ENGL 338
The American Renaissance Fall 2015
Division I
Cross-listed AMST 338
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

“The American Renaissance” keeps shifting and expanding since it was named in 1941. It once centered on New Englanders (plus Whitman) in intersecting circles who produced masterpieces between 1850 and 1855, Transcendentalists or doubters of Transcendentalism. Emerson and Thoreau were Transcendentalist neighbors; they knew Hawthorne; they were very intrigued by Whitman; Hawthorne and Melville knew each other, though Hawthorne did not know what to make of his increasingly desperate friend. It took the twentieth century to know what to make of Melville; also to find its way to a genius unknown to any of them (Dickinson). Perhaps the jury is still out on a genius from another region (Poe); and only in the last decades has the work of another Southerner, the escaped slave Harriet Jacobs, found its way to the canon. Now the term “The American Renaissance” includes writing from 1830 to the Civil War (and its aftermath), the first great era of American writing, whose explosive cultural energy was provided by Puritan optimism and its shadow, Evangelical fervor, expansive Jacksonian democracy, slavery, and the looming crisis of slavery.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 25
Class#: 1324
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: 3 papers totaling about 15 pages; class participation
Prerequisites: a 100-level ENGL course, or a score of 5 on the AP English Literature exam, or a score of 6 or 7 on the Higher Level IB English exam
Enrollment Preferences: English majors, American Studies majors
Distributions: Division I
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ENGL; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under AMST
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AMST 338 Division II ENGL 338 Division I
Attributes: AMST Arts in Context Electives
ENGL Literary Histories B

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