ENG 2310 American Literary Cultures

A Short Literary History of the United States offers an introduction to American Literature for students who want to acquaint themselves with the most important periods, authors, and works of American literary history. Comprehensive yet concise, it provides an essential overview of the different currents in American literature in an accessible, engaging style. This book features: the pre-colonial era to the present, including new media formats the evolution of literary traditions, themes, and aesthetics readings of individual texts, contextualized within American cultural history literary theory in the United States a core reading list in American Literature an extended glossary and study aid. This book is ideal as a companion to courses in American Literature and American Studies, or as a study aid for exams.

Provides a solid background in the social, historical, economic and intellectual trends which influenced American literature. Ends with the first half of the 20th century, so also consult "The Worlds of American Intellectual History" also in this list for more current eras.

Essays on various aspects of American thought in contemporary perspective. Readings may be a bit challenging, as they place American thought in conversation with that of Europe and the world.

In his groundbreaking new book Charles Pete Banner-Haley explores the history of African American intellectualism and reveals the efforts of black intellectuals in the ongoing struggle against racism, showing how they have responded to Jim Crow segregation, violence against black Americans, and the more subtle racism of the postintegration age. Banner-Haley asserts that African American intellectuals--including academicians, social critics, activists, and writers--serve to generate debate, policy, and change, acting as a moral force to persuade Americans to acknowledge their history of slavery and racism, become more inclusive and accepting of humanity, and take responsibility for social justice. Other topics addressed in this insightful study include the disconnection over time between black intellectuals and the masses for which they speak; the ways African American intellectuals identify themselves in relation to the larger black community, America as a whole, and the rest of the world; how black intellectuals have gained legitimacy in American society and have accrued moral capital, especially in the area of civil rights; and how that moral capital has been expended. Among the influential figures covered in the book are W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Weldon Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Oliver C. Cox, George S. Schuyler, Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Charles Johnson, and Barack Obama. African American intellectuals, as Banner-Haley makes clear, run the political gamut from liberal to conservative.

Essays on authors, movements, genres, and topics. Great for background information and current through the mid- to late-20th century.

This link to the 96 Companions on various aspects of American literature, are great starting points for background information on authors, ethnic literatures, genres, and movements. Each volume will have essays of 15 - 20 pages introducing the author/genre/theme, discussing specific works, and the larger movements and influences the individual or group fits in with in American literature and life.

A "monumental" work covering authors, ethnic groups, regions, and movements. Includes chronologies and bibliographies for the writers covered.

Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism provides a comprehensive A-to-Z guide to the Transcendentalists, the legendary group of New England authors that included Ralph Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalism promoted intuitive knowledge and the idea that the individual, rather than the Christian God, was the spiritual and moral center of the universe; it was often called the most influential American literary and intellectual movement of the 19th century. Entries cover writers, literary works, and more, ranging from the movement's origins in the first decades of the 19th century to the activities of a second generation of thinkers and activists after the Civil War. This volume is unique in bringing together all of the major, as well as some lesser-known but significant, writings of a wider circle of writers and thinkers associated with the Transcendentalists and engaging their philosophical themes. Coverage includes: The central writers and thinkers of the movement, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and many more Great writers who influenced or were influenced by the movement, including Immanuel Kant and Henry James Major transcendentalist essays and lectures, including Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" Major poems, including Emerson's "Concord Hymn" and Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" Major books, including Thoreau's Walden and Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century Major works of short fiction, including Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" and Louisa May Alcott's "Transcendental Wild Oats" Places, including Walden Pond and Concord Concepts, including Unitarianism and abolitionism Periodicals, including the Dial and the Atlantic Monthly and much more.