LITERATURE AND CULTURE II: FROM THE 18TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT

ENGL 243

Is America a new world, a city on a hill, an imperial power? Are American literatures revolutionary, nationalist, countercultural? Explores how writers have wrestled with such questions for several hundred years. We will encounter literary figures from white whales to red wheelbarrows, focusing on the diverse geographies, cultural practices, and political mythologies that compose the Americas, and interrogating what is meant by American literature and what it means to be American. We will consider the ways that genres from Native stories to slave narratives to postmodern novels have contributed to social, intellectual, and political currents of American cultures. Develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

ENGL 438

Study of a topic in 18th-Century literature.

ENGL 241

What is a person, a home, a nation, a world? What we now call "English literature" begins with these questions, imagining a cosmos filled with gods and heroes, liars and thieves, angels and demons, dragons and dungeons, whores and witches, drunken stupor and religious ecstasy. Authors crafted answers to these questions using technologies of writing from parchment to the printing press, and genres old and new, from epic and romance to drama and the sonnet. Develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

ENGL 334

Eighteenth-century literature and culture, including such writers as Dryden, Defoe, Swift, and Pope.

ENGL 805

Selected works, with an emphasis on literary and cultural background.