CRN 60486 – LIT 222 – 001
3.000 Credits
Jan 17, 2012 – May 20, 2012
W 6:30 pm – 9:10 pm
Avante/X Building 124
Prof Richard E. Middleton Kaplan
American Literature: Civil War to Present
LIT 222 explores U.S. prose, drama and poetry, Civil War to present, including minority literature, regional literature, literary journalism, criticism, and social and historical novels in their historical, social, and cultural context to reflect current controversies and social changes. The course reflects diversity amongst the authors as well as the literary modes of expression presented.
We will trace the development of fiction and poetry from realism (Twain and Henry James) through psychological realism (Chopin), naturalism (Stephen Crane), modernism (Pound, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Faulkner), the Beat generation (Ginsberg), and postmodernism (Pynchon, John Barth, and the Chicago writer Richard Powers). We will follow drama from our first great playwright, Eugene O’Neill, through Arthur Miller and up to August Wilson. The diversity of the U.S. experience will be represented through authors as varied as Wilson, Black Elk, Harlem Renaissance writers, Toni Morrison, and the Chicago-born Sandra Cisneros. The course culminates with this year’s One Book One Harper selection, the novel The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart by former Harper professor M. Glenn Taylor.
Harper Literature 