American Literature: Myths and Legends

Catalog description

Our national literary tradition has been defined by the stories we tell about ourselves and our conversations about important social and political issues, including race, reform, democracy, suffrage, Native American removal, class, technology, and Manifest Destiny. This course explores how literature reflects, constructs, and questions the dominant image and understanding of the American identity from the Puritans through the nineteenth century. The course leads to developing a term paper drawing on research and using literary criticism. Writers include Bradstreet, Franklin, Wheatley, Irving, Douglass, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, James, and Twain.