Assignment task: In the middle of the 19th century, political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville claimed, "The inhabitants of the United States have...properly speaking, no literature." Based on what you learned this semester, is this statement accurate? Evaluate the contributions of two or more writers this semester to the development of uniquely American literature. What genres, subjects, themes, settings, or characters did these writers develop?
Students should define what is meant by "American literature," including such things as common subject matter (frontier and small-town life, U.S. wars, modern women's family relationships); themes (social prejudices, racial progress, urbanization); settings (California mining towns, Wild West saloons, and modern industrial cities such as Pittsburgh); and characters (a schoolteacher in a small, rural town; leaders of Blue Vein societies; and the sheriff of a small Western town). In addition, students can focus on the growth of uniquely American contributions to realistic fiction (regionalism and local color fiction), which were in part reactions to events in the United States after the Civil War (industrialization and the move to cities, colonialism, adventuring).