Center for Lit: American Literature

by Adam Andrews Other, Missy Andrews Other

The American experience is unique in world history – a nation founded not on ethnicity but ideology, whose people have struggled for more than two centuries to realize the proposition that all men are created equal. American literature demonstrates the power of this idea in all of its triumph and devastation. We’ll join Hester Prynne, Jay Gatsby, Henry Fleming, Huckleberry Finn, Atticus Finch and others as they live out the contradictions inherent in a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people.” CenterForLit instructors use the Socratic method to conduct online discussions of classic books. This method involves asking questions that force them to think carefully about their reading, and then to think carefully about their thinking. Using the author's theme as the goal of the discussion, instructors encourage students to understand his message by discussing the structural and stylistic components make up his story. Next, students are drawn by further questioning to critically examine their own assumptions about the author's theme. As a result, students gain a deeper understanding of the book, and also of themselves as readers and thinkers.