Professor Lisa Gordis
BC 3179x  Fall 2019
TuTh 11:40-12:55 Barnard 409

Office: Barnard Hall 408D
Office phone: 854-2114
Mailbox: Barnard Hall 417
[email protected]
Office hours: Generally Tuesdays 2:20-4 by appointment.
To sign up for an appointment, click here.

BC 3179x surveys American literature written before 1800. While we will devote some attention to the literary traditions that preceded British colonization, most of our readings will be of texts written in English between 1620 and 1800. These texts–histories, autobiographies, poems, plays, and novels–illuminate the complexity of this period of American culture. They tell stories of pilgrimage, colonization, and genocide; private piety and public life; manuscript and print publication; the growth of national identity (political, cultural, and literary); Puritanism, Quakerism, and Deism; race and gender; slavery and the beginnings of a movement towards its abolition. We will consider, as we read, the ways that these stories overlap and interconnect, and the ways that they shape texts of different periods and genres.

This fall, most materials for this course will be housed on a course blog. To join the blog, go to https://edblogs.columbia.edu/engl3179x-001-2019-3/ and log in using your uni.

A pdf of the 2019 course syllabus is available here.

Charlotte Temple, the Overbury Collection, Barnard College Library