Welcome to ENG 241, Early American Literature, Fall 2012.
This is the first full week of the course. We've got twelve weeks total--through 15 December. Each week for the course will run from Tuesday through the following Monday. All work for the week is, hence, due each Monday at Midnight.
Begin your journey by familiarizing yourself with the course website.
This week explore this site, ENG241.weebly.com, and discover where you find the things you'll need to survive and thrive in the course--things such as: course announcements (right here, under the "Home: Announcements" tab), weekly assignment descriptions (under the "Weekly Assignments, F12" tab), class discussion forums and your Committee of Correspondence Assignment (under the "General Assembly, F12" tab), my office hours (under the "Contact Me" tab, the best ways to get in touch with me (under the "Contact Me" tab), ways to earn extra-credit (under the "Extra Credit" tab), where to ask questions about the course (under the "General Assembly" tab and under the discussion thread title, "Questions and Answers about the Course"), etc. Explore. It's a grand American tradition.
Those who settled the Americas had a whole continent, their selves, and 500 native Nations to discover. Take a few minutes with the map above and notice how much wasn't known almost a full hundred years after contact. When we closed the frontier in 1870--almost four hundred years after 1492--Americans were still discovering what it meant to live on this land, and we were still mapping the land and learning how to live on and with it.
This week, you've got an easier job, that is, to explore the ENG241 website and begin filling in the blanks in what you'll need to succeed in the course. Like the settlers, you'll spend part of your life here, and--hopefully--the experience will change you.
Make sure to take the time to scroll down each page, looking for what's there, and reading as you explore, as each page will give you additional insight into how ENG 241 is organized and what you can learn and do each week. Pay attention, as you'll be acknowledging that you were introduced what you can find on the course webpage in an assignment next week. In this first full week, you'll also want to get to know your fellow travelers.
You've been assigned into Committees of Correspondence (small groups called CoCs after the American Revolution's committees of correspondence), and you can find your committee assignment for the fall by looking under the General Assembly tab and scrolling down to near the bottom of the page. Near the top of the General Assembly, you'll find Coffee Houses (Discussion Forums) set up for your committee, and one of your jobs this first week is to use these forums to introduce yourself and to begin getting to know your group. Click on title for your committee's coffee house, and you'll find directions on how to write a short "letters of introduction" for your CoC there. This will establish that you are participating in the course and are attending, and the assignment is due Monday, 1 October.
Over this week, as you read the announcements I make here and write on your own, you'll begin to think about what each of the terms: "Early," "American," and "Literature" mean and what these terms mean when you bring them together, so again, you'll be beginning to map the new land and learning we'll explore together. To begin this process, you began by reading John Hector St. John de Creveceour's Letter III from Letters from an American Farmer (1781) It was in these letters, published in 1781, that de Creveceour began to explore the question, "What is an American?"
Like him, you'll be writing a short essay (minimum 750 words, due Monday, 1 October at Midnight). In your essay, you'll be following in de Creveceour's footsteps, and like him, you'll write to a modern, would be immigrate to America, someone who has never been here and only knows the land and the society through what they've hear. You'll find that it's one thing to know America first hand and quite another to begin to distill this knowledge into a short essay. In the weekly assignment descriptions for week two, I will explain how to use the personal google account you set up to publish your essay for your committee and for me. Look for the link to the assignment descriptions each week under the tab "Weekly Assignments, F12."
Again, like the early settlers, we'll be filling in the map as you go, and we'll be changing your conception of the land and changing ourselves in the process of our journey. Make sure you're prepared for the trip. After reading the assignment for week one, Click here to share the VCCS email and the personal gmail you set up for the class. You'll be using both of these email addresses in your journey through the course. Check announcements (right here, on this very page) often for secret extra credit opportunities, short written lectures, discussions, class announcements, videos by me, or just interesting stuff about what we're reading and connections to Richmond.
If you want to buy textbooks, we'll be using volumes A and B of either the fifth or sixth editions of the Heath Anthology of American Literature. Buy these texts if you don't want to read the literature online. If you don't mind reading online, you can save some money by using the links I'll provide each week.
Again, well come to "this America, this new found land."
Dr. Steve Brandon
