This is a basic introductory survey in American literature from the 1400s to the 1800s (c.15th ? 19th centuries). We explore the texts from the pre-Columbian Era and Colonial beginnings to the American Civil War, and analyze literature using the contexts of society, history and culture. Students will review oral, written, and folkloric texts by Indigenous, European, and African Diaspora people such as Sitting Bull, Emerson, Equiano, Child, Tecumseh, Twain, Whipper, Far, Brown, Alcott, Tubman, Hawthorne, Plato, Stewart, Poe, Wheatley, Whitman, and Dickinson.