BA History and American Studies

This course unit surveys American literature from its earliest periods to the end of the nineteenth century. It will introduce you to the major genres and movements of early American literature, including narratives of captivity, seduction, and escape, fiery sermons and revolutionary oratory, gothic tales, sentimental fiction, and transcendental essays, as well as poetry in a variety of forms. In particular, we’ll explore the rise of feelings—in the form of ecstatic religious experience, sentimental reform, the culture of sensation, and national sentiment—as a vital literary and cultural force in America; we’ll also track the relationship between form and reform (most especially between social movements and antebellum literary genres) and closely attend to texts and counter-texts—the ways that American writers speak back to and rewrite one another, drawing on older forms to issue new calls for change, but also recasting familiar genres and styles for their own literary purposes. We’ll read a mix of canonical and popular authors alongside and against the shifting geographical borders and cultural controversies of their time, tracking our key threads across texts that chart (and lay claim to) the development and formation of “American” literary traditions. And we’ll conclude our study by turning to the way U.S. writers sought to reunite and reinvent “America” in the aftermath of the Civil War, Reconstruction and its failure, a rapidly changing urban scene and a closing (but paradoxically expanding) frontier.

• To introduce students to some major themes in American Studies through readings of a number of the most significant literary works written in the 'New World,' primarily North America, between 1492 and 1900;


• To develop students' critical awareness by encouraging them to attend to variations and similarities in language, theme, tone and genre amongst the texts we will study;


• To introduce students to the specifically American historical and social influences which find expression in the literary works of this period;


• To encourage and develop students' writing skills (including skills of scholarly presentation) and their capacity to construct a sustained and coherent argument.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of some of the major themes in American Studies as manifested in a selection of the literature written in the 'New World,' particularly North America, between 1492 and 1900;


• Demonstrate a basic awareness of and critical sensitivity towards the varieties of literary theme and expression most characteristic of this period in America, and particularly the part of North America that we now call the 'United States';


• Demonstrate some ability to understand and theorize the ideological constructs of, and intersections between, race, class, caste, gender, and sexual identity, as well as religion and politics, within the space we now think of as the United States;


• Demonstrate some ability (in the assessed essay and examination) to construct a sustained and cohesive written argument and to deploy appropriate scholarly methods of presentation;


• Demonstate analyzing of texts; speaking in front of groups; making connections to present-day concerns; improved writing; self confidence in abilities.

Bibliographical Essay

Written feedback on essays 1 and 2

Additional one-to-one feedback (during the consultation hour or by making an appointment)

Readings will be drawn from the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th edition, volumes A and B. Readings may include:  

The journals and writings of Christopher Columbus, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and John Smith; 

Poems by Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman; 
Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”;  

Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson;  
Susannah Rowson, Charlotte Temple; 

Benjamin Franklin, selections from The Autobiography;  

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”; 

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”; 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Declaration of Sentiments”; 

Harriet Jacobs, selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; 

Henry David Thoreau, selections from Walden; 

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; 
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage.