Many people know one sentence from early American literature: Puritan leader John Winthrop’s 1630 claim that “we shall be as a City on a Hill.” Often misinterpreted as a promise of inevitable national success, these words were actually a warning that America’s redemptive promises carried the risk of disastrous and conspicuous failure. This course traces the efforts of English-language writers to respond to both the promises and the failures of the tiny colonial settlements that became the United States. Authors studied include Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman. Prerequisite: One course in English with attribute GFWI.