American Literature

American Literature Course Description

What does it mean to be an American? The “ideal of perfection” explores ways in which the American Dream brings with it high hopes, high expectations, and rigid realities for many people. We cannot celebrate the freedoms in America without examining its limitations. Although the literary pieces we shall read can stand alone as works of art, the focus of the course is to use the literature as a means of understanding our society in which we live. As such, this course will be taught in the order of major American literary time periods as well as the various schools of literary criticism.