American literature speaks in distinctive dialects that pre-date the arrival of European explorers in the Renaissance, range across centuries and continents, and intermingle a rich variety of racial, ethnic, and gendered perspectives. Genres examined in this course might include lyric poems, dystopian novels, horror stories, seduction narratives, slave narratives, political speeches, or postmodern plays. Writers studied might include Walt Whitman, Columbus, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Junot Díaz, Harriet Beecher Stowe, David Foster Wallace, Martin Luther King, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.