A. Introduction

Willa Cather, as you all know, was an important Nebraskan writer; but she was also a major figure on the national literary stage, and she engaged with a broader, transatlantic world of writing in the early twentieth-century. She was, in her own words, a writer of both the world and the parish. This course examines Cather and her world via a series of avenues and approaches. It is at once a straightforward introduction to the range of her writings and a course that places Cather within a larger framework. For this reason, we will look not only at Cather’s work, but also at that of some of her contemporaries – notably William Carlos Williams, F.Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton, in order to gauge Cather’s status as modernist and woman writer by comparing her with other significant figures.

Willa Cather’s work has seen some of the liveliest, if not heated, critical debates of recent times. Her status as a Nebraskan writer, as a woman, as a modernist, has been variously contested and argued over. We will be looking at the variety of criticism produced around Cather’s work, hoping to get a sense of how literary criticism has evolved during her lifetime and since her death in 1947. In particular, we will look at the role of feminist criticism in pioneering new ways of reading Cather since the 1970s, and we will examine the role of gay and queer literary studies in exploring Cather’s sexuality and the meanings of her texts in terms of their representations of desire and identity.

I hope to introduce you to the range of Cather’s texts, to the varied and multiple writings she produced in fiction, short stories, journalism, reviewing, and poetry. Cather was not a ‘single’ writer, the author of those classic pioneer texts, My Antonia and O Pioneers! Her work was more varied, more intellectually adventurous, more contentious than many of you might suggest: by the end of the course you should have some idea of why Cather remains so central to American letters, and why that centrality is bound up too with an ongoing controversy about what her work signifies.

B. Schedule

January 13 Introduction

15 Close readings: the ‘Introduction’ to My Antonia

20 Close readings: ‘Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle’

22 Close readings: ‘The Novel Demeuble’

27 O Pioneers!

29 O Pioneers!

February 3 Writing the First Paper

5 My Antonia

10 My Antonia

12 My Antonia

13 First Paper Due

17 William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain

19 In the American Grain

24 Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country

26 F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

March 2 Writing the Second Paper

4 Cather: Short Stories

9 Cather: Poetry

11 A Lost Lady

12 Second paper due

16 The Professor’s House

18 The Professor’s House: ‘Tom Outland’s Story’

23 Death Comes for the Archbishop

25 Death Comes for the Archbishop

30 Death Comes for the Archbishop

April 1 Writing the Final Paper

6 Cather and the Critics

8 Cather and the Critics

13 Lucy Gayheart

15 Lucy Gayheart

20 Sapphira and the Slave Girl

22 SSG

27 SSG

29 Reviewing the course

Finish/Final Paper Due on May 4th

C. Selected Secondary Criticism

This is a selected list; you should also undertake your own research in the library. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of scholarly articles held in the English periodicals section of the library. Key journals include American Literature, Novel, American Literary History, Journal of American Studies, Studies in Short Fiction. We also stock specialist journals such as the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. You can search for relevant items using the MLA and MHRA bibliographies. You should regard part of your job as being to turn yourself into an effective researcher and user of both online and library resources. Looking for these pieces involves detective work, but that is what being a literary student is all about.

Within each individual author section in the library you will find an array of scholarship on our writers. There is also an increasing amount of scholarship available on the web. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE THIS MATERIAL. Treat it as if it were ‘proper’ scholarship, and give full references to the web pages. We have good memories and long noses, and there have been cases recently when students have leaned a little too heavily on online material, while not acknowledging their debt. Good sites can be found via the ‘Voice of the Shuttle’ – http://vos.uscb.edu/, and via our very own Willa Cather project site.

Joan Acocella, Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism

Mildred Bennett, The World of Willa Cather

L.Brent Bohlke, Willa Cather in Person

E.K. Brown, Willa Cather

Deborah Carlin, Cather, Canon, and the Politics of Reading

Judith Fryer, Felicitous Space

Jonathan Golberg, Willa Cather and Others

Hermione Lee, Willa Cather: Double Lives

Marilee Lindemann, Willa Cather: Queering America

Ellen Moers, Literary Women

Walter Benn Michaels, Our America

John Murphy, ed., Critical Essays on Willa Cather

Sharon O’Brien, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice

Guy Reynolds, Willa Cather in Context

Guy Reynolds, Twentieth-Century American Women’s Fiction

Guy Reynolds, ed., Willa Cather: Critical Assessments (ordered for the library)

Susan Rosowski, The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism

Rosowski, ed., Cather Studies (numerous volumes: lots of stuff)

James Schroeter, ed., Willa Cather and her Critics

Joe Urgo, Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration

James Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life

D. What is expected of you

Basically, you will be expected to spend time with each week’s set texts, to read them slowly and carefully, and to begin to build up a picture of Willa Cather and her contemporaries. Some weeks, I will supply worksheets, or lists of topics for you to consider; other weeks, you will simply do the reading, bearing in mind the larger questions I will be developing. It is absolutely vital that you keep up with the reading; and do bear in mind that later in the semester we will be reading complex texts that demand an extended application of time.

I will run the seminars as free-flowing but structured debates, with plenty of open-ended questions and opportunities for you to contribute. EVERYBODY HAS A SAY. Indeed, I will expect everybody to talk, at least once, during each session. The emphasis will be on a dialogue. Most of the time, I will be asking you questions. I do not plan to simply pour information into you, which you will then pour onto a piece of paper, which I will grade at some point. My job is to present interesting debates and questions; your job is to put some flesh on these bones, to do research and to follow your own ideas. At the end of the course, you should think of yourselves as having begun to become independent literary scholars.

If you disagree with what I’m saying, all to the best. Make your dissent known.

F. How your grade will be arrived at

By means of writing assignments. There will be three main projects. First, a book review (around six pages: 25%). Then an account of a writer OTHER than Cather (25%). And then a final research paper on a topic of your choice (though obviously related to the course): 10-12 pages @ 50%. Deadlines as per schedule. I’ll give your more information on each project as we near the allocated times.

Guy Reynolds – January 04.