American Literature 2

American Literature 2 familiarizes students with major American writers and works of those writers from the Civil War to the present. It provides a variety of learning and teaching activities, links American literature and American history, and offers an opportunity for students to explore American values. The four sections in this curriculum unit present a generally chronological approach to this expanding literary story, emphasizing major writers and literary styles.

• Part 1 includes postwar protest, Mark Twain, local colorists and regionalists, and new styles of writing, such as early surrealism.
• Part 2 features great writers of the 1920s: Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and T. S. Eliot.
• Part 3 centers on the next generation, among them John Steinbeck, Eudora Welty, E. E. Cummings, and Arthur Miller.
• In Part 4, students consider diverse authors from James Baldwin, John Updike, and Garrison Keillor to Hispanic-American and Jewish-American writers.

Many reading selections are included within the text of the unit. Also featured in this unit is an appendix of useful Internet sites.

Use Center for Learning novel/drama units to enhance your approach to literature by including great American novels and plays.

• Death of a Salesman
• The Great Gatsby
• The Things They Carried
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• To Kill a Mockingbird

See our Novel/Drama section for additional titles.