Prerequisite(s): Any 200-level ENGL course. An analysis of American literary texts between 1820 and 1865. Covers American Romantics like Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe and transcendentalists like Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Special attention given to political writings (e.g., Lydia Maria Child, Frederick Douglass) and to women writers (including Fanny Fern, Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott).