This course is structured as a historical survey that spans the earnest Puritan writings of early settlers to the pioneering Modernist movements of the twentieth century. We will read, analyze, and engage the gothic Romanticism of Hawthorne and Poe, the introspective philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, the unique poetic voices of Whitman and Dickinson, the gritty realism of Bierce and London, and much more. In reading novels as Black No More by George Schuyler and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, we will explore how the unique social structure of America and its deeper philosophical struggles shaped the authorial imagination. We will discuss and analyze not only the Native American voice in early American literature but also the Latin American and Asian American experiences in the latter half of the twentieth century and examine how these diverse voices influence and reflect the landscape of American history, culture, and literature. Students will engage these primary texts by placing them in conversation with secondary criticism, both historical and contemporary. This class will challenge students to not only examine texts from a Christian worldview, but also analyze them within their original social context and grapple with the impacts and implications of their ideas. To accomplish these goals, students will compose essays that will task them with careful research, close reading, and the development of their own compelling voice; these assignments will include rhetorical, interpretative, and comparative analysis, along with a larger research-oriented critical piece that examines a particular movement in American literature.