Humanities and Fine Arts 191HFA48 - FYS- American Mythmaking

The purpose of this course is, as Whitman writes, "to define America" and to think critically and historically about where modern ideas of America originate and what such ideas might mean for our modern moment. This course looks to American literature, poems, and other documents, as well as occasional writing about America from outside perspectives. In this class we will be thinking through the concept of America and reading a variety of perspectives that document how America has been thought of, defined, and redefined over the course of the nineteenth century with direct implications for the twenty first century. From poets like Whitman and Longfellow to thinkers like Frederick Douglass and Emerson, from canonical New England writers to less-recognized Black and Indigenous voices, this course takes up the problem of defining America and critically investigates how the mythos of what has often been named "the greatest nation on Earth" was created and by (and for) whom.

Open to first-year Humanities and Fine Arts Exploratory Track students and first-year HFA Majors.