This course will examine the literary and cultural history of "America" with particular reference to a range of texts ranging from colonial times to the emergence of the new republic. Based on the foundational American assumption that the future can be better than the past through imagination and effort, the Transcendentalists could foresee a culture that would shape a mindset and a community in which the individual would be liberated and a way of thinking would in effect become a way of doing.
Some of the questions that this course will attempt to answer include the connections between writing and culture and the cultural-historical claims and interpretations of the prescribed texts.