American Literature

Catalog description

This course surveys authors, genres, and movements in American literature from 1865 to the present, including representative works of realism, naturalism, modernism, and post-modernism/post- structuralism. Students will engage in critical readings of exemplary literary texts from a diverse group of authors that have influenced American literature since the Civil War. Students will analyze how these works of literature exemplify particular historical moments in U.S. history, as well as how they communicate pertinent cultural issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual identity, community, region, and nation. In their study of the broad range of American fiction, poetry, and drama since 1865, students will analyze literary, aesthetic, and critical developments.