Revolutionary Writings: American Literature in the Age of 1776

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, one that Hannah Arendt considers one of the radical new beginnings in human history. What makes a revolution? How did writers imagine a new republic into being through words in the eighteenth century? What is the relationship between literature and politics, between words and revolutionary deeds? What can revolutionary literature teach us about democracy, dissent, and political transformation today? This course examines the literary and political writings that helped to shape American revolution and independence. We will explore how authors wielded language as a revolutionary tool and how rhetoric and art could be as revolutionary as battles, while debating questions of liberty, civic virtue, self-governance, and national identity. Readings span British political philosophy (Locke, Trenchard and Gordon, etc.), revolutionary texts (Franklin, John and Abigail Adams, Paine, Jefferson, among others), literary works (such as Mercy Otis Warren, Philip Freneau, and Phillis Wheatley), and later reflections on the Revolution (Cooper and Hawthorne). We will also engage with commentators like Burke and Arendt to understand how revolutions are theorized and remembered.