Table Of ContentAufses
A revolution in American literature
Conversations
Shea
Conversations in American Literature: Language ∙ Rhetoric ∙ Culture Scanlon
is a new kind of American literature anthology, featuring:
Aufses
• A unique chronological and thematic organization that encourages in American Literature
students to explore how the past continues to influence the present.
• In-depth instruction in rhetoric, close reading, argument, and synthesis.
• Engaging TalkBacks that pair classic pieces with more recent
LANGUAGE • RHETORIC • CULTURE
responses.
• Unique thematic Conversations that explore cultural issues and
literary legacies.
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“This powerful new book is filled with essential questions and c
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big ideas explored across works of literature, art, and all the great
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nonfiction one expects to find in an AP® Language class. These
gifted teachers offer you the book so many have hoped to find: one La
that gets Hemingway and Hurston, presidents and poets, artists itt
e
and authors talking to each other, and invites your students into the i
conversation.” —Jim Burke, author of The English Teacher’s Companion rao
and The Common Core Companion tn
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rs
“This excellent text bridges the current gap between the teaching of e
American literature and the usual AP® Language and Composition
course focusing on nonfiction. For the AP® Language teacher who is
required to focus on American literature throughout the course, this
text will be a godsend.” —Sylvia Kranish, John F. Kennedy High School, MD
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this product.
Robin Dissin Aufses • Renée H. Shea
Lawrence Scanlon • Kate Aufses
mech_Aufses-ConversationsAmLit-032814
Conversations in
American Literature
Language • Rhetoric • Culture
Robin Dissin Aufses
Lycée Français de New York
Renée H. Shea
Bowie State University, Mary land
Lawrence Scanlon
Brewster High School, New York
Kate Aufses
Bedford/St. Martin’s
Boston • New York
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For Bedford/St. Martin’s
hn hk io il sy SY Executive Editor: Daniel McDonough
Se nior Editor: Nathan Odell
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Se nior Production Editor: Peter Jacoby
hn hk io il sy SY Production Supervisor: Samuel Jones
hn hk io il sy SY Se nior Marketing Manager: Lisa Erdely
Editorial Assistant: Kathleen Wisneski
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Copy Editor: Mary Lou Wilshaw-W atts
hn hk io il sy SY Indexer: Kirsten Kite
Photo Researcher: Susan Doheny
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Se nior Art Director: Lucy Krikorian
hn hk io il sy SY Text Design: Linda M. Robertson
Cover Design: Donna Lee Dennison
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Cover Art: Gavin W. Sewell, Old Glory, a collage history of America. Mixed media on canvas.
hn hk io il sy sy 2010.
Composition: Westchester Publishing Ser vices
Printing and Binding: Quad/Graphics
Copyright © 2015 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing
by the Publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617- 399- 4000)
ISBN 978- 1- 4576- 4676- 8
Ac know ledg ments
Ac know ledg ments and copyrights are included at the back of the book on pages 1591–1602,
which constitute an extension of the copyright page.
It is a violation of the law to reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the
written permission of the copyright holder.
To our friend and mentor Nancy Perry
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hn hk io il sy SY About the Authors
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Robin Dissin Aufses is director of En glish Studies at Lycée Français
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de New York, where she teaches AP English Language. Robin was
hn hk io il sy SY formerly the English department chair and a teacher at John F.
hn hk io il sy SY Kennedy High School in Bellmore, New York, for ten years, and
pivor to that she taught English at Paul D. Schreiber High School
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in Port Washington, New York, for twenty years. She is co-author
of The Language of Composition and Literature & Composition.
Robin also has published articles for the College Board on the
novelist Chang Rae Lee and the novel All the King’s Men.
Renée H. Shea was professor of En glish and Modern Languages and
Director of Freshman Composition at Bowie State University in
Mary land. She is co-author of The Language of Composition and
Literature & Composition and two volumes in the NCTE High
School Literature series (Amy Tan and Zora Neale Hurston). A fac-
ulty con sul tant for more than thirty years in both AP Language and
Literature, she was also a reader and question leader for both exams.
Renée recently served as a member of the Development Committee
for AP Language and Composition. She is currently a member of the
En glish Academic Advisory Committee for the College Board and
the SAT Critical Reading Committee.
Lawrence Scanlon taught at Brewster High School for more than
thirty years, and now teaches at Iona College in New York. Over
the past twenty years he has been a reader and question leader for
the AP Language exam. As a College Board con sul tant in the
United States and abroad, he has conducted AP workshops in both
Language and Literature, as well as serving on the AP En glish
Language Test Development Committee. Larry is co-author of The
Language of Composition and Literature & Composition and
has published articles for the College Board and elsewhere on com-
position and curriculum.
Kate Aufses studied En glish at Kenyon College and holds MPhil
degrees in American Literature and Art History from Cambridge
University. Kate is currently studying law at the University of
Michigan.
Preface
F
or most of us, American literature is a familiar and beloved subject. We know our
history and ourselves through the work of classic writers such as Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, and Robert Frost.
We come to understand our nation and its culture by reading Emily Dickinson,
Sherman Alexie, Tim O ’Brien, and Edwidge Danticat. Most of these are authors of
fiction and poetry, yet today nonfiction has taken its rightful place as part of our
American literary tradition. In Conversations in American Literature: Language ∙
Rhetoric ∙ Culture, our goal is to bring all of these elements together: poems, short
stories, memoir, speeches, essays, visual texts, history, ideas, and culture. You’ll find
many of the classic examples of fiction and poetry that define American literature set
in the context of the cultural conversations, historical debates, and literary legacies
that have shaped — and continue to shape — our national identity.
Conversations in American Literature is designed to help teachers and students
explore American literature while balancing the current emphases on nonfiction,
rhetoric, argument, and synthesis required by both the AP En glish Language and
Composition course and the Common Core State Standards. As such, we hope that
the book you have in your hands strikes you as a bit different, even innovative: a lit-
erature anthology that puts nonfiction on equal footing with fiction and poetry; a
literature anthology that is both chronological and thematic; a literature anthology that
emphasizes close reading, critical thinking, rhetoric, argument, and synthesis.
How the Opening Chapters Work
Featuring accessible texts for effective scaffolding and an engaging activity-d riven
approach, the four opening chapters of Conversations in American Literature provide
an approachable introduction to the fundamentals of rhetoric, close reading, argu-
ment, and synthesis.
• Chapter 1, “An Introduction to Rhetoric,” provides explanations and exam-
ples of rhetorical concepts including the rhetorical triangle; ethos, pathos, and
v
vi Preface
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logos; and concession and refutation. Students apply these concepts to both
hn hk io il sy SY written and visual texts.
hn hk io il sy SY • Chapter 2, “Close Reading,” guides students through the analysis of diction
hn hk io il sy SY and syntax with an emphasis on their rhetorical and literary effects.
hn hk io il sy SY • Chapter 3, “Analyzing Argument,” introduces the essential language of
argument — such as claims, evidence, fallacies, and arrangement. The Essay
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in Progress feature walks students through the pro cess of constructing an
hn hk io il sy SY argument — from exploring ideas to crafting an arguable claim to developing
hn hk io il sy SY evidence and structuring the essay itself.
hn hk io il sy SY • Chapter 4, “Synthesizing Sources,” introduces students to the effective use of
sources in developing an informed argument. We ask them first to analyze how
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skillful writers use sources, then we walk them through the pro cess of using
hn hk io il sy sy sources to support their own viewpoints.
Working with Literature
Those of you who know The Language of Composition will find the structure of these
introductory chapters somewhat familiar, but you will also notice that we have added
instructional sections on working with literary texts, as well as numerous literary
Preface vii
examples throughout the chapters. While we approach these literary texts aesthetically,
we also ask students to consider how literary texts can be read rhetorically, analyzed as
arguments, and used as evidence in their own writing. The glossary includes literary
and rhetorical terms and examples that are helpful in the analysis of fiction, poetry, and
nonfiction.
Working with Visual Texts
We know our students live in a visual world, which makes it vital that they develop
the critical tools and habits of mind to be able to analyze how visual texts work — how
they persuade a viewer, how they reflect the culture, how they challenge beliefs and
ideas. Throughout these introductory chapters, we incorporate instruction in the
rhetorical and stylistic analysis of visual texts.
Just as a writer uses verbal humor to make a point, a po liti cal cartoonist might
use visual humor. Just as a writer uses evocative language to engage her audience, so
might a photographer use evocative images. Especially in this information-r ich age,
facts and figures, statistics, and numerical data are just as likely to be presented in
visual form — in charts, tables, graphs — as in prose. For these reasons, we have inter-
spersed visual texts of all kinds throughout the opening chapters rather than focusing
on them in a single chapter on visuals.
viii Preface
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hn hk io il sy SY How the Readings Chapters Work
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In keeping with the tradition of the American literature course, the readings chapters
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of Conversations in American Literature are or ga nized chronologically; however,
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since we see our American tradition less as a linear progression than an ongoing
hn hk io il sy SY dialogue, we have introduced thematic TalkBacks and Conversations. We have found
in our own classrooms that such connections encourage engagement and stimulate
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lively discussion of how the past continues to influence the present.
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Illustrated historical introductions provide essential context. To support the
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histo rical exploration of American literature, each chapter of readings begins with an
hn hk io il sy SY introduction to the major events and social forces that define the time period. We have
hn hk io il sy sy made these introductions brief yet thorough, and whenever possible we have tied the
events of the period directly to the pieces within the chapter to provide students with
both a sense of the historical importance of each work as well as its context.
TalkBacks pair classic pieces with more recent responses. We recognize that for
students older literature can sometimes seem a bit dusty. The aim of the TalkBacks is
to show the enduring relevance of these classic pieces, either as topics of debate in
society or as sources of inspiration for more recent writers.
Preface ix
Sometimes the TalkBack is a direct response, as is the case with Native American
writer Louise Erdrich’s twentieth- century poetic response to the seventeenth- century
captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson. At other times, the TalkBacks are indirect
responses. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s classic “Letter from Birmingham
Jail” is paired with “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,”
Malcolm Gladwell’s comparison of the strategies that made the civil rights movement
a success with those of more recent revolutions or ga nized through social media.
Another pairs a section of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that describes conditions in
a turn- of- the- century slaughter house with a startlingly similar passage from Eric
Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.
Whether direct or indirect, the instructional purpose of the TalkBack pairing
remains the same: to inspire students and draw connections between texts and
across the ages. In a way, these pairings re- create the old- fashioned filing cabinet in
which teachers stored clippings and connections as they developed lessons around
central texts of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
Conversations explore cultural issues and literary legacies. The heart of
Conversations in American Literature is the Conversations sections, which make up
nearly half of each chronological chapter. These eigh teen Conversations are thematic
clusters that explore a cultural issue, historical figure, or literary legacy from its his-
torical roots to the present. So, while the Conversations are indeed synthesis practice,
they are also much more. They are opportunities to enter long- standing cultural
conversations and debates in an informed way and with a true historical understand-
ing of the issues. They are an opportunity for students to investigate how the past
continues to shape the present. For instance, the Conversation on the Columbus
Day Controversy in Chapter 6 begins with primary- source documents from Columbus
and King Ferdinand of Spain before moving forward into argumentative pieces
regarding Columbus’s legacy and the suitability of a national holiday in his honor.
