This course introduces key concepts that pervade U.S.-America’s literary and cultural development from the colonial period to the present. Serving as ideological blueprints and mental signposts, the examined key concepts act like a matrix that shapes U.S. literature and culture – even today. Our survey will cover major periods and developments in US intellectual history: e.g., Puritanism, Great Awakening, Enlightenment, the Early Republic, expansionism, Transcendentalism, and the Gilded Age. Close attention will be paid to key concepts such as “America as a second Eden,” “Exceptionalism,” “Frontier,” “Jeremiad,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Modernization,” “New Woman,” “Noble Savage,” “Progress,” “Pursuit of happiness,” “Racial determinism,” “Self-reliance,” “Translatio imperii,” and “Wilderness.”
A reader with a collection of literary texts and other documents will be made available at the beginning of the course.
