American Literature 3301-L1ALW
It is a series of lectures offering a survey of American literature from the earliest forms of writing in the colonial period to the most important recent literary phenomena. Each lecture is devoted to a literary epoch, trend, or addresses the development of specific genres. The following issues constitute the thematic core of the course: Native American oral tradition, Puritanism and the narrative forms of the colonial period, the Enlightenment and the development of American national identity, American Renaissance and transcendentalism, nineteenth-century prose and poetry, literary realism and naturalism, modernist prose and poetry, post-war fiction and poetry, the development of American drama, postmodernism, ethnic writing , contemporary literary trends.
Type of course
Mode
Learning outcomes
Knowledge:
- rudimentary knowledge of the history of American literature
- acquaintance with the assigned texts
- understanding of relations between literary texts and their cultural context
Skills:
- the ability to recognize the texts from the reading list: their titles, authors, and historical contexts
- the ability to discuss and interpret the assigned texts
Attitudes:
- aesthetic and ethical sensibility and awareness of cultural differences
Assessment criteria
A student who intends to take this lecture MUST be registered for a class in American literature.
Students are expected to take an exam, the form of which (written, oral or online) will be determined by the end of semester and will depend on the state of the pandemic.
Students taking lectures have to demonstrate the knowledge of English at the B2+ level
retake exam session: an exam
Bibliography
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vols. 1 and 2.
Lewicki Z. (ed.), Handbook of American Literature.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: