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En 142
US literature before the Civil War
9 units (3-0-6)  | second term

The course will focus on the literature - what F.O. Matthiessen called "The American Renaissance" -- produced in the period leading up to the Civil War. We will consider representations of gender, race, and class, as well as the aesthetic sensibilities in works by the following: Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry David Thoreau. Not offered 2024-25.

Instructor: Weinstein