This course investigates American literature as it relates to a specific theme, issue, controversy, or question. Attention might center upon topics from childhood and friendship to captivity and freedom, and from immigration and labor to law and war, drawing on or even focusing more decidedly upon aspects of identity including but not limited to class, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sexuality Authors might extend from nineteenth century exemplars including Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman to twentieth and twenty-first century figures such as Philip K. Dick, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Richard Wright. This course may be repeated for different topics.
None, though coursework in English (e.g. EN 1251, Introduction to Literature) or any subsequent EN offering will be helpful.