This course will focus upon important and representative works of American literature in their historical and cultural contexts. We will focus on poetry and prose that provide insight into the literary and intellectual climate to which each work belongs.
We will begin by exploring the colonial origins of the United States and its colonial literature. We will move to examine American literature in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. We will be looking at some of the major historical and cultural events in American history, such as the American Civil War, and asking how literature may be involved within them. We will read a lot throughout the course and think critically about the texts, which is to say, we will analyze the texts and interpret meaning from them. The class examines the work H. D. Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Fredrick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, W. E. B. Dubois, and Toni Morrison
- Teacher: Dr. Gregory Dunne