Literature in the United States
Term 2
TTh, 12:30-2:00 p.m.
This course will survey nineteenth-century American literature by focusing on prose and poetry dealing with major social justice issues of the day. We will study literature that took on U.S. settler colonial culture, capitalism, slavery, women’s rights, and workers’ rights. To help with context, students will be introduced to major features of nineteenth-century U.S. history,
Authors studied will include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, William Apess, Rebecca Harding Davis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The assignments include one in-class essay, one re-write of the in-class essay, an annotated bibliography, and a final exam. In addition, students are graded on class participation and group presentations.
