Slides for a talk on teaching 19th Century American literature in the High School classroom.

1. A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E
I N T H E H I G H S C H O O L C L A S S R O O M
1 9 T H C E N T U RY
@ccareylit
craigcarey.net

2. – Y O U R AV E R A G E H I G H S C H O O L S T U D E N T
“What does it mean?”

3. T H E H E R M E N E U T I C T R A D I T I O N
R E A D I N G A N D I N T E R P R E TA T I O N

4. T H E G R O U N D
O F L A N G U A G E
1.Words are signs of natural
facts.
2.Particular natural facts are
symbols of particular
spiritual facts.
3.Nature is the symbol of
spirit.
A C C O R D I N G T O E M E R S O N

5. T H E R O M A N C E
S E A R C H I N G F O R

6. – H E R M A N M E LV I L L E , M O B Y D I C K
“If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree,
some time or other, cherish very nearly the same
feelings towards the ocean with me.”

7. – D . H . L A W R E N C E
“To leave, to leave, to escape … to cross the horizon, enter into
another life … It is thus that Melville finds himself in the middle
of the Pacific. He has really crossed the line of the horizon.”

9. – G I L L E S D E L E U Z E
“American literature is a process of experimentation.
They have killed interpretation.”

11. – G E R T R U D E S T E I N
“Think of anything, of cowboys, of movies, of detective stories,
of anybody who goes anywhere or stays at home and is an
American and you will realize that it is something strictly
American to conceive a space that is filled with moving.”

12. - C H A R L E S O L S O N
“I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America,
from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes
large here. Large, and without mercy.”

13. Space and Slavery

15. W R I T I N G S PA C E S

16. – M A R K T WA I N
“The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no
engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise…"

17. “But this thing has knocked the romance out
of piloting, to a large extent. It and some
other things together, have knocked all the
romance out of it.”
M A R K T WA I N

19. T H E O RY WA R S
T E X T A N D T H E O RY

20. C A N O N WA R S
T E X T A N D I D E O L O G Y

21. T H E C U LT U R A L
& H I S T O R I C A L
T U R N
T E X T A N D C O N T E X T

22. T H E M AT E R I A L
& T E C H N I C A L
T U R N
T E X T A N D T E C H N E

23. – J A C Q U E S D E R R I D A
“By carrying us beyond
paper, the adventures of
technology grant us a sort
of future anterior; they
liberate our reading for a
retrospective exploration
of the past resources of
paper, for its previously
multimedia vectors.”

24. P R I N T I N C O M PA R AT I V E C O N T E X T
Comparative Textual Media

27. “Media always already yield ghost phenomena.”
Friedrich Kittler

28. M A G I C , M A R K S ,
A N D M A R K U P
L I T E R A RY E F F E C T S

29. “[it was ] a riddle which (so evanescent are the
fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw
little hope of solving. And yet it strangely
interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon
the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned
aside. Certainly, there was some deep meaning in
it, most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it
were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol,
subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but
evading the analysis of my mind.”

30. “But the object that most drew my attention, in the
mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red
cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about
it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly
frayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the
glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to
perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the
stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such
mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not
to be recovered even by the process of picking out
the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth,—for time, and
wear, and a sacrilegious moth, had reduced it to little
other than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed
the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A.”

31. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be
precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had
been intended, there could be no doubt, as an
ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or
what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times, were
signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the
fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope
of solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes
fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and
would not be turned aside. Certainly, there was some
deep meaning in it, most worthy of interpretation, and
which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol,
subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but
evading the analysis of my mind.”

32. “Seal, n. A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest
their authenticity and authority. Sometimes it is stamped upon wax,
and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in
this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important
papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy
independent of the authority that they represent.”
- Ambrose Bierce

33. L I T B Y L E T T E R S
Literature
•from Latin literatura/litteratura
"learning, a writing, grammar.”
•"writing formed with letters,"
from litera/littera "letter"

35. Scale Matters
T H E M E D I U M I S T H E M E S S A G E
H O W Y O U S E E C O N D I T I O N S W H A T Y O U S E E

36. scales in flux

37. – J O H N S E E LY B R O W N
“Technologies are curiosity amplifiers.”

39. New Archives

40. New Images

41. New Evidence

42. New Styles

43. New Lenses

44. How does it
mean?
Why does it
matter?

45. D I G I TA L T O O L S
Tools for writing and peer-review
• Google Documents
• Draft
Tools for word analysis
• Wordle
• Prism
• Google Ngram Viewer
• Wordnik
Tools for presentations and slides
• Canva
• Haiku Deck

46. • Emily Dickinson Archive
• Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives
• Emily Dickinson Collections
• Digital Thoreau
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Ledger: 1919–1938
• The Ambrose Bierce Project
• The Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive
• Digital Emerson
• Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
• The Thomas Edison Papers
• Du Bois Central: W.E.B. Du Bois Online
• The Willa Cather Archive
• William James: Life is in the Transitions
• The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Homepage
• Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words
• The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
• Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Multi-Media Archive
• Charles Brockden Brown: Electronic Archive
• Melville's Marginalia Online
• The Life and Works of Herman Melville
• Looking for Whitman
• The Walt Whitman Archive
• Mark Twain Project Online
• Mark Twain in His Times
• Common-place (American Antiquarian Society)
• Harlem Renaissance Resources
• Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Visual Record
• Blackface Minstrelsy, 1830-1852
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
• Our Americas Archive Partnership
• America's Historical Newspapers
• America's Historical Imprints
• American Memory from the Library of Congress
• The American Verse Project
• Early Americas Digital Archive
• Making of America Collection (Cornell)
• Making of America Journals (Michigan)
• Modernist Journals Project
• The Nineteenth Century in Print
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
• NINES: Nineteenth-Century Scholarship Online
• Documenting the American South
• Witness to the Early American Experience
• Our Americas Archive Partnership
• African American Women Writers of 19th Century
• Modern American Poetry
• The Vault at Pfaff's
• Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920
O N L I N E A R C H I V E S R E L AT E D T O 1 9 T H C E N T U RY
A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E A N D C U LT U R E

47. This slideshow by Craig Carey is
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