The 9 credit course includes the following texts and topics:

Puritans, Native Americans, the American wilderness and the witch hunt:
-John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630);
-Mary Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (First, Second, Third, Twelfth, and Twentieth Remove), (1682);
- Cotton Mather, “The Wonders of the Invisible World” (1692);
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (1835);
- William Apess, “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Letter to President Martin Van Buren” (1838).

The founding myths of the United States:
-Declaration of Independence (1776);
- Hector De Crèvecoeur ‘What is an American’, from “Letters from an American Farmer” (1782);
- Benjamin Franklin, “The Authobiography” (1791-1868) pp. 254-269; 297-308 Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Eight Edition;
-Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819);

“The peculiar institution”: slavery and race in America:
- Phyllis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773);
-Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave (1845);

The American Renaissance: forms and figures of mid-nineteenth century America:
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837);
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839);
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1832), “Rappacini’s Daughter” (available online 1844);
-Walt Whitman, “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1855);
-Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest”, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”, "There is a certain Slant of light", "This is my letter to the World", “Because I could not stop for Death”, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant—”.

Rise of the market, mass society and consumerism in the Antebellum America:
- E. A. Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Raven” (1845), “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846);
-Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853);
- Henry David Thoreau, “Where I lived and What I lived for", from "Walden” (1854);

Critical Bibliography:
Critical Bibliography:
-Norton Anthology of American Literature (Preferably the 8th Shorter Edition, or any other edition available in the library):
LITERATURE TO 1620: Introduction and Timeline
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 1620-1820: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1820-1865: Introduction and Timeline
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHORS IN THE SYLLABUS:
-ELLIOTT, Emory,ed., Columbia Literary History of the United States, 2 Vols., Vol. I pp. 28-37; 83-92;
FISHER, Benjamin, "Poe and the American Short Story", in BENDIXEN, Alfred and NAGEL, James, ed. by, A Companion to the America Short-Story, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 20-34;
RYAN, Steven T., "A Guide to Melville’s 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'”, in BENDIXEN, Alfred and NAGEL, James, ed. by, A Companion to the America Short-Story, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 35-62;
-BENDIXEN, Alfred, “Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story”, in Bendixen, Alfred and Nagel, James, ed. by, A Companion to the America Short-Story, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 50- 67.