Topics in American Literature (ELT372)

From its colonial origins to the present, American literature has posed questions regarding the meaning of America, striving to articulate a sense of national cultural identity. For the first several centuries, American writers struggled to emerge from the shadow of Europe. It was during the 19th century, the period of the so-called American Renaissance, that American writers found their own voice for the first time as they evoked the country with an unpretentious directness of style and fidelity to what they saw as a distinctly American valuation of experience. More recent literature of the modern and postmodern periods has formed in reaction to the increased complexity and diversity of the United States. Our study will read and interpret samples of poetry, short fiction, essays, biography, and one complete novel. Although all of these works stand on their own, we can trace a continuing engagement with American ideology throughout these texts.

• Colonial Beginnings
• Eighteenth-Century National Optimism
• The American Renaissance
• The Birth of Modern American Poetry
• Modernism
• Postmodernism

• Analyze the key aspects of American ideology, especially in literature written prior to the twentieth century.
• Determine the characteristic literary styles and thematic concerns of major historical periods of American literature, from colonial era to postmodernist.
• Demonstrate the uniquely American identity of the texts.
• Propose connections between the themes and concerns of American literature within a larger sense of historical development and the social issues facing the planet in the present day.
• Examine the major themes and concerns that reappear throughout American literature.
• Compose academic essays that employ the appropriate skills in scholarly research, writing, and citation.