Courses

This is a survey of American literatures and cultures ranging from the colonial era to the early Republic. Although most of the texts on the syllabus were written in colonies that would eventually become part of the U.S., the course itself is not designed to be a literary history of the United States. Instead, we will consider these texts in their local, regional, and Atlantic contexts, and inquire into the theological, political, and literary issues that framed the colonial experiences they describe. We will examine major concepts and themes that include Exploration and Captivity, Puritan theology, Antinomianism, the rise of the Enlightenment, Slavery and Emancipation, and the Age of Revolutions. Our investigations will push us to test the conceptual limits of these categories as we trace their place in emerging discourses of nationhood.