Course Description In this course on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American literature, we will read the seduction novels, sermons, captivity accounts, political pamphlets, slave narratives, and popular literature that helped to define the Americas and American identity in the colonial imagination. Authors and titles include the captivity narrative of Puritan Mary Rowlandson, the poetry of Phillis …
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Canons of 19th-Century American Literature
Course Description Nineteenth-century American writers and literary critics hoped to develop a canon of American literature that would distinguish itself from European literary traditions by representing a distinctively American identity and experience. When American literature emerged as its own field of study in the early twentieth century, critics had the same goal but a very …
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A More Perfect Union: 19th-Century American Literature and Social Reform
Course Description Many nineteenth-century American writers worried that the United States was not living up to its promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans; they used their voices and the written word to imagine a more equal and inclusive nation. In this class, we will study how literature helped the …
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