Society, Culture and Literature of the USA

The course is divided into two units:
a) Literature of the USA
b) Society and Culture of the USA
Literature of the USA: The course touches upon selected events in the history of the United States of America and focuses on the following periods and authors: US history to 1620; Native American Literature: Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World; Early US History and Literature 1620-1820; Thomas Jefferson, US History and Literature, 1820-1865; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Edgar Allan Poe; Walt Whitman; Herman Melville; Emily Dickinson; US History and Literature 1865-1914; Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Native American Chants and Songs, US History and Literature Between the Wars 1914-1945, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Eugene O'Neill, e. e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, US History and Literature since 1945, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison. The lectures include reading of selected passages or works.

Society and Culture of the USA: an overview of US geography; selected chapters from US history; minorities and immigration; US political system; US legal system; US economy; education; religion; US media; arts, sports and leisure