ENGL& 244 - American Literature I

• Differentiate and examine a broad variety of American literary voices, styles, and the cultures from which these works arise.
• Competently employ literary terminology.
• Identify the diversity of voices, styles, values, and experiences revealed in American literature, as well as appraise the contributions of previously overlooked or marginalized voices.
• Assess the relationship between literature and its themes to its contextual times, places, and historical and political events.
• Evaluate the ways that literature’s insights can be relevant culturally and personally.
• Interpret and analyze literary texts, such as poetry, stories, essays, plays, novels, speeches, and memoirs.
• Apply several different literary critical approaches to class texts.
• Critique the literature by presenting and clarifying opinions and responses to reading through use of textual evidence and other rhetorical devices.

1. Readings from historic and contemporary American authors.
2. Discussion of the course literature and reader response to it.
3. Influence of religious, cultural, and political events as shaping forces in literature.
4. Emergence of the voice of literary minorities.
5. Literary trends