Students explore American literature about nature, ethnicity, gender, culture, family, and identity in this second-semester course. The selections offer perspectives diverse in history, culture, class, geography, age, gender, and sexual orientation. Literature of various genres (short story, novel, poetry, autobiography, testimony, nonfiction) guides students to a better understanding of people of many cultural backgrounds.

Students develop critical as well as creative thinking, writing, and communication strategies and skills as they examine the literary treatment of human relations in a multicultural society. Creative and analytical writing projects, vocabulary terms, newsgroup contributions, and self-guided activities enhance the learning process. Students who complete this course will experience writing as a form of thinking, self-expression, and communication through reading other writer's works and through their own writing; incorporate grammatical and compositional information when writing; develop multicultural awareness through reading, reflection, application and writing; and analyze and interpret diverse perspectives in multiple genres of some major American literary themes.