Overview

Course No. 20100

Journey from sea to shining sea to discover the richness and diversity of American writing in this deeply researched literary road trip. Across the nation’s history, American writers have produced a compelling and diverse body of literary expression, which joins the great literatures of other cultures to create unique perspectives on human life flowing from America’s trailblazing political system, innovative spirit, and history of immigration.

Your guide in this thrilling inquiry is Professor Arielle Zibrak of the University of Wyoming, an award-winning scholar of American literature, whose inspired teaching shows an astonishingly wide and deep knowledge of this tradition, and who has traveled extensively across the United States on the trail of its greatest writers.

Course Highlights

• Explore literature from New England to Hawaii, spanning three centuries.

• Discover works reflecting diverse American experiences: European settlers, immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans, and more.

• Uncover regional voices, from Southern Gothic to Western frontier tales.

Video Lectures

• Hitting the Road (27 min)

Themes of travel, self-discovery, and outsider perspectives (Kerouac, Nabokov, McCarthy).

2. Poets and Novelists of Boston (26 min)

From Longfellow to Plath: Boston’s literary legacy.

• Transcendentalism in New England (27 min)

Emerson, Dickinson, Alcott, and Howells.

• Wild Spaces of New England (26 min)

Thoreau, Melville, Jewett, and Frost.

5. New York’s Elites (27 min)

Satire of high society (Irving, Wharton, James, Fitzgerald).

• New York through the Eyes of Immigrants (27 min)

Struggles of assimilation (Cahan, Crane, Alvarez).

• New York’s Countercultures (26 min)

Harlem Renaissance and queer arts (McKay, Lorde).

8. Appalachia and the Mid-Atlantic: Ghosts and Labor (27 min)

Industrial hardships and gothic tales (Poe, Douglass, Kingsolver).

9. Romance and Scandal in Virginia and DC (26 min)

Reconstruction romances and feminist adventures (Glasgow, Ephron).

• Southern Gothic in Mississippi and Georgia (24 min)

Faulkner, O’Connor, and Ward on decay and prejudice.  

11. Alabama and Louisiana: The Soul of the South (28 min)

Lee, Capote, Williams, and Chopin’s New Orleans.  

• Fisticuffs in Florida (25 min)

Hurston, Hemingway, and Key West poets.  

• Where the South Meets the West (28 min)

Twain, Beckwourth, and Angelou’s Missouri.  

14. The Midwest and the Dream of Postwar America (29 min)

Suburban critiques (Morrison, Ng) and African American voices.  

• The Neighborhoods of Chicago (29 min)

Dreiser, Wright, and Cisneros on urban struggles.  

• The Wild West (27 min)

Mythmaking in Wister and Grey’s frontier tales.  

17. The Literature of American Indian Reservations (32 min)

Native resistance (Momaday, Orange) and cultural erasure.  

18. Landscapes of Red Rocks and Prairies (29 min)

Southwest’s blend of cultures (Anaya, Cather).  

19. Central Californian Farms and Fisheries (28 min)

Steinbeck and migrant worker narratives.  

• Dreams and Illusions in Hollywood (30 min)

West, Didion, and Babitz on Tinseltown.  

21. From Gold to Silicon in Northern California (33 min)

Gold Rush racism to tech gentrification (Tan, Wang).  

• Among the Trees in the Pacific Northwest (28 min)

Native and Japanese American voices (Kesey, Okada).  

23. Adventures in Alaska and Hawai’i (31 min)

Wilderness (London) and Hawaiian identity (Hakes).  

• American Expatriate Writers (33 min)

Stein, Hemingway, and Baldwin abroad.