ENGL4700: Early American Literature (60338)

Payton, Jason

MWF 11:30 AM

Park Hall 144

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This course explores how the idea of America took shape in literature from the colonial period through the age of revolutions and into the nineteenth century.

We will focus specifiaclly on the themes of liberty and bondage and will explore the artistic, philosophical, and political resonances of these themes through readings of early American histories, poems, novels, and philosohical texts. 

Topics covered will include: 

• Literatures of empire, with emphasis on the perspectives of racial and ethnic minorities and women
• Literatures of the Enlightenment & Revolution, wtih emphasis on domestic novels & slavery narratives
• Literatures of the American Renaissance, with emphasis on American Romanticism & the American Gothic

Authors covered will include: 

• Colonial women writers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz & Anne Bradstreet
• 18th-century women writers Phillis Wheatley and Hannah Webster Foster
• 19th-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson

Major assignments include one short paper (5 pp.) and one final project (creative or critical).

Interested students are encouraged to send inquiries to Dr. Payton at jmpayton@uga.edu.

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