Citizenship and the American Novel

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore how civic life has been represented in classic American fiction. We will take up questions of form and style as they relate to distinctive visions of US citizenship in Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables (1851), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Henry Adams's Democracy: An American Romance (1880), Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), and Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker (1995). Several of these novels are quite long, so be prepared to do a good amount of reading. Course requirements include regular attendance and consistent high-quality participation; presentations and/or group work; and a mix of short and longer writing assignments totaling around 25 pages.