ENG 253 - American Literature to 1865

Columbus may have sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but he certainly didn’t discover America. The continent had been discovered, lived on, and home to countless civilizations before Columbus arrived. This course will study American literature’s development of American cultural identity from the Iroquois and Seneca tales of origins through early colonization and up to the Civil War. We will read fiction, poetry, and personal narratives from writers such as Bradstreet, Wheatley, Franklin, Hawthorne, Douglass, Poe, and Dickinson. Discover what being “American” means from some of America’s earliest writers and thinkers.

Credits 4

Compass Attributes
Humanities