Introduction

This course looks at a range of texts written in the United States of America from the period of colonialencounter to the present day. Following a loose chronology, we proceed through a contrapuntal investigation, examining texts that write and unwrite the nation from perspectives that are contrasting but parallel: colonist and Native American, slave and citizen, President and poet. We will consider how fiction participates in battles over the meanings of identity and group definition. In addition, we will investigate how novels, short stories, and poetry respond to the social and material contexts in which they were produced as well as how literature might be thought of as relevant beyond its historical moment of production.