A Road Course in Early American Literature

Essays that fuse literary scholarship and personal travelogue to explore American identity A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzln to Amherst explores a two-part question: what does travel teach us about literature, and how can reading guide us to a deeper understanding of place and identity? Thomas Hallock charts a teachers journey to answering these questions, framing personal experiences around the continued need for a survey course covering early American literature up to the mid-nineteenth century. Hallock approaches literary study from the overlapping perspectives of pedagogue, scholar, unrepentant tourist, husband, father, friend, and son. Building on Ralph Waldo Emersons premise that there is creative reading as well as creative writing, Hallock turns to the vibrant and accessible tradition of American travel writing, employing the form of biblio-memoir to bridge the impasse between public and academic discourse and reintroduce the dynamic field of early American literature to wider audiences. Hallocks own road course begins and ends at the Lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina, following a circular structure of reflection. He weaves his journey through a wide swath of American literatures and authors: from Native American and African American oral traditions, to Wheatley and Equiano, through Emerson, Poe, and Dickinson, among others. A series of longer, place-oriented narratives explore familiar and lesser-known literary works from the sixteenth-century invasion of Florida through the Mexican War of 18461848 and the American Civil War. Shorter chapters bridge the books central themesthe mapping of cognitive and physical space, our personal stake in reading, the tensions that follow earlier acts of erasure, and the impossibility of ever fully shutting out the past. Exploring complex cultural histories and contemporary landscapes filled with ghosts and new voices, this volume draws inspiration from a tradition of travel, place-oriented, and literature-based works ranging from William Carlos Williamss In the American Grain and Jack Kerouacs On the Road to Alice Walkers In Search of Our Mothers Gardens, Wendy Lessers Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, and Rebecca Meads My Life in Middlemarch.