1. What is American Literature? Fear and the Making of the American Mind

2. American Literature What is Literature? –What’s the purpose? –Definition –Canon –Influences

3. What’s the Purpose? Why teach and learn about American Literature? Why read classical literature? Why care about America’s intellectual history? Construct an argument that answers these questions. Write for fifteen minutes.

4. Definition Who defines American Literature and why? –Harold Bloom –Text books –Academics Who or what does this definition serve?

5. Historical Contextualization Fear –Clip from the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine

6. The Canon What is the Canon? How is it made? Who does it serve and why?

7. Influences British, Spanish, French, and Indigenous cultural influences Religion –Puritan Values Puritan Values: Language –Plain –Utilitarian Typology –Typological hermeneutics »Explicating signs in Old Testament as foreshadowing people and events in the New. Nature –Third channel of communication from God to man »Time of Francis Bacon »Royal Society –Heresies Arminianism Antinomianism