This course is a survey of American literature from its beginnings to 1865. The course will provide students with an introduction to the early history of American literature, examining a broad range of literary genres and considering the complex cultural and social context in which these important literary texts were written. Authors may include John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.