EN 914 Some American Renaissances (Spring: 3)
The American Renaissance is traditionally conceived as the first full flowering
of American culture in the 1850s in the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne,
Melville, Whitman, Dickinson. This course places those authors in juxtaposition
to other "renaissances" occurring in the same period: in African-American
writing, women's writing, and popular literature. Among the questions engaged
will be the difference between "high literary" and "lower" types of writing,
the effect of culture on literature and of literature on culture, and the
roles of race, class, and gender.
James Wallace
Last Updated: 29-JAN-13