Antebellum Fiction Dr. Milette Shamir
BA Advanced Course Spring Semester mshamir@post.tau.ac.il
"What is an American?" This question, posed by writer St. Jean de Crevecoeur in an essay by that title
Only a few short years after the American Revolution, continued to occupy American writers in the
decades to come. Writers from Cooper and Poe to Melville and Douglass attempted to formulate a
coherent and inclusive American identity, an attempt that often involved the negation, exclusion or
suppression of alternatives. This course will examine debates over national character and national identity
as they played themselves out in both canonical and neglected texts, through transformations in language,
literary genres, and prose styles.
Requirements: Short written assignments, final paper, final exam.