Course Description

English 20503 Major American Writers, sections 56 and 65

The Literature of Social Change in the USA

When Harriet Beecher Stowe first met President Abraham Lincoln, he is reported to have said, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!'” And while it open to debate that Stowe did start the American Civil War, her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin was tremendously important in promoting the abolitionist cause and ending slavery in the United States.

Even before Stowe, American writers were advocating social change for their own lives, the lives of Native Americans, immigrants, children, and promoting issues such as education, civil liberties, equal pay for equal work, suffrage, marriage reform, and freedom from gender discrimination. This course will examine different literary genres (essays, poems, novels, short stories, and visual texts) to examine how Americans have advocated for social change from Colonial times to the present.