This course surveys the US American literary tradition including indigenous orature, colonial-era literary production, and later US American literary movements broadly defined: romanticism, realism, modernism, the post-war period, and onto contemporary work. Drawing on historical, cultural, and political developments, students analyze genres, authors, styles, and ideas associated with US American Literature. Readings draw upon American Literature’s multicultural legacy from J. Hector St John de Crevecœur to Wendell Berry, Frederick Douglass to Ishmael Reed, Phyllis Wheatley to Yusuf Komunyakaa, Emily Dickenson to Safia Elhillo, James Baldwin to Carlos Santos Perez, Anne Bradstreet to Toni Morrison.