AMST 331 - American Literature as American Studies

Institution:

Wesleyan University

Subject:

American Studies

Description:

Together we will consider how literature can advance American studies as an interdisciplinary critical and self-critical project. Literature--like life, and like American studies--is not divided into disciplines. Indeed, literature functioned as a form of "American studies" long before American studies took shape as a field in the 1930s. Literature investigated some areas of American experience well before historians recognized and researched these areas as "history" and focused on key theoretical concerns well before theorists formulated and abstracted these concerns as "theory." We will read a variety of literary forms: novels (Twain, Adams), stories (Hawthorne, Hughes, Cheever), plays (Glaspell, Odets, Gold Kopit), essays (Emerson, London), literary cultural criticism (Eastman, Du Bois), utopian fiction (Bellamy), memoirs (Cabeza de Vaca). And we will reflect on writing by some key critics (Trilling, Bercovitch) and theorists (Marx, Williams, Eagleton, Bourdieu, Butler). Our goal is to reassess how literature can help us develop as creative American studies thinkers.

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Seminar

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.wesleyan.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 685-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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