[On November 18,
1865, Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in The New York Saturday Press (under its
original title, “Jim Smiley
and His Jumping Frog”). So this week I’ve AmericanStudied “Frog” and four
other local color short stories, leading up to this special weekend post on
teaching such American texts.]
On three classes
that illustrate three different pedagogical uses for local color stories.
1)
The Survey: The text from this week’s series
that I’ve taught most frequently is “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”—in my American
Lit II survey class I complement our longer readings with interspersed,
shorter supplemental works; since my initial (Spring 2006!) syllabus Harte’s
story has served as the first such supplemental text in our opening (late 19th
century) unit, complementing Huck Finn.
In that role, Harte’s story serves as a stand-in for local color overall, helping
us discuss that movement as a key part of American literature and society in
that late 19th century time period. While we certainly also discuss
more specific and distinct aspects of the story, it’s fair to say that the
overall discussion is nonetheless framed by that literary historical question,
by conversation about what Harte’s story can help us understand about the
concept of “local color writing” as a genre and a movement.
2)
America in the Gilded Age: I’ve had the chance
to teach a class with this title (based loosely around my
first book) four times, first as an English Studies Junior/Senior Seminar
and then three times as our Honors
Literature Seminar. The latter syllabus in particular features the Harte,
Freeman, and Garland stories from this week’s series (along with other texts by
Twain and Chesnutt), as well as a few other works that likewise could be
classified as local color fiction. That quantity allows us to think (as the
semester develops) about local color with more nuance and depth, really
considering both similarities and differences across this group of contemporary
authors and texts. But at the same time, the ubiquity of local color writing both
in the Gilded Age and on the syllabus means that we can in each individual discussion
move beyond that frame to think more specifically about the text in front of us—what
local worlds it depicts to be sure, but also many other literary and historical
elements and threads.
3)
Special Author: I believe the only time I’ve
taught “Jumping Frog” was in my Fall
2017 Special Author: Mark Twain course. My syllabus for that class moved
both chronologically and generically, and for both reasons we started with a
unit on Twain’s early journalistic and local color stories. Reading a story
like “Jumping Frog” early in the semester made it possible to trace those
journalistic and local color elements across much of the rest of Twain’s career
and our syllabus, even those texts (like his more socially realistic
and/or satirical later works) that might
seem quite different from those early genres. But that setting also allowed for
distinct readings of “Jumping Frog” than might otherwise have been the case—for
example, one of our most central through-lines across the semester was humor,
and so in that class we focused on how “Jumping Frog” and all of Twain’s local
color stories (and perhaps the genre as a whole, or at least one key thread
within it) work as humor far more than I imagine we would in a survey course.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Other local
color stories, or teaching experiences, you’d highlight?
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