American Lit Survey I

Catalog description

This course introduces students to significant works of American literature from the early Colonial period up through the 1865 end of the Civil War. This time-span includes works related to early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans; the Salem Witch Trials; early African-American literature; slave narratives; early American women's writing; literature of and related to the American Revolution; early environmentalist and nature writing; and Romanticist essays, poems, and stories of the nineteenth century. Attention will be paid to the historical and cultural contexts in which these writings were produced, and to studying writers of diverse gender and ethnic backgrounds. While exploring these early American writings students will question what it means to be "American," the various ways that we define the term, and the complexities surrounding the term and any definition of it.