Jose Marti: Cuban poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher. He is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country, and he was an important figure in Latin American literature.

Walt Whitman: American poet, essayist and journalist. (1819 - 1892)

W. E. B. Du Bois: American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Became one of the founders for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

The Souls of Black Folk: 1903 work of Literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.

Harriet Jacobs: African-American writer. Well-known for autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), depicting her life in slavery in the South prior to escaping to the North.

Frederick Douglass: American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. Well-knownf or leading abolitionist movement.

Americanism and nationalism.

Incomplete annotation - can't collaborate his existence.

Reoccuring theme of early American activity.

Howard Mumford Jones: American intellectual historian, literary critic, journalist, poet, and professor of English at the University of Michigan and later at Harvard University.

Will asking this help in defining American Literature though?

Summary: there are now so many factors to consider when defining American Literature, including but not limited to: the origin of the author, the theme/idea of the text, and who the intended audience will be.

What classifies as American text? Better yet, text?

Summary: what locations, then, can we count as of America?

Summary: American Literature was once easy to define. Now, not so much.

Franco Moretti: Italian literary historian and theorist.

Summary: digital American Literature archives can become too cluttered and irrelevant if we are not careful, eve though we are aming towards that future anyway.

Junkspace: residue mankind leaves on the planet.

Rem Koolhas: full name - Remment Lucas Koolhaas. Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of ‘Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan’.

Detritus: waste or debris of any kind.

Melange: a mixture; a medley.

Summary: we are now creating as many digitial archives to catalog American Literature as physical ones.

Ephemeral: lasting for a very short time.

Summary: Defining "Where is American Literature?" has become even more urgent over the last few decades with economic and geographical problems arising.

Very helpful to have.

Fashion du jour: popular, fashionable, or prominent at a particular time.

Behooves: it is a duty or responsibility for someone to do something; it is incumbent on.

Indelible: making marks that cannot be removed.

Progenitors: people or things from which a person, animal, or plant is descended or originates; an ancestor or parent.

American Literature is both familiar and unfamiliar to everyone because of its clearly unclear definition.

So then will American Literature not be labelled as American Literature anymore?

Breakdown of paragraph: the African rendition of "Sleepy Hollow" exploits and draws out the racial, sexual, gender dynamics found in the original American text.

Brom Bones: from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Romantic rival of protagonist, Ichabod Crane, to win Katrina Van Tassel's hand in marriage.

Ichabod Crane: protagonist of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Works as a schoolteacher and is romantic rival of Brom Bones to win Katrina Van Tassel's hand in marriage. Disappears after racing against a headless horseman, never heard from again.

Bing Crosby: American singer, comedian and actor. Leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1930 to 1954, he made over seventy feature films and recorded more than 1,600 different songs.

Will Rogers: American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, and social commentator from Oklahoma. Was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.

Christina Ricci: American actress and producer. (Some of) Famous Works: The Addams Family (1991), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Black Snake Moan (2006), Speed Racer (2008), and The Smurfs 2 (2013).

Miranda Richardson: English actor. (Some of) Famous Works: Empire of the Sun (1987), The Crying Game (1992), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Hours (2002), Spider (2002), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), The Young Victoria (2009), and Stronger (2017).

Johnny Depp: American actor, producer, and musician. (Some of) famous works: Edward Scissorhands (1990), Cry-Baby (1990), Donnie Brasco (1997), Sleepy Hollow (w/ Tim Burton) (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Corpse Bride (2005), Public Enemies (2009), Alice in Wonderland (2010) and the Pirates of the Carribean series.

Tim Burton: full name - Timothy Water Burton. American filmmaker, animator, and artist. (Some of) Famous films: Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Sleepy Hollow (w/ Johnny Depp) (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and Alice in Wonderland (2010).

Karl Musaus: full name - Johann Karl August Musaus. Popular German author and one of the first collectors of German folk stories, most celebrated for his Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–1786), a collection of German fairy tales retold as satires.

So does this count as American Literature as well? (American author writes well-accepted American text in England.)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: gothic story written by American author Washington Irving, published in 1820 as short story in collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.. . Plot revolves around schoolteacher Ichabod Crane attempting to outrace an arguably headless horseman (which may or may not have been a prank set up by his romantic rival, Brom Bones, to win over Katrina Van Tassel).

Breakdown: American Literature focuses on breaking boundaries (literally and figuratively (creativity, innovation and expression) as an indicator of its identity.

Key Point.

Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.

This is alluding to American Literature contradicting itself?

Key Point - note this.

Granularity: the condition of existing in granules or grains, refers to the extent to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces.

Which territories?

Peripheries: the outer limits or edge of an area or object.

Whitman: Walt Whitman. American poet, essayist, and journalist. Famous poetry: "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".

Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson. American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Twain: pen name Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens). American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Famous Works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

Metropoles: the parent state of a colony.

Correction Synecdochical: related to synecdoche, meaning is using an inclusive term for something included, or vice versa; using something spoken of as the whole (hand for laborer) or vice versa (the court for the judge).

