ENGL 9050 - American Historical Fiction: Practice and Theory

3 cr.

This course typically examines several sub-genres of the American historical novel, looking in each case at multiple primary text and excerpts from scholarly approaches to the sub-genre. At the broad level, this course’s goal is to help us think about how we read and define a literary genre, both in terms of our own individual analyses and the ongoing critical conversation; concurrently, one specific goal is to develop working definitions for both the “American” and the “historical fiction” contained within our title. Studied authors may include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner and Leslie Marmon Silko.