ENGL 194 - Penn State Altoona - Penn State University

ENGL 194: “Early American
Women Writers and Their Worlds”
Spring 2011
Office: 129 Misciagna
Dr. Sandy Petrulionis
Mailbox: 108 Misciagna
TR 1:15-2:30
shp2@psu.edu
144 Hawthorn 949-5365
Office Hours: TWR, 9-12
REQUIRED TEXTS:
• Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds., The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 3 rd ed.,
volume 1 (Norton, 9780393930139)
• Louise Erdrich, Tracks (Harper Perennial, 9780060972455)
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 9780312442668)
• daily access to ANGEL
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS:
ENGL 194 is a General Education (GH, US, IL) literature course focusing on early American (and a few
British) women authors writing in English in various literary genres. As with all literary artists, women
throughout history have used the written word to tell the stories of their lives. We’ll read poems,
stories, essays, political pamphlets, and novels to examine the attitudes, vision, intellectual scope,
and creative power of women—from a Puritan held captive by Native Americans for three months in
what she called the “howling wilderness,” to an adolescent slave girl besieged by her owner in North
Carolina, to a high society dame bored with her wealthy life in the late nineteenth century, to a
contemporary Chippewa woman who relates the story of her community’s efforts at cultural
survival.
The goals of ENGL 194 are to introduce you to the variety of subjects and historical eras in which
women writers have depicted their life stories in English and American literature. In addition to
gaining knowledge and respect for the courage and strength women have exhibited in the face of
incredible odds against their writing, you will also improve your critical reading and writing skills and
learn how to recognize different literary techniques in several genres. By the end of the semester,
you should have a broad introduction to women writers in early America—their influences, their
subjects, their aspirations, their struggles, and their talent.
ASSIGNMENTS (you will receive specific instructions for each):
♦ Quizzes and Class Participation (20%)
♦ Reading Responses (postings to ANGEL Discussion Forums) (20%)
♦ Mid-Term Exam (20%)
♦ Short Essay (20%)
♦ Cumulative Final Exam (20%)

CLASS POLICIES
• Late assignments: Late papers will be dropped a letter grade for each class that they are late and
will not be accepted more than one week after the original due date. Assignments may always be
handed in early—in person or in my mailbox in 108 Misciagna.
• Make-Up Exams: Make-up exams will be given only if you miss class due to a documented
emergency.
• Portable Electronic Devices, Headphones, etc.: A college classroom is not “business as usual.”
Please turn off or mute and place under your desk all cell phones, pagers, beepers, watches, i-
pods, cameras, and any other gadgets that make noise and are distracting. Better yet, leave
them at home or in the car .
• Attendance: You can only benefit from and contribute to class discussion if you’re here. Regular
attendance and class participation are expected if you plan to pass ENGL 194.
• Tardiness: Repeated tardiness is rude to everyone in the class and will reduce your final grade in
ENGL 194.
• Class cancellation: To find out if class has been cancelled, go to ; or to
our class on ANGEL. Note: If the entire campus has been closed for severe weather, it will be
announced at as well as on WPSU radio (106.7 FM).
• Classroom Environment: There are few right and wrong answers in here. A literature classroom
is most rewarding when it centers on probing, thought-provoking discussion. The more you
speak up to share your thoughts about the authors and works we’re reading, the more enriching
everyone’s experience will be. You will not always agree with your classmates—but in such
disagreements we all more closely approach an understanding of the subject and gain insights
into others’ opinions and experiences. In all class discussions, I expect and provide tolerance,
courtesy, and respect. Any student whose behavior is disrespectful or disruptive to me or to
other students will be asked to leave (and perhaps to drop) the class. Your questions are
welcomed and encouraged—in class, during office hours, via e-mail, or telephone. If you don’t
understand or are having trouble with an assignment, or if you just want to discuss something—
please let me know. I’d like to have the chance to suggest a solution before an issue becomes a
problem.
• Students with Disabilities: Penn State University welcomes students with disabilities into its
educational programs. If you have a disability-related need for modifications or reasonable
accommodations in this course, please let me know as soon as possible after you have contacted
the Disability Services office in the Health & Wellness Center, located at the Sheetz Family Health
Center (949-5540; www.altoona.psu.edu/healthwellness).
Grading Scale: Your final grade in this class follows the scale recommended by the university’s
College of Liberal Arts, as shown below. [Note that Penn State does not allow the option to award
grades of C-, D+ or D-.]
A = 95 to 100
A- = 90 to 94.9
B+ = 87.9 to 89.9
B = 83.33 to 87.8
B- = 80 to 83.32
C+ = 75 to 79.9
C = 70 to 74.9
D = 60 to 69.9
F = 59.9 and below

