Classics of American literature

Lecture 1: Introduction

Lecture 2: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: the first American story

Lecture 3: Washington Irving: the first American storyteller

Lecture 4: Ralph Waldo Emerson's yesterday: America's coming of age

Lecture 5: Emerson today: architect of American values

Lecture 6: Emerson tomorrow: deconstructing culture and self

Lecture 7: Henry David Thoreau: countercultural hero

Lecture 8: Thoreau: stylist and humorist extraordinaire

Lecture 9: Walden: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Lecture 10: Edgar Allan Poe: Poete Maudit

Lecture 11: Edgar Allan Poe: ghost writer

Lecture 12: Poe's legacy: the self as "Haunted Palace"

Lecture 13: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the American past

Lecture 14: The Scarlet letter: Puritan romance

Lecture 15: Hawthorne's "A": interpretation and semiosis

Lecture 16: The Scarlet letter: political tract or psychological study?

Lecture 17: Hawthorne our contemporary

Lecture 18: Herman Melville and the making of Moby-Dick

Lecture 19: The biggest fish story of them all

Lecture 20: Ahab and the white whale

Lecture 21: Moby-Dick: tragedy of perspective

Lecture 22: Melville's "Benito Cereno": American (mis)adventure at sea

Lecture 23: "Benito Cereno": theater of power, or power of theater?

Lecture 24: Walt Whitman: the American bard appears

Lecture 25: Whitman: poet of the body

Lecture 26: Whitman: poet of the city

Lecture 27: Whitman: poet of death

Lecture 28: The Whitman legacy

Lecture 29: Uncle Tom's cabin: the unread classic

Lecture 30: Stowe's representation of slavery

Lecture 31: Freedom and art in Uncle Tom's cabin

Lecture 32: Emily Dickinson: in and out of nature

Lecture 33: Dickinson's poetry: language and consciousness

Lecture 34: Dickinson: devotee of death

Lecture 35: Dickinson: "Amherst's Madame de Sade"

Lecture 36: Dickinson's legacy

Lecture 37: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: American paradise regained

Lecture 38: Huckleberry Finn: the banned classic

Lecture 39: Huckleberry Finn: a child's voice, a child's vision

Lecture 40: Huckleberry Finn, American orphan

Lecture 41: Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson: black and white charade

Lecture 42: Henry James and the novel of perception

Lecture 43: The Turn of the screw: do you believe in ghosts?

Lecture 44: Turning the screw of interpretation

Lecture 45: Stephen Crane and the literature of war

Lecture 46: The Red badge of courage: brave new world

Lecture 47: Stephen Crane: scientist of human behavior

Lecture 48: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: war against patriarchy

Lecture 49: "The Yellow Wallpaper": descent into hell or free at last?

Lecture 50: Robert Frost and the spirit of New England

Lecture 51: Robert Frost: "At home in the metaphor"

Lecture 52: Robert Frost and the fruits of the earth

Lecture 53: T.S. Eliot: unloved modern classic

Lecture 54: T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land" and beyond

Lecture 55: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: American romance

Lecture 56: The Great Gatsby: a story of lost illusions?

Lecture 57: Fitzgerald's triumph: writing the American dream

Lecture 58: Ernest Hemingway's The Sun also rises: novel of the lost generation

Lecture 59: The Sun also rises: spiritual quest

Lecture 60: Ernest Hemingway: wordsmith

Lecture 61: Hemingway's The Garden of Eden: female desire unleashed

Lecture 62: The Garden of Eden: combat zone

Lecture 63: William Faulkner's The Sound and the fury: the idiot's tale

Lecture 64: The Sound and the fury: failed rites of passage

Lecture 65: The Sound and the fury: signifying nothing?

Lecture 66: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: Civil War epic

Lecture 67: Absalom, Absalom!: the languages of love

Lecture 68: Absalom, Absalom!: the overpass to love

Lecture 69: The Grapes of wrath: American saga

Lecture 70: John Steinbeck: poet of the little man

Lecture 71: The Grapes of wrath: reconceiving self and family

Lecture 72: Invisible man: black bildungsroman

Lecture 73: Invisible man: reconceiving history and race

Lecture 74: Invisible man: "What did I do to be so black and blue?"

Lecture 75: Eugene O'Neill: great god of American theater

Lecture 76: Long day's journey into night: there's no place like home

Lecture 77: Tennessee Williams: managing libido

Lecture 78: A Street named Desire: the death of romance

Lecture 79: Death of salesman: death of an ethos?

Lecture 80: Death of salesman: tragedy of the American dream

Lecture 81: Toni Morrison's Beloved: dismembering and remembering

Lecture 82: Beloved: a story of "thick love"

Lecture 83: Beloved: Morrison's writing of the body

Lecture 84: Conclusion.