Canonicity and an American Literature Survey Course

This term, I taught an American literature survey for the first time since I was a high school teacher, and since the demands of a college curriculum and schedule are quite different from those of a high school curriculum and schedule, it was a very new course for me. Indeed, I've never even taken such a course, as I was successful at avoiding all general surveys when I was an undergrad.

As someone who dislikes the nationalism endemic to the academic discipline of literature, I had a difficult time figuring out exactly what sort of approach to take to this course — American Literature 1865-present — when it was assigned to me. I wanted the course to be useful for students as they work their way toward other courses, but I didn't want to promote and strengthen the assumptions that separate literatures by national borders and promote it through nationalistic ideologies.

I decided that the best approach I could take would be to highlight the forces of canonicity and nationalism, to put the question of "American literature" at the forefront of the course. This would help with another problem endemic to surveys: that there is far more material available than can be covered in 15 weeks. The question of what we should read would become the substance of the course.

An Important Clarification

I stopped by the University library yesterday to take a look at the latest issue of American Literature because it includes not only some interesting essays about Samuel R. Delany, a fellow I've written about a bit myself, but also a fabulous essay by Aaron Bady, "Tarzan's White Flights: Terrorism and Fantasy Before and After the Airplane".

In this essay, there is what may be my favorite statement-required-by-a-rights-holder evah (as they say). It accompanies a drawing by Robert Baden-Powell, author of Scouting for Boys, that appeared in the Daily Mail in 1938 and is titled "Policeman Aeroplanes":

Reproduced by kind permission of the Scout Association Trustees. The Scout Association does not endorse Mr. Bady's article or the use of air power against civilians.

So relieved to have that cleared up!

The cover for this issue of American Literature, by the way, reprints the famous August 1928 cover of Amazing Stories. If Duke University Press, the journal's publisher, were to sell posters of this cover, I would buy one in a second, because seeing Amazing Stories on the cover of American Literature gives me irrational, childlike joy.

Origin Story

Ed left Sears, Roebuck in August 1908, and the card he sent to Emma from South Bend, Indiana, shortly afterward indicates that he was preparing for some new enterprise or engaged in making contacts or purchases for his partnership with Dentzer. Dated September 15, 1908, the card was addressed to Emma at 197 Park Avenue. It reads: "This isn't a half bad little town. Haven't accomplished much yet. Not even my lunch -- 12:15 p.m." On the same date he sent little Joan a card containing one word: "Google."

--Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Invented Tarzan by Irwin Porges, Brigham Young University Press, 1975, page 104