This is a chronological survey of American literature from 1865 to the present. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to write analytical essays on literary texts, explain the individual, social, economic, and global forces that have shaped American literature from 1865 to the present, define the characteristics of realism, modernism, and postmodernism in relation to American literature, present chronologically the movements and major writers of American literature from 1865 to the present, and use secondary sources to analyze literary texts from diverse cultural and social perspectives.