American Passages, OPB

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American Passages, OPB

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Mission

• To encourage readers critical appreciation of
  American literature by enhancing the
  understanding of its diversity, continuity, and
  position within American history and culture.

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Challenges in Todays Classroom

• New Traditions (Asian American, Chicano,
  Spanish American, Oral Tradition)
• Rethinking the Stories We Tell about American
  Literature
• Technology
• Teaching within a Cultural and Historical Context
• Brainstorming What challenges do you face?

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American Passages Offers These Solutions

• Movements
• Pairing of Canonical and New Voices
• More information on Emergent Traditions
• 5 Guiding Questions
• Fully Integrated Materials
• Archive Quality Electronic Materials
• Contextual Materials
• Easy to Create Presentations

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Component One Movements

• Native Traditions
• Borderlands
• The Promised Land
• Becoming American
• Western Manhood
• American Gothic
• Slavery
• Regional Realism

• Class Consciousness
• American Rhythms
• Alienation
• Migrant Voices
• The Southern Renaissance
• Becoming Visible
• Liberation Poetry
• Search for Identity

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Brainstorming

• Time period covered
• ___ Beginnings to 1865 (Videos 1-7)
• ___1865-present (Videos 8-16, 1 2)
• ___ Beginnings to present (Videos 1-16)
• ___ Other____________________
• Which movements would you cover?
• Any special focus?

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Component Two Authors

• Authors from Becoming Visible (1940-1969)
• Ralph Ellison, N. Scott Momaday, Philip Roth,
  Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Paule Marshall,
  Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Paley, James Baldwin,
  Saul Bellow
• Brainstorming Authors

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Pairing Authors

• Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) and Saul Bellow
  (1916--) were friends, sharing a house together
  in rural New England when they were both young
  and aspiring writers. But both of them were
  also people apart. As artists they were highly
  suspicious of mass movements, of slogans, of
  attempts to reduce identity and political
  questions to simple terms. Both of them were
  college educated and respectful of a canonical
  literary tradition. In echoing and responding to
  that tradition as they developed contrarian
  voices for their own time, they won high praise,
  but also resentment from other factions in the
  modern and contemporary arts.

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Component Three More Information on Emergent
Traditions

• Borderlands
• Masculinity
• Eco-literature
• Oral Tradition

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Component Four 5 Guiding Questions

• 1. What is an American?
• 2. What is American Literature?
• 3. How do place and time shape the authors works
  and our understanding of them?
• 4. What characteristics of a literary work have
  made it influential over time?
• 5. How are American myths created, challenged,
  and re-imagined through this literature?
• Brainstorming which of these questions would
  you use?

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Component Five Fully Integrated Materials

• A thorough and step-by-step integration of print,
  video, and electronic material
• carefully and specifically bridging the print
  instructors trust with the technology their
  students are at home in

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Component Six The Archive

• Web Museum Format
• Curriculum Materials in Electronic Format and
  Guided Activities
• Information on the Five Guiding Questions and how
  they relate to each module
• Open Ended Activities with the Archive

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The Museum Format

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Curriculum Materials in Print and Electronic
Format

• The Instructor Guide
• In Print and Online
• Guided Activities
• Help on How to relate Literature and Cultural
  Artifacts
• The Student Guide
• Available in print only

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Instructor Guide Guided Activities

• "American culture had been profoundly affected by
  atomic fear, by a dizzying plethora of atomic
  panaceas and proposals, and by endless
  speculation on the social and ethical
  implications of the new reality." (Alan Filreis,
  Penn. University)
• Have students interview family members who
  were adults or children during this era. How do
  they characterize their experiences? Did men and
  women respond differently to the threat? How did
  children cope with the daily- reinforced fear of
  nuclear annihilation? Did anyone in their family
  build a bomb shelter? Did they wish at the time
  they could if they didnt?

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Instructor Guide Open Ended Activities with the
Archive

• Using the archive, students search for
  paintings made by African American artists during
  the Harlem Renaissance. Students freewrite on
  which of the paintings best illustrates DuBoiss
  notion of double-consciousness. Ask them to pay
  attention to both the style and the content of
  the paintings.

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More Sample Images

• Archibald Motley, The Octoroon Girl (1925)
• Palmer Hayden, Nos Quatre a Paris (1935)

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Instructor Guide Help on How to Relate Literature
and Cultural Artifacts

• The Five Guiding Questions Episode 14
• 1. What is American Literature?
• Jazz Aesthetics
• 2. How are American Myths created and/or
  challenged?
• Suburban Dreams Levittown, New York
• Baseball An American Pastime
• Working the Mines Native Americans and the
  Postwar Uranium Boom
• 3. What is an American?
• With Justice for All From World War II to the
  Civil Rights Movement

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Component Seven Contextual Materials

• Architecture
• Paintings Sculpture
• Maps Graphics
• Photographs
• Interior Design
• Music
• Political Cartoons
• Speeches, and more...

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More Sample Contextual Materials

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Component Eight Easy to Create Presentations

• Slide Shows for
• Teacher Presentations
• Student Presentations
• Student Assignments

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Sample Presentation Teaching about the Genteel
Tradition

• I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
• When the sun is bright on the upland slopes
• When the wind stirs soft through the springing
  grass,
• And the river flows like a stream of glass
• When the first bird sings and the first bud
  opes,
• And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
• I know what the caged bird feels!
• (Dunbar Sympathy Edmonia Lewis Hagar)

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Summary Goals

• Encourage the critical appreciation of American
  Literature by fulfilling the traditional goals of
  an American Literature survey course
• Promote diversity and continuity by respectfully
  presenting the canonical works while thoughtfully
  integrating works and voices that have
  traditionally been unheard, ignored, or
  discounted.
• Advocate for an understanding of American
  Literature in a broader contextual framework by
  using biographical, historical, and cultural
  contextual materials to support and enrich the
  readings.