American Literature: Fictions of National Identity

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course provides an introduction to some important moments in the literary history of the United States. Rather than provide a survey of this literature from the nation's founding to the present, this course focuses on specific periods and movements-such as the American Renaissance, the literature of Reconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism-to understand the role that literature has played in the nation's history. In particular, students will understand how the meaning of the word "American" has changed over the past two and a half centuries and how literature has influenced the political, cultural, and artistic uses of that national identity. Readings may include works by Kathy Acker, Charles Chesnutt, Percival Everett, William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, John Steinbeck, and Kurt Vonnegut.