This course will provide a survey of American literature between the colonial period and the Civil War. We will read in a wide variety of genres – poetry, sermons, autobiography, essays, songs, letters, journalism, and political tracts – paying close attention to how writers used the conventions of these genres to meet their particular personal, aesthetic, and political goals. Along the way, we will focus on issues such as colonization, slavery, women’s rights, nature, magic, and individualism. Course assignments will include weekly activities that culminate in short papers as well as one longer paper that is at least partly a revision of some of the earlier weekly writings. This is a WI course and is conducted entirely online. It meets the diversity requirement for the English major.