“A woman must have money and a room of
her own if she is to write fiction.”
---Virginia Woolf
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES (all readings are from The Norton Anthology except for Harriet Jacobs’s
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. Always read the author’s biographical
sketch preceding the assigned texts.)
Week 1
Jan. 11:
Jan. 13:
Introduction
Virginia Woolf: from A Room of One’s Own (handout)
Queen Elizabeth I: “On Monsieur’s Departure”
Weeks 2-3: Puritan Women Writers
Jan. 18: “Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” (pp. 123-44)
Anne Hutchinson: “Trial at the Court of Newton, 1637” (handout)
Anne Bradstreet: “The Prologue,” “The Author to Her Book,” “To My Dear and Loving
Husband”
Jan. 20:
Mary Rowlandson: from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson
Lucy Terry: “Bars Fight”
Cotton Mather: “A Notable Exploit: Hannah Dustan’s Captivity and Revenge” (handout)
Jan. 25, 27: Eliza Haywood: Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze
Aphra Behn: “The Willing Mistress”
Weeks 4-5: Revolutionary Women
Feb. 1: Sarah Kemble Knight, from The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York
Abigail Adams: Letters to John Adams
Feb. 3: Phillis Wheatley: “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
Hannah More: from The Slave Trade
Sarah Wentworth Morton: “The African Chief”
Feb. 8: Lady Mary Chudleigh: from The Ladies Defense and “To the Ladies”
Judith Sargent Murray: “On the Equality of the Sexes”
Feb. 10: Mary Wollstonecraft: from A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Week 6:
Feb. 15:
Feb. 17:
An American Movement Begins (or; “that Damned Mob of Scribbling Women”)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: from “Address to the New York State Legislature”
Fanny Fern: “Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the ‘Blue Stocking,’” Mr. Pipkin’s Ideas of
Family Retrenchment,” “A Law More Nice than Just,” “The Working Girls of New York”
Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman?”, “Keeping Things Going while Things Are Stirring”
Margaret Fuller: from Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Weeks 7-8: Slave Women Write
Feb. 22, 24: Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Mar. 1, 3: Finish Incidents
Frances E. W. Harper: “Ethiopia,” “The Slave Mother”
Mid-Term Exam Mar. 3
SPRING BREAK: March 7-11

Week 9: Women Document the Industrial Nightmare
Mar. 15, 17: Rebecca Harding Davis: Life in the Iron Mills
Week 10: More “Scribbling Women”
Mar. 22: Louisa May Alcott: “My Mysterious Mademoiselle,” “How I Went Out to Service”
Mar. 24: Constance Fenimore Woolson: “Miss Grief”
Week 11:
Mar. 29:
Mar. 31:
Week 12:
Apr. 5, 7:
From 1850 to 2011: American Women Poets
Emily Dickinson: “Rearrange a ‘Wife’s’ Affection!”, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” “She
dealt her pretty words like Blades,” “I dwell in Possibility,” “Much Madness is divinest
Sense”
Guest speaker: Poet Shara McCallum from Bucknell University
Women in the Gilded Age
Kate Chopin: The Awakening
Week 13: Local Color, and Women’s Health and Sexuality
Apr. 12: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: “The Revolt of ‘Mother’”
Apr. 14: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Short Essay due Apr. 14
Weeks 14-15: A Contemporary Woman’s Voice
Apr. 19, 21: Louise Erdrich, Tracks (through p. XX)
Apr. 26, 28: Finish Tracks
** FINAL EXAM: Thursday, May 5, 2011—3:10 pm-5:00 pm **
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PENN STATE ALTOONA STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
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“According to Penn State University, Academic integrity is the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open,
honest and responsible manner. Academic integrity is a basic guiding principle for all academic activity
at The Pennsylvania State University, and all members of the University community are expected to
act in accordance with this principle.
Academic integrity includes a commitment not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification,
misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of
the University community and compromise the worth of work completed by others.”
Following are all examples of plagiarism:
• submitting work as your own that you did not write (even a sentence!)
• failing to document your research sources
• failing to use quotation marks to indicate words that are directly quoted from any source (in
other words, any words that you did not write must be contained in quotation marks).
We all know that Internet sources have made it very easy and (perhaps) tempting to plagiarize.
** But before you decide to engage in academic dishonesty in ENGL 194, carefully assess the risk
you take**: Any student in this class who engages in academic dishonesty will fail the course, will
be reported to Academic Affairs, and may be suspended from Penn State Altoona.