American Novel From 1900

Twentieth-century American fiction is the lens here for tracking how the US has narrated itself through modernist rupture, two wars, the rise of mass culture, and the widening of the literary canon to Black, Native, and immigrant voices. You'll read across this arc seminar-style, with weekly discussion, regular homework, and two analytical essays (midterm and final) that ask you to read closely for narrative technique and situate each novel in its historical moment. As a third-year required course in the AMER sequence, it builds on the earlier American literature surveys and gives you the genre and contextual vocabulary you'll lean on in senior-year electives and the graduation essay.