ENGL 201 - American Literature: Beginnings-1865

3 Credits: (3 lecture)

Course Description
In this course the student will read works of representative American authors from origin narratives to 1865.  The course explores American literature’s diverse aesthetic and cultural traditions. This course meets the General Education competency of Critical Thinking (CT).

Prerequisite ENGL 101 or permission of instructor.

A. Evaluate a diverse collection of evidence related to an American Literature research question/thesis. (CT) 

B. Synthesize the evidence and draw conclusions regarding various authors’ response to basic questions about the nature of Americans. (CT) 

C. The student will be able to compile a written, verbal, or visual response to the evidence that acknowledges alternative explanations and views. (CT) 

D. Identify, define, and cite examples of literary forms/genres and themes prominent in each era and among various cultural/racial/gender groups. 

E. Identify and explain some of the environmental, social, political, scientific, religious, or artistic influences that manifest themselves in the literature produced in each era. 

Content
The following periods, groups, and authors will be included.  Other authors may be included.

A. Pre-Colonial Period:  First writings about America–letters, journals, official documents, etc. of explorers and founders of colonies, such as Columbus, Cortez, Smith, Champlain. 

B. Colonial Period: The beginnings of American literary traditions–Colonial histories, sermons, journals, diaries, first imaginative works by writers such as Bradstreet, Sewell, Edwards, Crevecoeur.  

C. Revolutionary/Federal Period: Writers such as Franklin, Paine, Jefferson, Freneau. 

D. Romantic Period: The flowering of internationally recognized imaginative letters. 

1. Early Romantics: Irving, Cooper, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller. 

2. Later Romantics: Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson. 

3. New England Brahmins–at least one of the following:  Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell. 

E. Slavery/Civil War: Writers such as Stowe, Lincoln, Douglass, Jacobs, Whitman. 

Student Evaluation
A. Literary research paper 

B. Class discussion, Exam essay questions 

C. Literary analysis paper 

D. Exams 

E. Class discussion, Exam essay questionsBibliography
Davidson, Cathy N. and Linda Wagner-Martin. The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Oxford UP, 1995. 

Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 

Hart, James D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature. Oxford UP, 1995.  

Perkins, George, Barbara Perkins, and Philip Leininger, eds. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature. Harper Collins, 1991. 

Rogers, Katharine M., ed. The Meridian Anthology of Early American Women Writers. Meridian, 1991. 

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.  Encyclopedia of Southern Literature. ABC-CLIO, 1997. 

Spiller, Robert E., et al. eds.  Literary History of the United States. 3rd ed.  Revised. Macmillan, 1963. 

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher.  Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. Oxford, 1983. 

Whitson, Kathy J. Native American Literatures. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999. Print. 

Zola, Gary Philip. Isaac Harby of Charleston, 1788-1829: Jewish Reformer and Intellectual. U of Alabama P, 1994.