This course approaches the U.S. literatures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in terms of a series of related problems. Students will work collaboratively to describe, contextualize, and understand these problems, rather than trying to solve them definitively. In the process, they will generate a list of keywords (some possible examples include “culture,” “imperialism,” “man,” “modern,” “revolution,” and “sensibility”), which will help to organize the course and also serve as the basis for major assignments. The class will read both canonical works of “American literature,” such as Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791), as well as lesser-known, harder to locate texts, such as The Narrative of Robert Adams (1816).