19C American Literature

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course examines U.S. literary history before 1900, surveying American literature in the context of broader social and intellectual developments. Throughout the semester we will focus on four issues that figure centrally in the emergence of American writing: 1) citizenship and the contested ideal of the American self; 2) nationhood and the cultivation of national literary and cultural traditions; 3) literature’s relationship to revolution, political protest, and social change; and 4) the realities and legacies of slavery, emancipation, and American empire. Authors include Rowlandson, Rowson, Sedgwick, Apess, Walker, Douglass, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Stowe, Twain, and Chesnutt. The semester will culminate with a reading of Moby-Dick. This course requires two essays and a final exam, as well as regular response writings throughout the term.