I’m making the final touches on syllabi for my courses on American literature at JMU and composition at Mary Baldwin College.
As for the course on American lit. since 1865, I’m thinking about teaching the usual suspects:
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain
Jack London
Henry James
Emily Dickinson
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
W.E.B. DuBois
Gertrude Stein
Carl Sanderg
Willa Cather
Upton Sinclair
T.S. Elliot
Ezra Pound
Dylan Thomas
Ernest Hemingway
Robert Frost
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
John Steinbeck
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Richard Wright
Ralph Ellison
James Baldwin
Wallace Stevens
William Carlos Williams
e. e. cummings
Arthur Miller
William Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
J.D. Salinger
Sylvia Plath
Kurt Vonnegut
Dylan Thomas
N. Scott Momaday
Simon Ortiz
Oscar Zeta Acosta
Leslie Marmon Silko
Amiri Baraka
Toni Morrison
Rita Dove
Don Delillo
Sherman Alexie
Louise Erdrich
Sam Shepard
As for the authors assigned for my composition classes at Mary Baldwin College, the list is shorter but just as sweet:
President Bush’s speech on the surge in the war in Iraq
President Obama’s speech on the surge in the war in Afghanistan
Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”
J.D. Salinger “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor”
Ernest Hemingway “The Big Two-Hearted River”
Errol Morris “The Fog of War”
Thanks to all those who have contribued to this list, and please, if you haven’t, contribute your own recommendations by leaving a comment.
