We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.
- Foreign Critics speech, 1890
Perhaps you are an English major already, you are considering becoming one, or you simply love reading good books and thinking about them. Whatever your reasons for enrolling, you have chosen a course for students who are open to opening books and discovering what's inside. You will learn how to reveal meaning in some classic American texts and their contexts. You will immerse yourself in the literature and then emerge into a rich conversation about it, about the nature of reading itself, and about the conspiracy of forces--race, class, gender, religion, and sexuality among them--that have shaped the rich and complex American identity.
