Am. Lit: Contact to Civil War

Studies in American Literature from the early seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Focus on the diverse searches for identity (artistic, cultural, ethnic, political, philosophical, racial, religious and sexual) to reveal developments in early American culture. Literature may include the novels and short stories of Cooper, Fern, Hawthorne, Irving, Melville, and Poe; the poetry of Bradstreet, Dickinson, Whitman, and Wheatley; the prose of Apess, Bradford, Douglass, Edwards, Emerson, Fuller, Franklin, Jacobs, Thoreau, and Rowlandson.