Course Info

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Course Info for ENGL - 104 - 01, Fall 2023
Class number: 2692 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: 35 Available seats: 0
Start date: Tuesday, September 5, 2023 End date: Thursday, December 21, 2023 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM, LIB - 181 Instructor(s): Wyss, Hilary
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement
Note: For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a survey.
Note: Seat reservations: 12 seats for first-years, 5 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.)