ENGL2304 - 01 - American Voices I

(LI) Literary Inquiry (AI-L) Aesthetic Inquiry Lit (DM) Diversity & Multiculturalism

This course examines the development of American literature from its origins to the Civil War. Students will consider the aesthetic characteristics of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry as they engage with political and religious movements, including settler colonialism, Puritanism, abolitionism, and transcendentalism. Students consider each text within its historical, national, and transnational context in order to understand how it simultaneously responds and contributes to the conditions that have given rise to it. With the diversity of American literature and U.S. identities serving as the key theme of the course, students will consider a wide array of American voices as well as competing accounts of national origin stories, from Christopher Columbus's Letter's of Discovery and the Pilgrim's "Mayflower Compact" to Frederick Douglass's account of his journey from slavery to freedom, as well as the more recent literary reflections on Jamestown in the 1619 project.