January 13, 2016: Spring 2016 Previews: Major American Authors of the 20th Century

[Next week brings a new semester, the last of my 11^th year at Fitchburg State University. So this week brings a series of spring 2016 preview posts, this time focused on the texts we’ll be reading in my spring courses. I’d love to hear about your spring syllabi, and other spring plans, in comments!]

Honestly, for a course like this the issue is what Marlo Stanfield would call one of them good problems: far, far too many authors and works that I want to teach. Here’s the roster of 7 to which I’ve narrowed it down for the Spring 2016 syllabus (and with which I’ll have the help of a great student Writing Associate):

1)      Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900)

2)      Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940)

3)      Langston Hughes’ Collected Poems

4)      Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems

5)      Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984/1993)

6)      Philip Roth’s American Pastoral (1997)

7)      Junot Dịaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008)

Next spring preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What are you teaching/reading this spring? Other spring plans you’d share?