This course is centered on writing about outlying regions, those places that, as the wags tell us, it's great to be from. The escape from the provinces -literature and historiography are replete with examples -is made the precondition of an awakening into cultural knowledge; the simple life comes at the price of narrowness. Our task in this course will be to consider how the provinces have been represented in literature and history and the work that these representations perform. Because the province could not exist without the urban center, we'll be especially interested in works that describe encounters between the provincial and the sophisticate: works we take up may include Rousseau's Confessions, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, Dickens' Great Expectations and biographical materials related to real-life provincial strivers, from Napoleon to Bill Clinton. We will also discuss and write about the role of provincialism in national self-definition and the connection of the pastoral and the provincial. Additional reading will likely include selections from Raymond Williams and Lionel Trilling, as well as a few recent essays. Format: seminar. Requirements: a number of short papers totaling 15-20 pages. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference to first-year students.

Hour: HACKER