Moby Dick -- a whale of a tale.

Starting with the earliest Europeans in America and the storytelling of Native Americans and ending with the rhymes of Robert Frost, we will watch a national literature develop. Along the way, writers such as James Fenimore Cooper will struggle with the concept of American's conquest of nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson will urge Americans to develop their own voice, and we'll see how America's most popular female poet in 1850 — Lydia Sigourney — fell into obscurity.

Don't worry. It's not all "serious" literature either. We'll leaf through popular magazines, escape in dime novels, and find out what teens were reading in the 19th century.

In the 17th century, American literature helped induce settlers to come to a New World. In the 18th century, literature helped to establish a nation governed by its people, based on their ideals. In the 19th century, American writers helped define what it meant to be an American and helped chart the direction America was moving — not only geographically, but also spiritually.

Reading these writers today helps us better understand who we are and who we'll be in the 21st century.

1. The Colonial Era to 1789
   1. Discovery! The New World
   2. Settlers Arrive: The Colonial Experience
   3. Women's Perspectives
   4. Preachers and Pedagogues
   5. Revolutionary Voices
   6. Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano
2. Quest for an "American Identity"
   1. Early Popular Drama and Novels
   2. Washington Irving and "The Knickerbocker Tales"
   3. James Fenimore Cooper
   4. Transcendentalism
   5. Ralph Waldo Emerson
   6. Henry David Thoreau
3. Growing Pains
   1. Native American Voices
   2. Perspectives on Slavery and Abolition
   3. Uncle Tom's Cabin
   4. Writers for Women's Rights
   5. Rise of the Ladies' Magazines
4. Edgar Allan Poe: The Sad Life and Times
   1. The Gothic Tales
   2. Creating the Detective Story
   3. Poetry, Passion, and Beauty
5. Hawthorne and Melville
   1. Nathaniel Hawthorne
   2. The Scarlet Letter
   3. Herman Melville
   4. Moby-Dick
6. The Emergence of American Poetry
   1. William Cullen Bryant
   2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
   3. Lydia Huntley Sigourney
   4. Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass
   5. The Reticent Celebrity: Emily Dickinson
   6. "Telling It Slant" -- Emily Dickinson
7. Tiny Brush Strokes: Local Colorists "Paint" America
   1. Sarah Orne Jewett -- Maine's Treasure
   2. Bret Harte: Scalawags and Scoundrels
   3. Storm and Calm: Kate Chopin's Creole Folk
8. Luck, Pluck, and the American Dream
   1. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
   2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
   3. Stephen Crane Defines Courage
   4. Rags to Riches: Horatio Alger
9. Surmounting Cultural, Racial, and Gender Barriers
   1. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
   2. Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Dilemma of Race
   3. James Weldon Johnson -- One of God's Trombones
   4. Charles Chesnutt
   5. Booker T. Washington
   6. W.E.B. Du Bois
10. The Evolution of Women's Spheres
    1. Louisa May Alcott
    2. Frances Ellen Harper
    3. Willa Cather: The Special Language of Loneliness
    4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
11. Interesting Incidentals
    1. Webster and His Dictionary
    2. "Dime" Novels
    3. The Tall Tale
    4. Humor in the Media
    5. Children's Literature
    6. Influence of Literary Magazines and Critics
12. The Early Moderns: Terror and Wonder in the 20th Century
    1. Upton Sinclair and the Novel of Social Outrage
    2. Theodore Dreiser
    3. Carl Sandburg
    4. Edgar Lee Masters: "Spoon River Anthology"
    5. Sage and Seer: Robert Frost