Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. Third Norton Critical Edition.  New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2018. ISBN-13: 9780393617313

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Ed. Michael Gorra. Norton Critical Edition. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2010. ISBN-13: 9780393931389

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. ISBN-13: 9780743273565

Larsen, Nella. Passing. Ed. Carla Kaplan. Norton Critical Edition. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2007. ISBN-13: 9780393979169

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Ed. Hershel Parker. Third Norton Critical Edition. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2018. ISBN-13: 9780393285000

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Third Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. ISBN-13: 9780415506755

Students should feel free to use digital versions of these texts if available, but please make sure you have the correct editions because they do feature critical material vital to the course. In addition, PDFs of the journal readings are posted on the Resources and Materials page. You can also access the journal articles on the JSTOR Academic Database from the CMU library. The link to the CMU Smiley Library Resource webpage is located under Quick Links in myCMU.

This course is an advanced study of American Literature and Culture. We will consider written work in American Literature, along with some of the literary questions raised with regard to the cultural contexts in which it was written. There is an emphasis on the context and critical reaction to those works through the lens of contemporary literary theory which will allow us to consider American Literature both as products of their author's time and as contemporary cultural works. 3 credit hours.

Students will:

• analyze American history and culture in order to understand the multiple contexts for and pressures on literary and dramatic production during that time;
• study the life and selected works of American authors as products of their own society;
• express their understanding of the relationship between literature and the historical/cultural contexts in which it was written;
• demonstrate an understanding of contemporary literary theory, including movements such as new historicism, cultural materialism, postcolonial criticism, feminism, reader-response criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, and post-structuralism, among others;
• deploy ideas from works of criticism and theory in their own reading and writing;
• evaluate journal articles and professional studies of American Literature in order to be able to write in appropriate genres and modes for an audience of professional scholars, and
• demonstrate a fuller and deeper understanding of all the facets of American Literature and its relation to the past and present worlds.