ENGL 6640 - American Literature and the Civil War

(crosslisted)
(also AMST 6640 , ARTH 6640 , FGSS 6640 )

This course focuses on cultural expressions around the Civil War in the nineteenth-century United States. We will read poetry, novels, and short stories that consider not only the violence of battle, but also the war at home, the debates about slavery that preceded and followed on the war (possibly including recent cinematic treatments), and the great work of mourning. Writers will include Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckley, Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Augusta Evans, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Stephen Crane, and Ambrose Bierce. Theories of violence and nationalism will appear. Short oral presentations and a long research paper required.

S. Samuels.