|
Class number:
2158
|
|
Title: This American Experiment, Pt 1 |
|
Department: English |
|
Career: Undergraduate |
|
Component: Lecture |
|
Session: Regular |
|
Instructor's Permission Required: No |
|
Grading Basis: Regular |
|
Units: 1.00 |
| Enrollment limited to 35 |
|
Current enrollment: 23 |
|
Available seats: 12 |
|
Start date: Tuesday, September 8, 2026 |
|
End date: Wednesday, December 23, 2026 |
|
Mode of Instruction: In Person |
|
Schedule: TR: 9:25AM-10:40AM, MC - 106 |
|
|
Instructor(s): Pokross, Benjamin |
|
Prerequisite(s): None |
|
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement |
|
Note: For English majors, this course fulfills the additional 100-level, pre-1800, elective, and additional literature or film requirements. For all students, it fulfills the College’s HUM requirement. |
|
Note: Seat reservations: 12 seats for first-years, 10 seats for sophomores. |
Course Description:
The America we know today has always been an experiment, defined by conflicts over land, debates about communal purpose and meaning, and the struggles of people born here and who dreaded or dreamed of coming here. This course emphasizes literary texts that have shaped-and contested-narratives of what America is and who it's for. From Indigenous stories and colonists' journals to the revolutionary texts of the new United States, from the writings of Transcendentalists and anti-slavery activists to the literature of the civil war and an abandoned Reconstruction, the works in this survey challenge students to reckon with the American present by reading and writing about its literary roots. (This course is first in a two-part sequence; students may take one part or both.) |