What stories do Americans tell about their origins? How have they used the power of the word to define their communities, justify or contest colonization, resist oppressive regimes, raise their voices, and imagine a new nation? What did it mean to claim the right to write? And how did gender, ethnicity, race, and class—as social constructions and embodied identities—shape the answers to these questions? This course considers questions such as these in exploring the kinds of stories that have circulated on this continent and how narrative shapes what we think we know about ourselves as a nation; we will also come to understand why these stories still matter today.
