ENGL222 - American Literature: 1865 to Present

"This Land is Whose Land? Nationalism and Borders"

From the resounding calls to abolish ICE, to the cry that Black Lives Matter, to the declaration that there is no justice on stolen land, the people are demanding that the U.S. confront its uncensored past like never before. This course seeks to contextualize our current moment within the longer history of U.S nation-building through an examination of literature from the Civil War to the present. We will read with an attentiveness to issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, immigration, environmentalism, and imperialism as central to understanding U.S. history. We will consider the questions: What is “America,” and what do we know as “American literature?” Where did these constructs come from, and have they remained stable throughout history? 

Course texts will range in genre and medium, including novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction, film, and music. Writers studied may include but are not limited to Zitkála-Šá, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Vine Deloria Jr, Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa, Louise Erdrich, Maxine Hong Kingston, Junot Diaz, and Jhumpa Lahiri. 

Section(s):
0301 - Kerishma Panigrahi

Schedule of Classes
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