The romance: type of novel and genre fiction which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."

Correction transcendentalism: philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States. A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.

Poe: short for Edgar Allen Poe. American writer, poet, editor and literary critic. (Remember The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart.)

The irony of this statement is that nothing was ever really found but rather gathered and changed shape into something else.

Is this why America tries so hard to be taken seriously among the other superpowers?

How can one invent America? Why would one need to invent something like America?

Edmundo O'Gorman: Mexican writer, historian and philosopher. Considered as being among the earlier and most influential applicants of historical revisionism to commonly held narratives regarding the Spanish colonial period in Latin America.

Same comment for these books.

Why haven't literary critics revamped and republished these books since they were written 100+ years ago? The definition of American Literature has changed, hasn't it?

I'm surprised no one has found this book and recided to reedit and republish it with new works. Why is that?

George Woodbury: long name - George E. Woodbury. American poet, critic and teacher. Also wrote biographies of Edgar Allen Poe and Hawthorne.

John Macy: long name - John Albert Macy. Editor, Writer, Literary Critic.

Note: annotation feels incomplete.

Embarrassing for whom? Still important to address and speak aloud.

Fred Lewis Pattee: American author and American Literature scholar. Referred to as the "first Professor of American Literature."

House of the Spirits: novel by Isabel Allende, published in 1982. Plot details the life of the Trueba family, spanning four generations, and tracing the post-colonial, social and political upheavals of Chile – though the country's name, and the names of figures closely paralleling historical ones, such as "the President" or "the Poet", are never explicitly given. The story is told mainly from the perspective of two protagonists (Esteban and Alba) and incorporates elements of magical realism.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: written by Gabriel Garcia Marque, published in 1967. Plot revolves around multi-generational story of the Buendia family whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the (fictitious) town of Macondo, Colombia.

Capacious: having a lot of space inside; roomy.

Isabel Allende: Chilean writer. Known for novels such as The House of the Spirits (1982) and City of the Beasts (2002). Work sometimes contain aspects of magical realism and is considered "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author."

The Prairie: actual title is The Prairie: A Tale, written by James Fenimore Cooper, published in 1827. Features character named Natty Bumppo, known as "the trapper" or "the old man". Plot revolves around Bumppo interacting with a family trying to advance out west and unveils a murder within the family, who later harbor a hostage, and escape a villaged ransacked by the Pawnee warriors.

Democracy in America: written by Alexis de Tocqueville, published in 1835 and 1840. Examines the democratic revolution that he believed had been occurring over the previous several hundred years.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Columbian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).

Alexis de Tocqueville: French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, and historian. Wrote Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He analysed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies.

James Fenimore Cooper: American writer of the first half of the 19th century. His historical romances depicting frontier and Native American life from the 17th to the 19th centuries created a unique form of American literature.

what actually counts as America: overall objective of the course.

How do we define it? Does one have to be a U.S. Citizen? Does it have to be on U.S. soil? What counts for either one?

idiosyncratic: peculiar or individual.

Heuristic: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.

Neologism: a newly coined word or expression.

Juan Bruce-Novoa: worked as a Professor of Latin American and U.S. Chicano/Latino literatures and cultures, Film Studies, and Critical Theory at the University of California Irvine.

Gari Laguardia: professor in the Languages department at SUNY Purchase College.

Bell Gale Chevigny: author of The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings and the novel Chloe and Olivia. She has also edited the anthology Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing. Chevigny is a professor emeritus at Purchase College, SUNY.

Arrogation: the unlawful taking or withholding of something from the rightful owner under a guise of authority.

C. L. R. James: Trinidadian historian, journalist and socialist. Work is considered a staple of subaltern (population exclusion of higher imperialist power) studies, and is a pioneer and influential voice in postcolonial literature. Wrote World Revolution (on Communist International, 1937) and The Black Jacobins (on the Haitian Revolution, 1938).

W. E. B. Du Bois: American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Became one of the founders for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Jose Marti: Cuban poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher. He is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country, and he was an important figure in Latin American literature.

Michel Crevecoeur: French-American writer.

Alexis de Tocqueville: French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, and historian. Wrote Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He analysed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies.

Homogenize: make uniform or similar.

Americanization: the influence American culture has on other countries outside of the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology or political techniques.

Americanism: a word, expression, or other feature that is characteristic of American English; attachment or allegiance to the traditions, institutions, and ideals of the United States.

G.W. F. Hegel: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher. Known for German idealism (and sometimes what is called absolute idealism), in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome.

Magnalia Christi Americana: 1702 book published by Cotton Mather. (Subtitle: he Ecclesiastical History of New England from Its First Planting in 1620, until the Year of Our Lord 1698.)

