LIT-256 American Literature of the 19th Century
A lot happened in this country in the nineteenth century. Slavery was expanded and then eventually abolished. Women fought for equal rights and didn't get them. Indigenous peoples were attacked and displaced – but refused to vanish. Waves of immigrants arrived and dispersed. There was a civil war. Meanwhile, the novel became a mass-market media sensation. Poetry was a set of popular genres that everyone read. Melodramas attracted large crowds. New versions of American philosophy rose and fell. People tried to write their life stories. In this course we will read some of those novels, poems, autobiographies, and philosophical essays (by Stowe, Wheatley, Douglass, Thoreau, and Whitman, among others) against the historical backdrop of war, immigration, forced removal, misogyny, and racism.
Standard Course (40)
Credits
1
Notes
(Genre or History)