Lectures

On these pages, you will find lectures that go along with the readings. Please read them carefully.

Use the links below to get to the lecture you want.

Lecture 1: Introduction to American Literature; Recurring Themes and Issues

Lecture 2: American Indian Literature

Lecture 3: The Explorers and the Colonists

Lecture 4: The Puritans

Lecture 5: The Influence of the Puritans

Lecture 6: Witchcraft

Lecture 7: The Democratic Revolution

Lecture 8: Slavery

Lecture 9: The American Gothic

Lecture 10: Transcendentalism

Lecture 11: Hawthorne

Lecture 12: Melville

Lecture 13: Whitman

Lecture 14: Whitman in the 20th and 21st Century

--The mural on this page is called "Rural Highway." It's the mural painted for the Middleport, N.Y. Post Office by Marianne Appel in 1941. More information about this mural can be found at Western New York Heritage Press.

--During the Depression in the 1930s and early 1940s, the U.S. government commissioned a number of murals for post offices across the United States. Many of these were quite amazing. To read more about them, CLICK HERE.