America in ConTEXT: The Stories of the Stories that Shape US
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2025
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America in Context: The Stories of the Stories that Shape U.S. combines history, American studies, and pop culture to help students understand selections from American literature. Each chapter contains interdisciplinary, multi-modal narratives that lead to a paired older selection from American literature with a newer selection. The author also introduces New Historical Theory to challenge students to see these texts from various perspectives and to spark their curiosity. This text also models MLA guidelines, with clear in-text citations and Works Cited for each chapter.
CHAPTER 1 Beginnings
• 1493 letter to Luis de Santángel, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)
• “The Columbus Controversy,” Zinn Education Project, 1992
CHAPTER 2 Reading a City, St. Augustine
• Overview of Literary Theory, with focus on New Historicism
• “Letter of Edward Winslow,” 1621
• Secrets of the Dead: Secrets of Spanish Florida, PBS documentary, 2017
CHAPTER 3 The Puritan Spirit
• “Puritan Spirit Is the Faith that Victory Comes from God,” Life Magazine, 1942
• Selections from “Wonders of the Invisible World” by Cotton Mather (1663–1728)
• “The Author to Her Book,” “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” and “Verses Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet (1628–72)
• “Words,” and “To the Oppressors” by Pauli Murray (1910–85)
CHAPTER 4 Revolutionary Propaganda
• “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82)
• Excerpts of “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine (1737–1809) • Excerpts of “Tear Down This Wall” by Ronald Reagan (1911–2004)
CHAPTER 5 American Philosophy
• “The American Scholar” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82)
• “Commencement Speech at Kenyon College (This Is Water)” by David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)
CHAPTER 6 America’s Poet?
• “Song of Myself” and “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman (1819–92)
• “I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1901–67)
• “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsburg (1926-27)
• “Whitman, Alabama” by Jennifer Crandall, established 2017
CHAPTER 7 Civil War
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
• “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason (b. 1940)
CHAPTER 8 American Horror
• “The Raven” and “Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49)
• “Manufacturing Intellect” Interview with Stephen King (b. 1947)
CHAPTER 9 Modernism
• “Ezra Pound: American Odyssey,” New York Center for Visual History Documentary
• “In a Station of the Metro” and “April” by Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)
• “The Road Not Taken” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost (1874–1963)
CHAPTER 10 Migration
• “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Harlem” by Langston Hughes (1901–67)
• “The Great Migration and the Power of a Single Decision” by Isabel Wilkerson (b. 1961)