English (MA/MS)

This course examines the rise of American narrative through the nation’s colonial and early national periods, especially in British North America between 1620 and 1820. Topics for consideration could include exploration of how such narratives as the memoir, captivity narrative, sermon, and novel fostered the invention and formation of Americanness and American literature, examination of the fundamental ideas, myths, and intellectual concepts that still influence the ways in which Americans think about themselves and their societies and consideration of how anxieties about race, class, gender, and religion informed the creation of literary texts in early America.

Studies in various aspects of the period in American writing from the turn of the century to the Second World War. Special emphasis will be placed on the multifaceted and experimental nature of American literary modernism and the ways in which it was informed by the various social and art movements during this period.

An overview of the various problems associated with adolescent literature including the problem novel and new realism, how adolescent literature is defined issues associated with censorship and the problems adolescents experience in the texts.