ENG-329 Inventing America

This course explores the making of "America" (focusing primarily on the United States) through literature, from the age of discovery through the post-Revolutionary period. Our primary purpose is to explore the means by which settlement and national identity were invented through language. Our texts feature a range of "literature," including transcribed Native American oral stories, colonial promotional tracts, sermons, speeches, captivity narratives, political pamphlets, personal letters, and slave narratives. The class will explore personal and cultural issues that concerned early Americans and discuss how texts both define and complicate some of the terms associated with the literature of this period, including "colonist," "Puritan," "Enlightenment," "liberty," and even "America" itself.(Literature Seminars) Prerequisites: 200-level Introduction to Literary Studies course (any version).

Credits

3 credits