It consists of seven "books" collected into two volumes, and it details the religious development of Massachusetts, and other nearby colonies in New England from 1620 to 1698. (Ntotable parts: Mather's descriptions of the Salem witch trials, in which he criticizes some of the methods of the court and attempts to distance himself from the event; his account of the escape of Hannah Dustan, one of the best known captivity narratives; his complete "catalogus" of all the students who graduated from Harvard College, the story of the founding of Harvard College itself; and his assertions that Puritan slaveholders should do more to convert their slaves to Christianity.)

Was Columbus rightly due this title though?

Expansionist: a follower or advocate of a policy of territorial or economic expansion.

Vernacular: the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region.

Walt Whitman: American poet, essayist and journalist. (1819 - 1892)

Impugning - related to impugn: dispute the truth, validity, or honesty of (a statement or motive); call into question.

Pundit: an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public.

Nomenclature: the devising or choosing of names for things, especially in a science or other discipline.

Metonym: a word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated.

Ex. Washington is a metonym for the federal government of the US.

Hoary: grayish-white; old and trite.

Ken Burns' America (1996); the information I could find is a documentary collection of seven outstanding documentaries that serve as an anthem to the nation and its people. Directed by Ken Burns.

Note: still feels incomplete.

Tautological - related to tautology: useless statement, or saying the same thing twice using different words.

Ex. "speedy sprint" because the word "sprint" means "speedy running".

Misnomer: a wrong or inaccurate name or use of a name or term.

Point of article: the definition of America has always been clear and unclear depending on who is asked, so there's no universally accepted definition. Gruesz depicts how the definition of America has changed over time and varying opinions - even the origin of how America was created is unclear. Unfortunately, even as we are now discussing including South America into America, the overall solution may not be that simple.

Key Point: although they are beginning to alter names (which is good), this solution may only work for so long until something else naming-related comes into question.

Examples of altering names of institutions to include both continents (North and South America).

Key Point: Latin Americans want to undo the imperial arrogation of the name of the hemisphere to create a pluralized, relational Americas studies, but their approaches are conflicting. Some want to completely dismantle the U.S. appropriation of the name 'America' since Americans like to create new interpretations and meanings of words. Others have begun to substitute "U.S." or "United Statesian" for "American" because the very awkwardness of the word should be challenged and looked into.

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Relevant to today's world with the Black Lives Matter fighting the systemic oppression of black people and other marginalized groups.

Key Point: the U.S. is proactive in separating its America from the "other" America (Latin America).

I'm curious as to how that would work.

Key Point: the previous definition of America referring to the continent has been greatly altered by the strength of excluding all nations and ideas outside of the praised U.S. definition.

(Thought: this is done to build America's own history and not have it tied to anyone else.)

Why did it start in the 1950s? Was this in the aftermath of WWII?

Summary: the idea of defining America for strictly the United States emerged around this time with "Americanism" and especially "Americanization".

Summary: Surprisingly, the idea of calling oneself American was still a novice idea, as people identified themselves by the region (i.e. New England). However, America was still a new nation to older and established nations as de las Casas initially wanted to rename North and South America as Columba and Columbina, which inspired Mather to catalogue himself as an American.

Summary: part of why it is unclear what is actually considered American or not is because potential origins of its name contradict each other.

Summary of this paragraph.

Summary: there is great power in being to define a country that itself doesn't allow there to be a clear definition.

Sumary: Americans are biased because of our upbringing, no matter how hard we try to say that we are not.

Summary: the definition of America is simultaneously defined through mutual understand and open to interpretation.

Summary: there is debate over fine arts and literature being defined in a land that is 'historyless'.

How did we transition to where it's of the founding fathers on coinage? Why is it now on coinage? Did WWI have something to do with this?

Idea: does this connect back to Lady Liberty in any way? Makes me think of her.

This would also be a great topic for discussion - it brings it back to whether if it's American Literature or British or Spanish or some other?

This is the key point - despite their best efforts to not see America as a novelty to be changed to how they choose, it was.

Imperialism enrooted in sexism - this could be a great topic question as well.

Key Point: America (North, Central and South Americas) was already established as one entity until the defining of Latin America in the 19th century.

Which bears the question whether they needed to be labelled at all?

If this was the case, then the Founding Fathers and most leaders of the great establishments (particularly in the police force) have a lot of explaining to do.

Very much so.

This bears the question of when does American Literature start?

Key Point: Americans like to talk about their ideals of what America can be, not what it actually is.

This would be a great discussion topic.

Imagine if we had the name Columbina - it makes me think of how we are trying to change the name Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. If this happened leading up to today, there would probably be anarchy.

Never thought about New England being a new territory of England - interesting.

The more you know!

What were some of his beliefs? How would he feel about the world today?

What else did Whitman believe? How would he feel about the world today?

This also makes me think of American meaning anti-Communist during McCarthyism and anti-Islam post-9/11.

This makes me connect back to our class discussion about how claiming Latin America and Canada as part of America being imperialistic.

How were we able to define what America came out to be in the first place?

Declaration of Independence summarizes the colonists' motivations for seeking for seeking independence from Great Britain during King George III's reign.

What are these semantics?