I am probably going to be teaching a section of American Literature next year, which has caused me to ponder what I should teach and why. For years, various people have urged that an American Studies course, wherein American history and literature are merged, offers a powerful synergy not found in the two separate courses. While I’m not going to be trying that idea per se, I do know from personal experience how powerful the reinforcement between calculus and physics is, and it stands to reason that reinforcement of one subject by another is good for both.
With those points in mind, I started thinking what the point is of taking American history and reading American literature beyond the external mandates. I was immediately reminded of the Catch-22 quote asking why someone had studied British literature: wasn’t American literature good enough for him? So, here we go….
- Why, apart from external mandates, should one read American literature?
- Assuming the first question can be answered satisfactorily, the next (or another) question is “What is American literature?”
- As I am not a big fan of the idea of ‘canonical works” except in the root sense of sine qua non readings, the answer to the previous question needs to inform the response to the question, “What works should one study in an American literature course?”
- At some point, one must address the question of what general language skills should be incorporated into 11th grade English at St. John’s.