ENGL 2142 American Literary History II

Fulfills pre-1900 requirement.. The decades following the Civil War were a time of fundamental change in U.S. society: the demise of the slave system and the rise of segregation; the emergence of industrialism, corporate culture, imperial adventurism, and successive waves of immigration; new roles for women; new patterns in cities and in regional byways; and new ideas imagined for reordering and reinventing democratic society all transformed the contours of daily life. This course examines how a diverse range of U.S. writers sought to capture and address these developments with new literary forms and practices, including the realist and naturalist novels to utopian literature and various forms of social commentary. Stretching, roughly, from 1865 to 1914, course readings will likely include works by Herman Melville, Mark Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Henry James.