ENGL 2030 - Introduction to American Literatures: Beginnings to the Civil War

(crosslisted) AMST 2030
(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

May be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

E. Cheyfitz.

This course begins with a look at the philosophies of the first Americans, Native Americans, using the example of the Navajo creation narratives, and then proceeds to read European, African American, and other Native texts in order to understand what forces shaped the formation of the United States and pulled it apart by the time of the Civil War. We will be particularly interested in the forces of colonialism, capitalism, and democracy, through the readings of such documents as the journals of Christopher Columbus; the Indian captivity narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Mary Jemison; the political writings of Tom Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry David Thoreau; narratives of African American resistance by David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass; the Pequot William Apess’s writings for the rights of American Indians; and the fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Herman Melville.