Much emphasis will be put on writing exercises that will contribute to sharpen your analytical skills and capability to write effective responses to texts. We will look at the sociohistorical contexts of these works and their place in literary history, as well as the literary devices that make them unique works of art. Three film screenings will also be included.
Scott Fitzgerald will allow us to dip into the prohibition era and Jazz Age of the American 1920s. We will look at a number of poems including Edgar Allan Poe’s – The Raven, Emily Dickinson’s – Because I could not stop for death, Native American writer Louise Erdrich’s, Dear John Wayne, and Beatnik Gregory Corso’s Bomb. Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, Eudora Welty, and Kurt Vonnegut will introduce us to Gothic Romanticism, turn of the (nineteenth) century feminism, racial discrimination during the segregation era, and a dystopian view on equality. In this course we will read three genres in American literature: short stories, poems, and a novel.
