American Literature II, 1865-Present

Catalog description

This course focuses on American literature written since the end of the Civil War, paying particular attention to historical, social, and political contexts. Fiction and poetry will be the central elements of the course, though drama, essays and memoir may be included. The approach may be topical rather than chronological in covering the significant literary movements and modes of realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. This might include topics such as the Beat movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts movement, magical realism, science fiction, and meta-fiction and may include works by Winnemucca, Cather, Faulkner, Du Bois, Vonnegut, Kerouac, Ellison, Le Guin, Erdrich, and Baraka.