This course surveys the evolution of literary themes and forms from the period of European exploration of the Americas through the Civil War, tracing distinctive traditions of writing and thinking that have shaped the development of modern literature and thought in the United States. How, in particular, did this writing and thought address religious, political and economic conflict? How was it shaped by encounters between European and native American cultures; the arts of religious devotion and cosmopolitan enlightenment; the cultural politics of revolution and modern nationalism; responses to the expansion of capitalism and slavery; the development of print media and modern literary values; and the philosophy and aesthetics of American transcendentalism and sentimentalism?