Frederic Giacobazzi

1. How did you become interested in this discipline?

My commitment to American literature as a discipline, as distinct from my interest in specific works of American literature, actually emerged fairly late, when I was in graduate school. I had been reading American authors all my life, of course; indeed, I'd been raised on them. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my parents reading Longfellow and Whittier and Poe to me. I read and studied American writers in high school and college, of course (although my undergraduate and graduate English departments were rather "traditional" in that they placed a somewhat heavier emphasis on English than American literature. So even my college course work has been, on balance, a little more "English" than American), but my understanding of the literary history of America was fragmentary. It took a while for a real sense of the coherence of American literary history, and a real rationale and mission behind the study of American literature, to dawn in me.

As look back, I think I was helped by my equally long-standing interest in American ideas and intellectual history. In a sense, it was this interest which brought me "back" to American literature with a fresh eye. I had long been drawn to American eighteenth and nineteenth-century philosophical, political, and historical writings. And, gradually, with this background, as I studied American writers I came to gain a sense of the connections between American literature and American ideas. I came to see and to understand how the intellectual currents which have cumulatively shaped American society and culture also have shaped our literature in distinctively American ways.

2. What is this discipline all about?

American literature, in the sense in which I teach it, is the literature of the United States from its intellectual beginnings in the early colonial period to the present day. Its materials are vast and varied: chronicles, diaries, sermons and devotional works, autobiographies, letters, essays, reviews and criticism, polemical works, poetry, fiction, drama; the list is long.

And just as long is the list of significant writers one might encounter in an American literature course. For example, in my survey course of earlier American literature, along with such expected figures as Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Bryant, Cooper, Emerson, and Whitman, the student will also encounter such writers as John Smith, William Bradford, John Winthrop, Mary Rowlandson, Franklin, Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Paine, and others. In my later American literature survey, I have an even longer list of significant authors from which to choose: nineteenth-century writers like Dickinson, Freeman, Stowe, Twain, James, Crane, Bierce, and Chopin; twentieth-century poets such as Robinson, Frost, Eliot, Cummings, Hughes, Stevens, Lowell, Jarrell, Roethke, Merwin, and more; fiction writers like London, Dreiser, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wright, Welty, Roth, Bellow, and many others; dramatists such as O'Neill, Williams, and Miller.

Along with all of the other goals common to all literature courses, one of my aims in a course in American literature is to encourage the student to gain an understanding of the continuity of American literature, how and why it developed in the manner it did, and the great ideas which have animated and shaped it. You might have a look at the course goals listed in the current syllabuses for my American literature survey courses for more about this.

3. Why should someone study this discipline?

I'd say I approach the teaching of American literature with a sense of "mission" as great as any I feel for any subject. I want the study of American literature to do for my students what it has done for me. I believe American college students ought to study American literature--not only because they ought to be acquainted with the best of what has been thought and said and written in the heritage of American ideas and culture, but also because such an acquaintance will make modern American culture more coherent and understandable. For the American present is the accretion of all of the significant intellectual developments of America's past.

4. How does this discipline fit in with other disciplines in the curriculum?

I guess my last answer started to address this question, too. A familiarity with American literature will enhance the student's understanding of American ideas--artistic, historical, scientific, political. It will deepen the awareness of American social and political history. It will give the student a very direct experience of what is properly termed America's mythology, the distinctive ideas, and tensions between ideas, which reflect what is characteristically "American."

The study of American literature also carries the benefits common to the study of any literature: it cultivates the habit of close reading; it develops the analytical and critical skills--the so-called "higher order" thinking skills. It develops the language skills of students, and increases their awareness of literary language and style. It offers students the opportunity to develop their writing and speaking and group communication skills. Finally, through reading and discussing literary works--pieces of human experience--it offers a means of gaining insight into one's own life experience. It is an excellent "foundation" course for college and life success.

Looking at things from the opposite direction. . . an understanding of other disciplines will enhance one's study of literature: psychology for its insights into human behavior; sociology for its examination of the forces which shape society; anthropology for illuminating human cultures; philosophy for its exploration of great ideas; history for the political and social background in which literature has been written; economics for its insights into human action; political science for the relationship between politics and culture; mythology for the timeless themes and patterns which shape all literature. This is only the "short list"; I could go on to suggest that, in reality, any other discipline might enhance one's experience of literature.

5. How does this discipline relate to the "real world"?

In part, see my previous answers! If American literature doesn't relate to the "real world" of American experience, and doesn't bring a real value to students, then it relates to nothing and deserves no place in the curriculum.

6. What jobs might an understanding of, or a major in, this discipline prepare you for?