Zelda Fitzgerald created this paper doll of her husband, Scott, whose literary genius and hard-drinking lifestyle made him one of the most fascinating figures of the last century.

On this voyage, ponder the question, "What does America look like?" Form your own impressions of our changing nation as it is reflected in the literature of the 20^th century.

Define the American landscape with Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis and Robert Frost. Experience the growth of towns and cities with Thornton Wilder, William Carlos Williams, and John Dos Passos as the century turns. Traverse geographical borders and cross the boundaries of your own imagination as you experience the fear, nostalgia and yearnings of the immigrants who teemed into our shores and sought to find their American Dream. Choose your own guide — Theodore Dreiser, Anzia Yezierska. And if you choose to "Go West" you can hear American voices in Native American Ghost Dances, Mexican-American corridos or the plight of Steinbeck's Okies in the Dust Bowl.

During the last century, our nation was shaped by the creative vision of poets who shunned old forms, defined Modernism, and reached inside themselves to give voice to American concerns. T.S. Eliot looked outward and surveyed the waste land of American experience, E.E. Cummings would not be contained by established norms, and the confessional poets poured out their hearts and spoke of longings that were once interior affairs.

Langston Hughes, one of the most important poets of the 20th century, regularly incorporated elements of jazz music into his work. Beginning with his time as a student at Columbia University, Hughes was also a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

There were those who sought to find their American Dream elsewhere.The Lost Generation surveyed our country from the cozy salons of their Paris retreat, but here at home new energy was bubbling. Voices from the margins began to reverberate against the walls of separation. The Harlem Renaissance gave national prominence to the uniquely African American experience. In the works of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston there sounded a request for inclusion in the American Dream. A generation later, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry would echo the demand. By the end of the century, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Rita Dove would take their rightful place in American literary history — and realize the "dream deferred."

American stories were being told on stage too, as Broadway welcomed American literary genius. Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams explored human dramas — private and public — and forced Americans to confront the best and worst in themselves. Everywhere you turned, Americans had a story to tell. O. Henry did it with a surprise ending, the Algonquin Round Table writers did it through the exchange of biting barbs, and Raymond Carver did it with minimalism and economy. Though the styles differed, a new genre had taken hold in America and reflected our changing face.

Maya Angelou was an actor and a civil rights activist before becoming one of the most popular American poets of the last 50 years.

On our lighter side, we had pop lit, detective stories, and sci-fi. But don't be fooled. These writers felt the impact of American concerns as strongly as their "serious-genre" contemporaries. Ursula LeGuin, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Asimov have plenty to say about the atomic age, and the disillusion that accompanied it. Journey to the planets Winter or Tralfamadore to see if their inhabits resemble anyone here on the homeworld.

When you return to Earth, and have settled back into the U.S.A, you can travel "on the road" with the beats, reflect on the last few decades with Philip Roth, scrutinize the present with Jamaica Kincaid, or hope for the future with Maya Angelou.

When you have concluded your exploration, return to the question, "What does America look like?"

It looks like all of us who long for the American Dream and continually redefine it for ourselves. What will your dream be? Come study your past to help shape your future.

1. The New Landscape: Americans Feel the Pain
   1. Sherwood Anderson: Life in a Small Town
   2. Thornton Wilder Our Town
   3. Problems on Main Street: Sinclair Lewis
   4. William Carlos Williams: Paterson Poet
   5. Robert Frost: Feelings from New England
   6. Quick Cuts: John Dos Passos's U.S.A.
2. America -- Land of Opportunity?
   1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
   2. Anzia Yezierska and Bread Givers
   3. Theodore Dreiser and An American Tragedy
   4. Sister Carrie
   5. Preserving Tradition: Isaac Bashevis Singer
3. Truth or Dare: Taming the American West
   1. Jack London's Adventure in the Klondike
   2. Steinbeck and the Social Conscience
   3. Grapes of Wrath
   4. Of Mice and Men
   5. Native American Perspectives
   6. Mexican-American Voices
4. Poetry Beyond the Rhyme
   1. Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Richard Cory"
   2. Ezra Pound's Weighty Poetry
   3. E.E. Cummings
   4. T.S. Eliot and the Modern Condition
   5. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
   6. The Waste Land
   7. Confessions in Poetry: Lowell, Plath, and Sexton
5. Literature in Exile: The Lost Generation
   1. Gertrude Stein Leads the Way
   2. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda
   3. The Great Gatsby
   4. Ernest Hemingway
   5. The Old Man and the Sea
6. Bearing Witness: The Harlem Renaissance
   1. Why Harlem?
   2. Claude McKay "If We Must Die"
   3. "A Dream Deferred": Langston Hughes
   4. Countee Cullen: "Any Human To Another"
   5. The Poetry of Jazz
7. The Stage Is Set -- American Drama Flourishes
   1. Eugene O'Neill
   2. Tennessee Williams
   3. A Streetcar Named Desire
   4. The Glass Menagerie
   5. Arthur Miller and the 1950s
   6. The Crucible
   7. Death of a Salesman
   8. Edward Albee
8. Let There Be Light: The South Awakens
   1. Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
   2. William Faulkner
   3. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
   4. Faulkner's "The Bear"
   5. Flannery O'Connor and the Southern "Gothic"
   6. Eudora Welty
9. Innocent No More: Alienation in America
   1. A Separate Peace
   2. Racism and Judgment in To Kill a Mockingbird
   3. The Loner: J.D. Salinger
   4. Adolescent Agony: The Catcher in the Rye
   5. Philip Roth: Odd Man In
   6. "On the Road" with Kerouac and the Beats
   7. Allen Ginsberg
   8. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
10. The Diverse World of the Modern Short Story
    1. O. Henry's Surprise Endings
    2. Katherine Anne Porter
    3. Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table
    4. The New Yorker and its Writers
    5. Tillie Olsen: Ironing Out Riddles
    6. Shirley Jackson: "The Lottery"
    7. Beyond the Fringe: Raymond Carver
11. Total Request Live: "Pop" Lit -- Instant Hit
    1. Ursula LeGuin: Sci-Fi Master
    2. Isaac Asimov I Robot
    3. Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451
    4. Tarzan and Popular Reading
    5. Detective Fiction
    6. Gone with the Wind
12. Keeping It Real: African American Voices
    1. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
    2. Richard Wright: Native Son
    3. James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain
    4. Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun
    5. Toni Morrison
    6. Alice Walker The Color Purple
    7. Gwendolyn Brooks, Mari Evans, and Sonia Sanchez
    8. Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, and June Jordan
13. American Voices at the Millennium
    1. Chaim Potok The Chosen
    2. Sandra Cisneros "The House on Mango Street"
    3. Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club
    4. Jamaica Kincaid -- "Life is difficult and that's that"
    5. Poets Laureate: Rita Dove and Robert Pinsky
    6. Maya Angelou "The Pulse of Morning"