College Bulletin 2022-2023 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
College Bulletin 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENGL 069. Reconstructing US Culture 1866 to 1900


This course will introduce students to the U.S. literature of the Reconstruction era. We will interpret the historical period and political project of  ”Reconstruction” broadly to include texts produced during and, in some cases, after the formal period of direct federal intervention in the south after the Civil War. If, as many scholars have suggested, Reconstruction was ultimately a contest over meaning-the meaning of the Civil War, of freedom, of race, of the nation, and of citizenship-then it did not end in 1877. Indeed, as the historian Eric Foner has suggested, Reconstruction is still not over. In addition to introducing students to the culture of the Reconstruction period, this course will also broadly consider the place of war, national citizenship, freedom, and race in post-bellum American literature. Authors to include Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Albion W. Tourgée, WEB Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Kate Chopin.
GATEWAY English Literature. For English Literature majors and minors, this course can count as either an 18th/19th or 20th/21st century course.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: English Literature  
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature


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