This course surveys American writing from its origins before the United States existed as a nation until the middle of the twentieth century (WWII). Emphasizing the interrelationship between the literature and its historical background, the course includes the study of important prose and poetry from the colonial, revolutionary, Romantic, and Modern periods. Attention is given to this literature’s diverse cultural
strands, the contested space of exploration and colonization (including Puritanism), Enlightenment rationalism and individual liberty, transcendentalism, slavery and civil war, race relations, realism, naturalism, Imagism, and Modernism.
Prerequisites:
ENG-103 or 104
