This course focuses on a representative selection of U.S. novels. Students will explore the formal and thematic elements of the genre associated with romance, realism, naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, fantasy, etc. They will investigate the novelistic techniques used to comment upon recurrent themes in American literature, such as economic opportunity, individualism, liberty, slavery, immigration and colonialism, the frontier, violence, religion/spirituality, nature, urbanization, to name just a few. This course will also examine how race, gender, class, and sexual orientation are central to constructions of a national identity and literary tradition.