstrate their understanding of course content through participation in informed class discussions and the preparation of written discussions of the literature under discussion, both with and without the incorporation of secondary source criticism.

• evaluate the influence of specific historical and political events on the writings of the figures of the Romantic period;
• analyze the texts assigned for the course in terms of their historical and political contexts and their engagement with the themes relevant to the course;
• distinguish between the different texts in terms of their political and philosophical viewpoints;
• produce effective written arguments, in both oral and written forms, regarding the texts under consideration.

Aug	26	Course Introduction
		A. Feminism and Gender
Sept	2	Smith, Desmond (Please be sure to read the Introduction and Appendices A and B) Recommended: Ellis, “Charlotte Smith's Subversive Gothic”
	9	Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria Talleyrand Excerpt (handout) Recommended: Ferguson, “MW and the Problematics of Slavery ” Recommended: Hoeveler, “Reading the Wound”
	16	Hays, The Victim of Prejudice Deadline to Select Topic for Brief Oral Presentation
	23	Lister, I Know My Own Heart WW, “To the Lady E.B and the Hon. Miss P” (handout) Recommended: Clark,  “Anne Lister's Construction of Lesbian Identity” Recommended: Brideoake,  “‘Extraordinary Female Affection’”
		B. Slavery and Abolition
	30	Phillis Wheatley (handouts) “To S. M., a Young African Painter”  “To the Right Hon. William, Earl of Dartmouth” “On Being Brought from Africa to America” "An Hymn to Morning" “A Farewell to America. To Mrs. S. W.” “To His Excellency George Washington” “On the Death of Gen. Wooster” Recommended: Balkun, “Phillis Wheatley's Construction of Otherness ” Recommended: Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"  Recommended: Jordan, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America"
Oct	7	Equiano, Narrative of the Interesting Life (Gates 15-247) Recommended: Orban,“Dominant and Submerged Discourses ”
	14	Equiano, cont. Prince, History of Mary Prince (Gates 249-321) Recommended: Paquet, “Heartbeat of a West Indian Slave ” Critical Response Paper Due
	21	Blake,  “The Little Black Boy,” (handout) “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” (handout) Recommended: Mellor, “Sex, Violence, and Slavery” Coleridge, “Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade” (handout) “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Recommended:  Diggle, “Coleridge's Greek Ode” Recommended: May, “Coleridge's Slave Trade Ode”
	28	Southey, from Poems on the Slave Trade (handout) WW, “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” (handout) “September 1st, 1802” (“The Banished Negroes”) (handout) “To Thomas Clarkson” (handout) “Queen and Negress chaste and fair!”(handout) Recommended: Persyn, “The Sublime Turn Away from Empire”  Recommended: Kaplan, “Black Heroes / White Writers” (see painting referred to ) Deadline for Research Paper Abstracts
		C. Colonialism and Orientalism
Nov	4	Edgeworth, Belinda Recommended: Moore, “Romantic Friendship ” Recommended: Greenfield, “Abroad and at Home”
	11	Byron, The Giaour (print pp. 1-36) The Bride of Abydos The Corsair (print pp. 1-51) Recommended: Meyer, “Romantic Orientalism ” Recommended: Schneider, “Secret Sins of the Orient ”
	18	P. Shelley, Hellas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
	25	Mary Shelley,  The Last Man Recommended: On-Line Resources
Dec	2	Final Examination
	5	Final Research Paper Due

Course Requirements and Student Evaluation:

• Students will be expected to complete all assigned readings for each session before coming to class and arrive prepared to discuss them.
• Written assignments will include weekly brief response papers (300-500 words) on the texts assigned for the course, one slighty longer critical response paper (1300-word min.), and one fully-documented critical research paper (6000-word minimum).
• The critical response paper and research paper must be on two separate subjects.
•  Written assignments are due at the beginning of class on the due date. Late papers will be penalized
• Students will also give a brief (15-20 minutes) oral presentation on one of the assigned readings.
• The brief presentation will be selected from a list generated by the instructor. A written version of the presentation will be submitted at the time of the presentation. Although no secondary source material is required for this assignment, ALL sources must be CLEARLY cited in the written version of the presentation.  Oral citation of sources will be insufficient and may lead to serious consequences (Please familiarize yourself with the Graduate School's guidelines on academic dishonesty, which can be found in the most recent catalog).
• Students will also experience a final, essay examination on the materials covered in the course.

Required Texts:

• De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and other Writings. Ed. Grevel Lindop. NY: Oxford, 1998.
• Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda. Ed. Kathryn J. Kirkpatrick. NY: Oxford, 1999.
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. The Classic Slave Narratives. NY: Penguin, 2002.
• Hays, Mary. The Victim of Prejudice. Ed. Eleanor Ty. Ontario: Broadview, 1998.
• Lister, Anne. I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840. Ed. Helena Whitbread. NY: NY UP, 1992.
• Shelley, Mary.  The Last Man. Ed. Morton Paley. NY: Oxford, 1994.
• Smith, Charlotte. Desmond. Ed. Anjte Blank and Janet Todd. Ontario: Broadview, 2001.
• Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. Ed. Anne K. Mellor and Noelle Chatto. NY: Longman, 2007.
• Handouts and On-line Sources

Secondary Texts:

• Bewell, Alan. Romanticism and Colonial Disease.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.
• Bode, Christophe, and Fritz-Wilhelm Neuman, eds. Re-Mapping Romanticism: Gender, Text, Context. Essen, Germany: Blaue Eule; 2001.
• Carey, Brycchan.  British Abolition and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery. NY: Palgrave, 2005.
• Coleman, Deirde. Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.
• Favret, Mary, and Nicola J. Watson, eds. At the Limits of Romanticism:  Essays in  Cultural, Feminist, and Materialist Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.
• Fay, Elizabeth. A Feminist Introduction to Romanticism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
• Fincher, Max. Queering Gothic in the Romantic Age. NY: Palgrave, 2007.
• Fulford, Tim, and Peter Kitson, eds. Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
• Greenfield, Susan. Mothering Daughters: Novels and the Politics of Family Romance: Frances Burney to Jane Austen. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2002.
• Hoeveler, Diane Long, and Jeffrey Cass, eds. Interrogating Orientalism:  Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices. Columbus:  Ohio State UP, 2006.
• Hofkosk, Sonia. Sexual Politics and the Romantic Author. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
• Keane, Patrick. Coleridge's Submerged Politics: The Ancient Mariner and Robinson Crusoe. Columbia: U Missouri P, 1994.
• Leask, Nigel.  British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
• Lee, Debbie. Slavery and the Romantic Imagination. Philadelphia: U Penn P, 2002.
• Makdisi, Saree. Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
• Malchow, H. L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.
• Mellor, Anne K.. Mothers of the Nation:  Women’s Political Writing in England, 1780-1830. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2002.
• ---, ed. Romanticism and Feminism>. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.
• ---. Romanticism and Gender. NY: Routledge, 1993.
• Morrison, Anthea. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade.” An Infinite Complexity: Essays on Romanticism. Ed. J. R. Watson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP< 1983. 145-60.
• Orr, Dannielle. “‘I Tell Myself to Myself’: Homosexual Agency in the Journals of Anne Lister (1791-1840).” Women's Writing 11.2 (2004): 201-22.
• O’ Rourke, Michael, and David Collings, eds. “Queer Romanticism.” Romanticism on the Net 36-37 (2004-2005).  <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2004/v/n36-37/index.html>.
• Page, Judith. Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women. LA: U California P, 1994. (on-line link )
• Persyn, Mary. "The Sublime Turn away from Empire: Wordsworth's Encounter with Colonial Slavery, 1802." Romanticism on the Net: An Electronic Journal Devoted to Romantic Studies 26 (2002). <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2002/v/n26/005700ar.html>.
• Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History. NY: Viking, 2007.
• Richardson, Alan, and Sonia Hofkosh, eds.  Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780-1834. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
• Shields, John.  Phillis Wheatley's Poetics of Liberation: Backgrounds and Contexts. Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 2008.
• Stabler, Jane. Byron, Poetics and History. NY: Cambridge UP, 2003.
• Thomas, Helen.  Romanticism and Slave Narratives:  Transatlantic Testimonies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
• Ty, Eleanor. Unsex’d Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1993.
• Wilson, Carol Shiner, and Joel Hafner, eds. Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1994.
• Winter, Kari. Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change:  Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790-1865.  Athens: U Georgia P, 1992.
• Woodard, Helena. "The Two Marys (Prince and Shelley) on the Textual Meeting Ground  of Race, Gender, and Genre." Recovered Writers/Recovered Texts. Ed. Dolan Hubbard. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1997. 15-30.
• Worrall, David, and Steve Clark.  Blake, Nation and Empire. NY: Palgrave, 2006.
• Wright, Eamon. British Women Writers and Race, 1788-1818: Narrations of Modernity. NY: Palgrave, 2005.